The struggle for public opinion was ardent; and each party supported its pretensions, not only with those arguments which each deemed conclusive, but also by those reciprocal criminations which, perhaps, each, in part, believed.
The opposition declared that the friends of the administration were an aristocratic and corrupt faction, who, from a desire to introduce monarchy, were hostile to France, and under the influence of Britain; that they sought every occasion to increase expense, to augment debt, to multiply the public burdens, to create armies and navies, and, by the instrumentality of all this machinery, to govern and enslave the people: that they were a paper nobility, whose extreme sensibility at every measure which threatened the funds, induced a tame submission to injuries and insults, which the interests and honour of the nation required them to resist.
The friends of the administration retorted, that the opposition was prepared to sacrifice the best interests of their country on the altar of the French revolution.

That they were willing to go to war for French, not for American objects: that while they urged war they withheld the means of supporting it, in order the more effectually to humble and disgrace the government: that they were so blinded by their passion for France as to confound crimes with meritorious deeds, and to abolish the natural distinction between virtue and vice: that the principles which they propagated, and with which they sought to intoxicate the people, were, in practice, incompatible with the existence of government.

That they were the apostles of anarchy, not of freedom; and were consequently not the friends of real and rational liberty..