The answer to this letter and to these resolutions evinced the firmness with which he had resolved to meet the effort that was obviously making, to control the exercise of his constitutional functions, by giving a promptness and vigour to the expression of the sentiments of a party, which might impose it upon the world as the deliberate judgment of the public.
Addresses to the chief magistrate, and resolutions of town and country meetings, were not the only means which were employed to enlist the American people against the measure which had been advised by the senate.

In an immense number of essays, the treaty was critically examined, and every argument which might operate on the judgment or prejudice of the public, was urged in the warm and glowing language of passion.

To meet these efforts by counter efforts, was deemed indispensably necessary by the friends of that instrument; and the gazettes of the day are replete with appeals to the passions, and to the reason, of those who are the ultimate arbiters of every political question.

That the treaty affected the interests of France not less than those of the United States, was, in this memorable controversy, asserted by the one party, with as much zeal as it was denied by the other.

These agitations furnished matter to the President for deep reflection, and for serious regret; but they appear not to have shaken the decision he had formed, or to have affected his conduct otherwise than to induce a still greater degree of circumspection in the mode of transacting the delicate business before him.