equate provision should be made for the support of public credit; and instructing the Secretary of the Treasury to prepare a plan for the purpose, and report it at their next session.

The arrangement of the judicial department was one of Washington's earliest cares. On the 27th of September, he wrote unofficially to Edmund Randolph, of Virginia, informing him that he had nominated him Attorney-general of the United States, and would be highly gratified with his acceptance of that office. Some old recollec

tions of the camp and of the early days of the Revolution, may have been at the bottom of this good-will, for Randolph had joined the army at Cambridge in 1775, and acted for a time as aidede-camp to Washington in place of Mifflin. He had since gained experience in legislative business as member of Congress, from 1779 to 1782, governor of Virginia in 1786, and delegate to the convention in 1787. In the discussions of that celebrated body, he had been opposed to a single executive, professing to discern in the unity of that power the "fœtus of monarchy;" and preferring an executive consisting of three; whereas, in the opinion of others, this plural executive would be "a kind of Cerberus with three heads " Like Madison, he had disapproved of the equality of suffrage in the Senate, and been, moreover, of opinion, that the President should be ineligible to office after a given number of years.

Dissatisfied with some of the provisions of the Constitution as adopted, he had refused to sign it; but had afterwards supported it in the State Con

vention of Virginia. As we recollect him many years afterwards, his appearance and address were dignified and prepossessing; he had an expressive countenance, a beaming eye, and somewhat of the ore rotundo in speaking. Randolph promptly accepted the nomination, but did not take his seat in the cabinet until some months after Knox and Hamilton.

By the judicial system established for the Federal Government, the Supreme Court of the United States was to be composed of a chief justice and five associate judges. There were to be district courts with a judge in each State, and circuit courts held by an associate judge and a district judge. John Jay, of New York, received the appointment of Chief Justice, and in a letter inclosing his commission, Washington expressed the singular pleasure he felt in addressing him " as the head of that department which must be considered as the keystone of our political fabric."

Jay's associate judges were, John Rutledge of South Carolina, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, William Cushing of Massachusetts, John Blair of Virginia, and James Iredell of North Carolina. Washington had originally nominated to one of the judgeships his former military secretary, Robert Harrison, familiarly known as the old Secretary; but he preferred the office of chancellor of Maryland, recently conferred upon him.

On the 29th of September, Congress adjourned to the first Monday in January, after an arduous session, in which many important questions had

been discussed, and powers organized and dis tributed. The actual Congress was inferior in eloquence and shining talent to the first Congress of the Revolution; but it possessed men well fitted for the momentous work before them; sober, solid, upright, and well informed. An admirable harmony had prevailed between the legislature and the executive, and the utmost decorum had reigned over the public deliberations.

Fisher Ames, then a young man, who had acquired a brilliant reputation in Massachusetts by the eloquence with which he had championed the new Constitution in the convention of that important State, and who had recently been elected to Congress, speaks of it in the following terms: "I have never seen an assembly where so little art was used. If they wish to carry a point, it is directly declared and justified. Its merits and defects are plainly stated, not without sophistry and prejudice, but without manageThere is no intrigue, no caucusing, little of clanning together, little asperity in debate, or personal bitterness out of the House."

ment.

CHAPTER V.

The Department of State still without a Head. - Sketch of Jefferson's Character and Opinions. - Deeply Immersed in French Politics at Paris. - Gouverneur Morris Abroad. — Contrast of his and Jefferson's views of the French Crisis. -News of the French Revolution in America. - Popular Excitement. - Washington's Cautious Opinion on the Subject.

Hamilton's Apprehensive View. - Jefferson offered a Place in the Cabinet as Secretary of State.

HE cabinet was still incomplete, the department of foreign affairs, or rather of

State, as it was now called, was yet to be supplied with a head. John Jay would have received the nomination had he not preferred the bench. Washington next thought of Thomas Jefferson, who had so long filled the post of minister plenipotentiary at the Court of Versailles, but had recently solicited and obtained permission to return, for a few months, to the United States for the purpose of placing his children among their friends in their native country, and of arranging his private affairs, which had suffered from his protracted absence. And here we will venture a few particulars concerning this eminent statesman, introductory to the important influence he was to exercise on national affairs.

His political principles as a democratic repub

lican, had been avowed at an early date in his draft of the Declaration of Independence, and subsequently in the successful war which he made upon the old cavalier traditions of his native State, its laws of entails and primogeniture, and its church establishment a war which broke down the hereditary fortunes and hereditary families, and put an end to the hereditary aristocracy of the Ancient Dominion.

Being sent to Paris as minister plenipotentiary a year or two after the peace, he arrived there, as he says, "when the American Revolution seemed to have awakened the thinking part of the French nation from the sleep of despotism in which they had been sunk."

Carrying with him his republican principles and zeal, his house became the resort of Lafayette and others of the French officers who had served in the American Revolution. They were mostly, he said, young men little shackled by habits and prejudices, and had come back with new ideas and new impressions which began to be disseminated by the press and in conversation. Politics became the theme of all societies, male and female, and a very extensive and zealous party was formed which acquired the appellation of the Patriot Party, who, sensible of the abuses of the government under which they lived, sighed for occasions of reforming it. This party, writes Jefferson," comprehended all the honesty of the kingdom sufficiently at leisure to think, the men of letters, the easy bourgeois, the young nobility, paitry from reflection, partly from the mode; for