expressed with great delicacy; the others were for peremptory terms. Knox was for sending him off at once, but this proposition was generally scouted. In the end it was agreed that a letter should be written to Gouverneur Morris, giving a statement of the case, with accompanying documents, that he might lay the whole before the executive council of France, and explain the reason for desiring the recall of Mr. Genet.

It was proposed that a publication of the whole correspondence, and a statement of the proceedings, should be made by way of appeal to the people. This produced animated debates. Hamilton spoke with great warmth in favor of an appeal. Jefferson opposed it. "Genet,” said he, “will appeal also; it will become a contest between the President and Genet. Anonymous writers will take it up. There will be the same difference of opinion in public as in our cabinet-there will be the same difference in Congress, for it must be laid before them. It would work, therefore, very unpleasantly at home. How would it work abroad?"

Washington, already weary and impatient under the incessant dissensions of his cabinet, was stung by the suggestion that he might be held up as in conflict with Genet, and subjected, as he had been, to the ribaldry of the press. At this unlucky moment Knox blundered forth with a specimen of the scandalous libels already in circulation; a pasquinade lately printed, called the Funeral of George Washington, wherein the President was represented as placed upon, the guillotine, a horrible parody on the late decapitation of the French king. "The President," writes Jefferson, "now burst forth into one of those transports of passion beyond his control; inveighed against the personal abuse which had been bestowed upon him, and defied any man on earth to

produce a single act of his since he had been in the government that had not been done on the purest motives.

"He had never repented but once the having slipped the moment of resigning his office, and that was every moment since. In the agony of his heart he declared that he had rather be in his grave than in his present situation; that he had rather be on his farm than to be made emperor of the world-and yet, he said, indignantly, they are charging me with wanting to be a king!

"All were silent during this outburst of feeling-a pause ensued-it was difficult to resume the question. Washington, however, who had recovered his equanimity, put an end to the difficulty. There was no necessity, he said, for deciding the matter at present; the propositions agreed to, respecting the letter to Mr. Morris, might be put into a train of execution, and, perhaps, events would show whether the appeal would be necessary or not." *

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Threatened Dissolution of the Cabinet-Action between the "Ambuscade" and "Boston"-Triumphant return of the former to New York-A French Fleet arrives same Day-Excitement of the People-Genet arrives in the midst of it-His enthusiastic Reception-Is informed by Jefferson of the Measures for his Recall-His Rage and Reply-Decline of his Popularity

WASHINGTON had hitherto been annoyed and perplexed by having to manage a divided cabinet; he was now threatened with that cabinet's dissolution. Mr. Hamilton had

* Jefferson's Works, ix. 164.

informed him, by letter, that private as well as public reasons had determined him to retire from office toward the close of the next session; probably with a view to give Congress an opportunity to examine into his conduct. Now came a letter from Mr. Jefferson, dated July 31st, in which he recalled the circumstances which had induced him to postpone for a while his original intention of retiring from office at the close of the first four years of the republic. These circumstances, he observed, had now ceased to such a degree as to leave him free to think again of a day on which to withdraw; "at the close, therefore, of the ensuing month of September, I shall beg leave to retire to scenes of greater tranquillity from those for which I am every day more and more convinced that neither my talents, tone of mind, nor time of life fit me."

Washington was both grieved and embarrassed by this notification. Full of concern, he called upon Jefferson at his country residence near Philadelphia; pictured his deep distress at finding himself, in the present perplexing juncture of affairs, about to be deserted by those of his cabinet on whose counsel he had counted, and whose places he knew not where to find persons competent to supply; and, in his chagrin, again expressed his repentance that he himself had not resigned as he had once meditated.

The public mind, he went on to observe, was in an alarming state of ferment; political combinations of various kinds were forming; where all this would end he knew not. A new Congress was to assemble, more numerous than the last, perhaps of a different spirit; the first expressions of its sentiments would be important, and it would relieve him considerably if Jefferson would remain in office, if it were only until the end of the session.

Jefferson, in reply, pleaded an excessive repugnance to public life; and, what seems to have influenced him more sensibly, the actual uneasiness of his position. He was obliged, he said, to move in exactly the circle which he knew to bear him peculiar hatred; "the wealthy aristocrats, the merchants connected closely with England; the newlycreated paper fortunes." Thus surrounded, his words were caught, multiplied, misconstrued, and even fabricated, and spread abroad to his injury.

Mr. Jefferson pleaded, moreover, that the opposition of views between Mr. Hamilton and himself was peculiarly unpleasant, and destructive of the necessary harmony. With regard to the republican party he was sure it had not a view which went to the frame of the government; he believed the next Congress would attempt nothing material but to render their own body independent; the maneuvers of Mr. Genet might produce some little embarrassment, but the republicans would abandon that functionary the moment they knew the nature of his conduct.

Washington replied that he believed the views of the republican party to be perfectly pure: "but when men put a machine into motion," said he, "it is impossible for them to stop it exactly where they would choose, or to say where it will stop. The constitution we have is an excellent one, if we can keep it where it is."

He again adverted to Jefferson's constant suspicion that there was a party disposed to change the constitution into a monarchial form, declaring that there was not a man in the United States who would set his face more decidedly against such a change than himself.

"No rational man in the United States suspects you of any other disposition," cried Jefferson; "but there does not

pass a week in which we cannot prove declarations dropping from the monarchial party that our government is good for nothing; is a milk-and-water thing which cannot support itself; that we must knock it down and set up something with more energy."

"If that is the case," rejoined Washington, "it is a proof of their insanity, for the republican spirit of the Union is so manifest and so solid that it is astonishing how any one can expect to move it."

We have only Jefferson's account of this and other interesting interviews of a confidential nature which he had with the President, and we give them generally almost in his own words, through which, partial as they may have been, we discern Washington's constant efforts to moderate the growing antipathies between the eminent men whom he had sought to assist him in conducting the government. He continued to have the highest opinion of Jefferson's abilities, his knowledge of foreign affairs, his thorough patriotism; and it was his earnest desire to retain him in his cabinet through the whole of the ensuing session of Congress; before the close of which he trusted the affairs of the country relating to foreign powers, Indian disturbances, and internal policy, would have taken a more decisive, and, it was to be hoped, agreeable form than they then had. A compromise was eventually made, according to which Jefferson was to be allowed a temporary absence in the autumn, and on his return was to continue in office until January.

In the meantime Genet had proceeded to New York, which very excitable city was just then in a great agitation. The frigate "Ambuscade," while anchored in the harbor, had been challenged to single combat by the British frigate "Boston," Captain Courtney, which was cruising off the