Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3.

by Benson John Lossing

“To hope that the people may be cajoled into giving their sanctions to such institutions is still more chimerical. A people so enlightened and so diversified as the people of this country can surely never be brought to it but from convulsions and disorders, in consequence of the arts of popular demagogues.

“The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the country is by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion and bring on civil commotion. Tired at length of anarchy or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of monarchy for repose and security.”

The rupture between Hamilton and Jefferson was now complete, and the violence of party spirit manifested by the Gazettes of Fenno and Freneau was greatly augmented. The latter became more and more personal in his attacks upon the administration; and Hamilton, who was held up by name as a monarchist at heart, believing that the assaults originated in the hostility of Jefferson, in whose office Freneau was employed, at length turned sharply upon his assailant. Over an anonymous signature he inquired, in Fenno's paper, whether the government salary given to Freneau was paid him for translations, or for calumniating those whom the voice of the nation had called to the administration of public affairs; whether he was rewarded as a public servant, or as a disturber of the public peace by false insinuations. “In common life,” he said, “it is thought ungrateful for a man to bite the hand that puts bread in his mouth; but if a man is hired to do it the case is altered.”

Again he said, after giving a history of the establishment of Freneau's paper: “An experiment somewhat new in the history of political manœuvres in this country; a newspaper instituted by a public officer, and the editor of it regularly pensioned with the public money in the disposal of that officer.... But, it may be asked, is it possible that Mr. Jefferson, the head of a principal department of the government, can be the patron of a paper the evident object of which is to decry the government and its measures? If he disapproves of the government itself, and thinks it deserving of his opposition, can he reconcile it to his own personal dignity and the principles of probity to hold an office under it, and employ the means of official influence in that opposition? If he disapproves of the leading measures which have been adopted in the course of his administration, can he reconcile it with the principles of delicacy and propriety to hold a place in that administration, and at the same time to be instrumental in vilifying measures which have been adopted by majorities of both branches of the legislature, and sanctioned by the chief magistrate of the Union?”

This brought out an affidavit from Freneau, in which he exculpated Mr. Jefferson from all complicity in the establishment, the conduct, or the support of his paper.

The feud between Hamilton and Jefferson gave Washington great concern and no little mortification. Both ministers discharged the duties of their respective offices to the entire satisfaction of the president. He had endeavored, on his own part, not to allow his private views to interfere with them in the performance of those duties; but he now found himself compelled to take part in the dispute. That part was the noble one of pacificator. He desired most earnestly to heal the breach, and on the twenty-third of August he wrote to Jefferson on the subject. After referring to the hostilities of the Indians, and the possible intrigues of foreigners to check the growth of the United States, he said:—

“How unfortunate and how much to be regretted is it, that while we are encompassed on all sides with armed enemies and insidious friends, internal dissentions should be harrowing and tearing our vitals. The latter, to me, is the most serious, the most alarming, and the most afflicting of the two; and, without more charity for the opinions and acts of one another in governmental matters, or some more infallible criterion by which the truth of speculative opinions, before they have undergone the test of experience, are to be forejudged, than has yet fallen to the lot of fallibility, I believe it will be difficult, if not impracticable, to manage the reins of government, or to keep the parts of it together; for if, instead of laying our shoulders to the machine after measures are decided on, one pulls this way and another that, before the utility of the thing is fairly tried, it must inevitably be torn asunder, and, in my opinion, the fairest prospect of happiness and prosperity that ever was presented to man will be lost, perhaps for ever.

“My earnest wish and my fondest hope, therefore, is that instead of wounding suspicions and irritating charges there may be liberal allowances, mutual forbearances, and temporizing yieldings on all sides. Under the exercise of these, matters will go on smoothly and, if possible, more prosperously. Without them, everything must rub; the wheels of government will clog; our enemies will triumph, and, by throwing their weight into the disaffected scale, may accomplish the ruin of the goodly fabric we have been erecting.

“I do not mean to apply this advice or these observations to any particular person or character. I have given them in the same general terms to other officers of the government; because the disagreements, which have arisen from difference of opinion, and the attacks which have been made upon almost all the measures of government and most of its executive officers, have for a long time past filled me with painful sensations, and can not fail, I think, of producing unhappy consequences at home and abroad.”

To Hamilton he wrote three days afterward, expressing his regret that subjects could not be discussed with temper on the one hand, or decisions submitted to without the motives which led to them improperly implicated on the other. “When matters get to such lengths,” he said, “the natural inference is that both sides have strained the cords beyond their bearing, and that a middle course would be found the best, until experience shall have decided on the right way, or (which is not to be expected, because it is denied to mortals) there shall be some infallible rule by which we could forejudge events.