of Randolph, would be sure to take, and as a matter of fact actually took, when the affair became known.  There was a great international question to be settled, and settled without delay.  This was done in a week, during which time Washington kept silent, as his public duty required.  The moment the treaty was signed he handed Fauchet’s dispatch to Randolph and asked for an explanation.  None knew of the dispatch except the cabinet officers, through whom it had necessarily come.  Washington did not prejudge the case; he did not dismiss Randolph with any mark of his pleasure, as he would have been quite justified in doing.  He simply asked for explanation, and threw open his own correspondence and the archives of the department, so that Randolph might have every opportunity for defense.  It is difficult to see how Washington could have done less in dealing with Randolph, or in what way he could have shown greater consideration.

Randolph resigned of his own motion, and then cried out against Washington because he had been obliged to pay the penalty of his own errors.  When it is considered that Washington did absolutely nothing to Randolph except to hand him Fauchet’s dispatch and accept his consequent resignation, the talk about Randolph’s forgiving him becomes simply ludicrous.  Randolph saw his own error, was angry with himself, and, like the rest of humanity, proceeded to vent his anger on somebody else, but unfortunately he had the bad taste to turn at the outset to the newspapers.  Like Mr. Snodgrass, he took off his coat in public and announced in a loud voice that he was going to begin.  The President’s only response was to open the archives and bid him publish everything he desired.  Randolph then wrote the President a private letter, which was angry and impertinent; “full of innuendoes,” said the recipient.  Washington drafted a sharp reply, and then out of pure kindness withheld it, and let the private letter drop into silence, whither the bulky “Vindication,” which vindicated nobody, soon followed it.  The fact was, that Washington treated Randolph with great kindness and forbearance.  He had known him long; he was fond of him on his own account as well as his father’s; he appreciated Randolph’s talents; but he knew on reading that dispatch, if he had never guessed it before, that Randolph, although honest and clever, and certainly not bad, was a dangerously weak man.  Others among our public men had put themselves into relations with foreign representatives which it is now intolerable to contemplate, but Randolph, besides being found out at the moment, had, after the fashion of weak natures, gone further and shown more feebleness than any one else had.  Washington’s conduct was so perfectly simple, and the facts of the case were so plain, that it would seem impossible to complicate them.  The contemporary verdict was harsh, crushing, and unjust in many respects to Randolph.  The verdict of posterity, which is both gentler and fairer to the secretary, will certainly at the same time sustain Washington’s course at every point as sensible, direct, and proper.