The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5)
J >> John Marshall >> The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5)Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30
"I do not mean to apply this advice to any measures which are passed,
or to any particular character. I have given it, in the same _general_
terms, to other officers of the government. My earnest wish is that
balm may be poured into _all_ the wounds which have been given, to
prevent them from gangrening, and to avoid those fatal consequences
which the community may sustain if it is withheld. The friends of the
union must wish this: those who are not, but who wish to see it
rended, will be disappointed; and all things I hope will go well."
* * * * *
NOTE--No. VIII. _See Page 479._
The gazettes of the day contain ample proofs on this subject. All the
bitterness of party spirit had poured itself out in the most severe
invectives against the heads of the state and treasury departments.
The secretary of the treasury was represented as the advocate of
"aristocracy, monarchy, hereditary succession, a titled order of
nobility, and all the other mock pageantry of kingly government." He
was arraigned at the bar of the public for holding principles
unfavourable to the sovereignty of the people, and with inculcating
doctrines insinuating their inability to rule themselves. The theory
of the British monarchy was said to have furnished his model for a
perfect constitution; and all his systems of finance, which were
represented as servile imitations of those previously adopted by
England, were held up to public execration as being intended to
promote the favourite project of assimilating the government of the
United States to that of Great Britain. With this view, he had
entailed upon the nation a heavy debt, and perpetual taxes; had
created an artificial monied interest which had corrupted, and would
continue to corrupt the legislature; and was endeavouring to prostrate
the local authorities as a necessary step towards erecting that great
consolidated monarchy which he contemplated.
To support some of these charges, sentences and parts of sentences
were selected from his reports, which expressed the valuable purposes
to which a funded debt might be applied, and were alleged to affirm,
as an abstract principle, "that a public debt was a public blessing."
He was, it was added, the inveterate enemy of Mr. Jefferson, because,
in the republican principles of that gentleman, he perceived an
invincible obstacle to his views.
If the counter charges exhibited against the secretary of state were
less capable of alarming the fears of the public for liberty, and of
directing the resentments of the people against that officer as the
enemy of their rights, they were not less calculated to irritate his
personal friends, and to wound his own feelings.
The adversaries of this gentleman said, that he had been originally
hostile to the constitution of the United States, and adverse to its
adoption; and "that his avowed opinions tended to national disunion,
national insignificance, public disorder, and discredit." Under the
garb of democratic simplicity, and modest retiring philosophy, he
covered an inordinate ambition which grasped unceasingly at power, and
sought to gratify itself, by professions of excessive attachment to
liberty, and by traducing and lessening in the public esteem, every
man in whom he could discern a rival. To this aspiring temper they
ascribed, not only "those pestilent whispers which, clandestinely
circulating through the country, had, as far as was practicable,
contaminated some of its fairest and worthiest characters," but also
certain publications affecting the reputation of prominent individuals
whom he might consider as competitors with himself for the highest
office in the state. A letter written by Mr. Jefferson to a printer,
transmitting for publication the first part of "the rights of man,"
which letter was prefixed to the American edition of that pamphlet,
contained allusions to certain "political heresies" of the day, which
were understood to imply a serious censure on the opinions of the vice
president: and the great object of the national gazette, a paper known
to be edited by a clerk in the department of state, was "to calumniate
and blacken public characters, and, particularly, to destroy the
public confidence in the secretary of the treasury, who was to be
hunted down for the unpardonable sin of having been the steady and
invariable friend of broad principles of national government." It was
also said that his connexions with this paper, and the patronage he
afforded it, authorized the opinion that it might fairly be considered
"the mirror of his views," and thence was adduced an accusation not
less serious in its nature than that which has been already stated.
The national gazette was replete with continual and malignant
strictures on the leading measures of the administration, especially
those which were connected with the finances. "If Mr. Jefferson's
opposition to these measures had ceased when they had received the
sanction of law, nothing more could have been said than that he had
transgressed the rules of official decorum in entering the lists with
the head of another department, and had been culpable in pursuing a
line of conduct which was calculated to sow the seeds of discord in
the executive branch of the government in the infancy of its
existence. But when his opposition extended beyond that point, when it
was apparent that he wished to _render odious_, and of course to
_subvert_ (for in a popular government these are convertible terms)
all those deliberate and solemn acts of the legislature which had
become the pillars of the public credit, his conduct deserved to be
regarded with a still severer eye." It was also said to be peculiarly
unfit for a person remaining at the head of one of the great executive
departments, openly to employ all his influence in exciting the public
rage against the laws and the legislature of the union, and in giving
circulation to calumnies against his colleagues in office, from the
contamination of which the chief magistrate himself could not hope
entirely to escape.
END OF VOLUME IV.