It is matter of some surprise to find a letter written so late as June, 1824, on the political paragraph contained in the letter to Mazzei, the following averment.[81] "In this information there was not one word which would not then have been or would not now be approved by every republican in the United States, looking back to those times."
In June, 1834, then, twenty-eight years after this extraordinary letter was written, and twenty-three years after its principal object had ceased to thwart the policy, or be an obstacle to the ambition of any man, Mr. Jefferson could deliberately, and on full consideration permit himself to make this assertion, and thus in effect to repeat the charge that General Washington belonged to an "Anglican, monarchical, and aristocratical party whose avowed object was to draw over us the substance as they had already done the forms of the British government,"—and this too while the venerated object of the charge was the chief magistrate of this great republic, acting under the obligation of a solemn oath "faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States, and to the best of his ability to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution!"
This unpleasant subject is dismissed. If the grave be a sanctuary entitled to respect, many of the intelligent and estimable friends of Mr. Jefferson may perhaps regret that he neither respected it himself, nor recollected that it is a sanctuary from which poisoned arrows ought never to be shot at the dead or the living.
END OF VOLUME V.
[FOOTNOTES]
[1] The day on which the palace of the Tuilleries was stormed and the royal government subverted.
[2] With this letter were addressed two others to the ministers at London and Paris respectively, stating the interest taken by the President and people of the United States in the fate of the Marquis de Lafayette. This gentleman was declared a traitor by France, and was imprisoned by Prussia. The ministers of the United States were to avail themselves of every opportunity of sounding the way towards his liberation, which they were to endeavour to obtain by informal solicitations; but, if formal ones should be necessary, they were to watch the moment when they might be urged with the best prospect of success. This letter was written at the sole instance of the President.