Note 263 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Gibbs, Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and John Adams, vol. i, p. 226, Oliver Ellsworth’s letter to Oliver Wolcott. Ellsworth reports that the “argument and explanation [of the treaty], that ‘’tis a damned thing made to plague the French,’ has by repetition, lost its power.” This could have been true only in a local sense.