His admonitions were received by the people at large with profound respect, and sank deep into the public mind. As the generations have come and gone, the farewell address has grown dearer to the hearts of the people, and the children and the children's children of those to whom it was addressed have turned to it in all times and known that there was no room for error in following its counsel.

Yet at the moment, notwithstanding the general sadness at Washington's retirement and the deep regard for his last words of advice, the opposition was so thoroughly hostile that they seized on the address itself as a theme for renewed attack upon its author. "His character," said one Democrat, "can only be respectable while it is not known; he is arbitrary, avaricious, ostentatious; without skill as a soldier, he has crept into fame by the places he has held. His financial measures burdened the many to enrich the few. History will tear the pages devoted to his praise.

France and

his country gave him fame, and they will take that fame away. "His glory has dissolved in mist," said another writer, "and he has sunk from the high level of Solon or Lycurgus to the mean rank of a Dutch Stadtholder or a Venetian Doge. Posterity will look in vain for any marks of wisdom in his administration.”

To thoughtful persons these observations are not without a curious interest, as showing that even the wisest of men may be in error. The dis

tinguished Democrat who uttered these remarks has been forgotten, and the page of history on which Washington's name was inscribed is still untorn. The passage of the address, however, which gave the most offense, as Mr. McMaster points out, was, as might have been expected from the colonial condition of our politics, that which declared it to be our true policy "to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world." This, it was held, simply meant that, having made a treaty with England, we were to be stopped from making one with France. Another distinguished editor declared that the farewell address came from the meanest of motives; that the President knew he could not be reëlected because the Republicans would have united to supersede him with Adams, who had the simplicity of a Republican, while Washington had the ostentation of an Eastern Pasha, and it was in order to save himself from this humiliation that he had, cunningly resigned.

When Washington met his last Congress, William Giles of Virginia took the opportunity afforded by the usual answer to the President's speech to assail him personally. It would be of course a gross injustice to suppose that a coarse political ruffian like Giles really represented the Democratic party. But he represented the extreme wing, and after he had declared in his place that Washington was neither wise nor patriotic, and that his retirement was anything but a calamity,

he got twelve of his party friends to sustain his sentiments by voting with him. The press was even more unbridled, and it was said in the "Aurora" at this time that Washington had debauched and deceived the nation, and that his administration had shown that the mask of patriotism may be worn to conceal the foulest dangers to the lib-erties of the people.. Over and over again it was said by these writers that he had betrayed France and was the slave of England.

This charge of being a British sympathizer was the only one of all the abuse heaped upon him by the opposition that Washington seems really to have resented. In August, 1794, when this slander first started from the prolific source of all attacks against the government, he wrote to Henry Lee: "With respect to the words said to have been uttered by Mr. Jefferson, they would be enigmatical to those who are acquainted with the characters about me, unless supposed to be spoken ironically; and in that case they are too injurious to me, and have too little foundation in truth, to be ascribed to him. There could not be the trace of doubt in his mind of predilection in mine toward Great Britain or her politics, unless, which I do not believe, he has set me down as one of the most deceitful and uncandid men living; because, not only in private conversations between ourselves on this subject, but in my meetings with the confidential servants of the public, he has heard me often, when occasions presented themselves, express very

different sentiments, with an energy that could not be mistaken by any one present.

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'Having determined, as far as lay within the power of the executive, to keep this country in a state of neutrality, I have made my public conduct accord with the system; and whilst so acting as a public character, consistency and propriety as a private man forbid those intemperate expressions in favor of one nation, or to the prejudice of another, which may have wedged themselves in, and, I will venture to add, to the embarrassment of government, without producing any good to the country."

He had shown by his acts as well as by his words his real friendship for France, such as a proper sense of gratitude required. As has been already pointed out, rather than run the risk of seeming to reflect in the slightest degree upon the government of the French republic, he had refused even to receive distinguished émigrés like Noailles, Liancourt, and Talleyrand. He was so scrupulous in this respect that he actually did violence to his own strong desires in not taking into his house at once the son of Lafayette; and when it became necessary to choose a successor to Morris, his anxiety was so great to select some one agree‐ able to France that he took such an avowed opponent of his administration as Monroe.

On the other hand, he had never lost the strong

1 See the Letter to the Duc de Liancourt explaining the reasons for his not being received by the President. (Sparks, xi. 161.)

feeling of hostility toward England which he, above all men, had felt during the Revolution. The conduct of England, when he was seeking an honorable peace with her, tried his patience severely. He wrote to Morris in 1795: "I give you these details (and if you should again converse with Lord Grenville on the subject, you are at liberty, unofficially, to mention them, or any of them, according to circumstances), as evidences of the unpolitic conduct (for so it strikes me) of the British government towards these United States; that it may be seen how difficult it has been for the executive, under such an accumulation of irritating circumstances, to maintain the ground of neutrality which had been taken; and at a time when the remembrance of the aid we had received from France in the Revolution was fresh in every mind, and while the partisans of that country were continually contrasting the affections of that people with the unfriendly disposition of the British government. And that, too, as I have observed before, while their own sufferings during the war with the latter had not been forgotten." The one man in the country who above all others had the highest conception of American nationality, who was the first to seek to lift up our politics from the low level of colonialism, who was the author of the neutrality policy, had reason to resent the bitter irony of an attack which represented him as a British sympathizer. The truth is, that the only foreign party at that time was that which