To follow his course while President is outside of the scope of this work, but a few facts are worth noting.  Allusion has already been made to his use of the appointing power, but how clearly he held it as a “public trust” is shown in a letter to his longtime friend Benjamin Harrison, who asked him for an office.  “I will go to the chair,” he replied, “under no pre-engagement of any kind or nature whatsoever.  But, when in it, to the best of my judgment, discharge the duties of the office with that impartiality and zeal for the public good, which ought never to suffer connection of blood or friendship to intermingle so as to have the least sway on the decision of a public nature.”  This position was held to firmly.  John Adams wrote an office-seeker, “I must caution you, my dear Sir, against having any dependence on my influence or that of any other person.  No man, I believe, has influence with the President.  He seeks information from all quarters, and judges more independently than any man I ever knew.  It is of so much importance to the public that he should preserve this superiority, that I hope I shall never see the time that any man will have influence with him beyond the powers of reason and argument.”

Long after, when political strife was running high, Adams said, “Washington appointed a multitude of democrats and jacobins of the deepest die.  I have been more cautious in this respect; but there is danger of proscribing under imputations of democracy, some of the ablest, most influential, and best characters in the Union.”  In this he was quite correct, for the first President’s appointments were made with a view to destroy party and not create it, his object being to gather all the talent of the country in support of the national government, and he bore many things which personally were disagreeable in an endeavor to do this.

Twice during Washington’s terms he was forced to act counter to the public sentiment.  The first time was when a strenuous attempt was made by the French minister to break through the neutrality that had been proclaimed, when, according to John Adams, “ten thousand people in the streets of Philadelphia, day after day, threatened to drag Washington out of his house, and effect a revolution in the government, or compel it to declare in favor of the French revolution and against England.”  The second time was when he signed the treaty of 1795 with Great Britain, which produced a popular outburst from one end of the country to the other.  In neither case did Washington swerve an iota from what he thought right, writing, “these are unpleasant things, but they must be met with firmness.”  Eventually the people always came back to their leader, and Jefferson sighed over the fact that “such is the popularity of the President that the people will support him in whatever he will do or will not do, without appealing to their own reason or to anything but their feelings towards him.”

[Illustration:  PRESIDENTIAL MANSION, PHILADELPHIA]