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JEFFERSON OPPOSES HIS RETIREMENT.

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weighed all the reasons for and against the measure, had made up your mind in full view of them, and that there could be little hope of changing the result. Pursuing my reflections, too, I knew we were some day to try to walk alone, and, if the essay should be made while you should be alive and looking on, we should derive confidence from that circumstance, and resource if it failed. The public mind, too, was then calm and confident, and therefore in a favorable state for making the experiment. But the public mind is no longer so confident and serene; and that from causes in which you are no ways personally mixed.”

Jefferson now launched out against the public debt and all the evils which he apprehended from the funding system, the ultimate object of all which was, said he, "to prepare the way for a change from the present republican form of government to that of a monarchy, of which the English constitution is to be the model." He concluded by pronouncing the continuance of Washington at the head of affairs, to be of the last importance.

"The confidence of the whole Union," writes he, "is centred in you. Your being at the helm will be more than an answer to every argument which can be used to alarm and lead the people in any quarter into violence or secession. North and South will hang together, if they have you to hang on; and, if the first corrective of a numerous representation should fail in its effect, your presence will give time for trying others not inconsistent with the union and peace of the States.

"I am perfectly aware of the oppression under which your present office lays your mind, and of the ardor with which you pant for retirement to domestic life. But there is sometimes an eminence of character on which society have such peculiar claims, as to control the predilections of the individual for a particular

walk of happiness, and restrain him to that alone, arising from the present and future benedictions of mankind. This seems to be your condition, and the law imposed on you by Providence, in forming your character, and fashioning the events on which it was to operate; and it is to motives like these, and not to personal anxieties of mine or others, who have no right to call on you for sacrifices, that I appeal from your former determination and urge a revisal of it, on the ground of change in the aspect of things. Should an honest majority result from the new and enlarged representation, should those acquiesce, whose principles or interests they may control, your wishes for retirement would be gratified with less danger, as soon as that shall be manifest, without awaiting the completion of the second period of four years. One or two sessions will determine the crisis; and I cannot but hope, that you can resolve to add one or two more to the many years you have already sacrificed to the good of mankind.”*

*Writings, x. 508.

CHAPTER XVI.

JEFFERSON'S SUSPICIONS-CONTEMNED BY HAMILTON-WASHINGTON'S EXPOSTULATION-COMPLAINS OF THE CONDUCT OF FRENEAU'S PAPER-HAMILTON AND RANDOLPH URGE HIM TO A RE-ELECTION-A WARRING CABINET

HAMILTON'S ATTACK ON JEFFERSON-WASHINGTON'S HEALING ADMONITIONS

-REPLIES OF THE TWO SECRETARIES-CONTINUED HOSTILITY TO THE EXCISE LAW-WASHINGTON'S PROCLAMATION-RENEWED EFFORT TO ALLAY THE DISCORD IN HIS CABINET.

THE letter of Jefferson was not received by Washington until after his return to Philadelphia, and the purport of it was so painful to him, that he deferred from day to day having any conversation with that statesman on the subject. A letter written in the mean time, by Jefferson to Lafayette, shows the predominant suspicion, or rather belief, which had fixed itself in the mind of the former, and was shaping his course of action.

"A sect," writes he, "has shown itself among us, who declare they espoused our constitution not as a good and sufficient thing in itself, but only as a step to an English constitution, the only thing good and sufficient in itself, in their eyes. It is happy for us that these are preachers without followers, and that our people are firm and constant in their republican purity. You will won

der to be told that it is from the Eastward chiefly, that these champions for a king, lords, and commons, come. They get some important associates from New York, and are puffed up by a tribe of Agioteurs which have been hatched in a bed of corruption, made up after the model of their beloved England. Too many of these stock-jobbers and king-jobbers have come into our legislature, or rather, too many of our legislature have become stockjobbers and king-jobbers. However, the voice of the people is beginning to make itself heard, and will probably cleanse their seats at the next election." *

In regard to the suspicions and apprehensions avowed in the above letter, and which apparently were haunting Jefferson's mind, Hamilton expressed himself roundly in one of his cabinet papers:

"The idea of introducing a monarchy or aristocracy into this country, by employing the influence and force of a government continually changing hands, towards it, is one of those visionary things that none but madmen could meditate, and that no wise man will believe. If it could be done at all, which is utterly incredible, it would require a long series of time, certainly beyond the life of any individual, to effect it—who, then, would enter into such a plot? for what purpose of interest or ambition?”

And as to the charge of stock-gambling in the legislature, Hamilton indignantly writes: "As far as I know, there is not a member of the legislature who can properly be called a stockjobber or a paper-dealer. There are several of them who were proprietors of public debt, in various ways; some for money lent and property furnished for the use of the public during the war,

* Jefferson's Works, iii. 450.

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FRENEAU'S GAZETTE.

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others for sums reccived in payment of debts, and it is supposable enough that some of them had been purchasers of the public debt, with intention to hold it as a valuable and convenient property, considering an honorable provision for it as a matter of course.

"It is a strange perversion of ideas, and as novel as it is ex traordinary, that men should be deemed corrupt and criminal for becoming proprietors in the funds of their country. Yet, I believe the number of members of Congress is very small, who have ever been considerable proprietors in the funds. As to improper speculations on measures depending before Congress, I believe never was any body of men freer from them.” *

On the 10th of July, Washington had a conversation with Jefferson on the subject of the letter he had recently received from him; and endeavored with his usual supervising and moderating assiduity to allay the jealousies and suspicions which were disturbing the mind of that ardent politician. These, he intimated, had been carried a great deal too far. There might be desires, he said, among a few in the higher walks of life, particularly in the great cities, to change the form of government into a monarchy, but he did not believe there were any designs; and he believed the main body of the people in the Eastern States were as steadily for republicanism as in the Southern.

He now spoke with earnestness about articles in the public papers, especially in the Gazette edited by Freneau, the object of which seemed to be to excite opposition to the government, and which had actually excited it in Pennsylvania, in regard to the excise law. "These articles," said he, feelingly, "tend to produce a separation of the Union, the most dreadful of calamities,

Hamilton's Works, iv. 268.