Yet with silly fatuity they vigorously opposed every effort to make the Government stronger or to increase national feeling, railing even at the attempt to erect a great Federal city as "unwise, impolitic, unjust," and "a monument to American folly." [Footnote: _Kentucky Gazette_, Feb.

8, 1794; Sept.

16, 1797, etc., etc.] The men who wrote these articles, and the leaders of the societies and clubs which inspired them, certainly made a pitiable showing; they proved that they themselves were only learning, and had not yet completely mastered, the difficult art of self government.
Negotiations of the Spanish and American Governments.
Wilkinson's Ineffectual Treason.
It was the existence of these Western separatists, nominally the fiercest foes of Spain, that in reality gave Spain the one real hope of staying the western advance.

In 1794 the American agents in Spain were carrying on an interminable correspondence with the Spanish Court in the effort to come to some understanding about the boundaries.

[Footnote: American State Papers, Foreign Relations, I., p.