The president urged the house of representatives to adopt measures for the “regular redemption and discharge of the public debt,” as a matter of the first importance; and announced the necessity of an augmentation of the public revenue to meet all proper demands upon the treasury. He concluded by saying, “Permit me to bring to your remembrance the magnitude of your task. Without an unprejudiced coolness, the welfare of the government may be hazarded; without harmony, as far as consists with freedom of sentiment, its dignity may be lost. But, as the legislative proceedings of the United States will never, I trust, be reproached for the want of temper or of candor, so shall not the public happiness languish for the want of my strenuous and warmest co-operation.”
On the fifth of December, according to promise, Washington laid before Congress the documents relating, not only to Genet and his mission, but to negotiations with England and other European governments. In his message accompanying these documents, after alluding to the general feeling of friendship for the United States exhibited by the representative and executive bodies of France, the president spoke as follows of the insolent Genet:—
“It is with extreme concern I have to inform you, that the proceedings of the person whom they have unfortunately appointed their minister plenipotentiary here have breathed nothing of the friendly spirit of the nation which sent him. Their tendency, on the contrary, has been to involve us in war abroad, and discord and anarchy at home. So far as his acts, or those of his agents, have threatened our immediate commitment in the war, or flagrant insult to the authority of the laws, their effect has been counteracted by the ordinary cognizance of the laws, and by an exertion of the powers confided to me. Where their danger was not imminent, they have been borne with from sentiments of regard to his nation, from a sense of their friendship toward us, from a conviction that they would not suffer us to long remain exposed to the action of a person who has so little respected our mutual dispositions, and from a reliance on the firmness of my fellow-citizens in their principles of peace and order.” He then alluded to the spoliations which had been committed upon the commerce of the United States by the cruisers of the belligerent powers, and the restrictions upon American commerce attempted to be enforced by the commanders of British vessels pursuant to instructions of their government. He also called attention to the inexecution of the treaty of 1783, and the relations of the United States and Spain.
“The message,” says Hildreth, “as originally drafted by Jefferson, contained a contrast between the conduct of France and England, especially in relation to commercial facilities, highly favorable to the former. This had been objected to by Hamilton, who considered the disposition of the people toward France a serious calamity, and that the executive ought not, by echoing her praises, to nourish that disposition. In his opinion, the balance of commercial favors was decidedly with the British; the commercial offers made by France were the offspring of the moment, growing out of circumstances that could not last. To evade Hamilton's objections, Jefferson consented to some modifications of the message. Hamilton then insisted that the papers relating to the non-execution of the treaty of peace, and to the stopping of the corn-ships, ought not to be communicated, unless in a secret message, as the matters therein discussed were still unsettled, and the tendency of the communication was to inflame the public mind against Great Britain. Jefferson was a good deal alarmed at this threatened suppression of his diplomatic labors; but Washington decided that all the papers should be communicated without any restrictions of secrecy, even those respecting the corn-ships, which all the cabinet except Jefferson had advised to withhold.”
In a letter to his wife, written on the nineteenth of December, John Adams, referring to the sentence in Washington's special message in relation to the French minister, said, “The president has considered the conduct of Genet very nearly in the same light with Columbus, and has given him a bolt of thunder. We shall see how this is supported by both houses. We shall soon see whether we have any government or not in this country.” Doubting whether Washington would be sustained by Congress, Adams continued: “But, although he stands at present as high in the admiration and confidence of the people as ever he did, I expect he will find many bitter and desperate enemies arise in consequence of his just judgment against Genet.”
In this, Adams was mistaken. The house, where the opposition was most rampant, determined, and unscrupulous, responded most affectionately to the president's message, and tacitly rebuked the demagogues for their personal abuse of Washington. They expressed their satisfaction at his re-election, and their confidence in the purity and patriotism of his motives, in all his acts, especially in again consenting, at the call of his country, to fill the presidential chair. “It is to virtues which have commanded long and universal reverence, and services from which have flowed great and lasting benefits, that the tribute of praise may be paid, without the reproach of flattery; and it is from the same sources that the fairest anticipations may be derived in favor of the public happiness.”
Both houses, likewise, in the face of the popular excitement in favor of France, approved of the president's course in regard to that country and its representative; and while the lower house was guarded in its terms of approval of the proclamation of neutrality that had been so loudly condemned by the partisan press, the senate pronounced it “a measure well-timed and wise, manifesting a watchful solicitude for the welfare of the nation and calculated to promote it.”
Jefferson's official connection with Washington was now drawing to a close. He had consented to remain in the cabinet until the end of the current year. With the completion and submission of some able state papers he finished his career as secretary of state. One of them was an elaborate report called for by a resolution of Congress adopted in February, 1791, on the state of trade of the United States with different countries; the nature and extent of exports and imports, and the amount of tonnage of American shipping. It also specified the various restrictions and prohibitions by which American commerce was embarrassed and greatly injured, and recommended the adoption of discriminating duties, as against Great Britain, to compel her to put the United States on a more equal footing, she having thus far persistently declined to enter into any treaty stipulations on the subject.
Jefferson's last official act was the administration of a deserved rebuke to Genet. That meddling functionary had sent to him translations of the instructions given him by the executive council of France, desiring the president to lay them officially before both houses of Congress, and proposing to transmit, from time to time, other papers to be laid before them in like manner. “I have it in charge to observe,” said Jefferson to Genet in a letter on the thirty-first of December, “that your functions as the minister of a foreign nation here are confined to the transactions of the affairs of your nation with the executive of the United States; that the communications which are to pass between the executive and legislative branches can not be a subject for your interference; and that the president must be left to judge for himself what matters his duty, or the public good, may require him to propose to the deliberations of Congress. I have, therefore, the honor of returning you the copies sent for distribution, and of being, with great respect, sir, your most obedient and most humble servant.” Even this did not keep Genet quiet.
Throughout all the storm that had agitated his cabinet, and the hostility of Jefferson and his party to the measures of the administration, Washington never withheld from the secretary of state his confidence in his wisdom and patriotism; and the latter left office with the happy consciousness that he carried with him into retirement the friendship of one, of whom he said in after years, “His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was indeed, in every sense of the word, a wise, and good, and great man"[62]