of our country.  After five and twenty years’ continual employment in it, I trust it will be thought I have fulfilled my tour, like a punctual soldier, and may claim my discharge.  But I am glad of the sentiment from you, my friend, because it gives a hope you will practise what you preach, and come forward in aid of the public vessel.  I will not admit your old excuse, that you are in public service though at home.  The campaigns which are fought in a man’s own house are not to be counted.  The present situation of the President, unable to get the offices filled, really calls with uncommon obligation on those whom nature has fitted for them.  I join with you in thinking the treaty an execrable thing.  But both negotiators must have understood, that as there were articles in it which could not be carried into execution without the aid of the legislatures on both sides, therefore it must be referred to them, and that these legislatures, being free agents, would not give it their support if they disapproved of it.  I trust the popular branch of our legislature will disapprove of it, and thus rid us of this infamous act, which is really nothing more than a treaty of alliance between England and the Anglomen of this country, against the legislature and people of the United States.  I am, my dear friend, yours affectionately,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CLXXXVIII.—­TO WILLIAM B. GILES, December 31, 1795

TO WILLIAM B. GILES.

Monticello, December 31, 1795.

Dear Sir,

Your favors of December the 15th and 20th came to hand by the last post.  I am well pleased with the manner in which your House have testified their sense of the treaty:  while their refusal to pass the original clause of the reported answer proved their condemnation of it, the contrivance to let it disappear silently respected appearances in favor of the President, who errs as other men do, but errs with integrity.  Randolph seems to have hit upon the true theory of our constitution; that when a treaty is made, involving matters confided by the constitution to the three branches of the legislature conjointly, the Representatives are as free as the President and Senate were, to consider whether the national interest requires or forbids their giving the forms and force of law to the articles over which they have a power.  I thank you much for the pamphlet.  His narrative is so straight and plain, that even those who did not know him will acquit him of the charge of bribery.  Those who knew him had done it from the first.  Though he mistakes his own political character in the aggregate, yet he gives it to you in the detail.  Thus he supposes himself a man of no party (page 57); that his opinions not containing any systematic adherence to party, fell sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other (page 58).  Yet he gives you these facts, which show that they fall generally on both sides, and are complete inconsistencies.