As Jefferson read the treaty, he saw that Hamilton had successfully managed to legislate through Jay’s diplomacy. “A bolder party-stroke was never struck,” Jefferson told Madison.93 “For it certainly is an attempt of a party, which finds they have lost their majority in one branch of the legislature, to make a law by the aid of the other branch and the executive, under color of a treaty, which shall bind up the hands of the adverse branch from ever restraining the commerce of their patron-nation.
