to be of a different complexion.  The man who means to commit no wrong will never be guilty of enormities; consequently he can never be unwilling to learn what are ascribed to him as foibles.  If they are really such, the knowledge of them in a well-disposed mind will go half-way towards a reform.  If they are not errors, he can explain and justify the motives of his actions.”  This readiness to hear criticism and this watching of public opinion were characteristic, for his one desire was to know the truth and never deceive himself.  His journey through New England in the autumn of that year, his visit to Rhode Island a year later, and his trip through the southern States in the spring of 1791, had a double motive.  He wished to bring home to the people the existence and the character of the new government by his appearance among them as its representative; and he desired also to learn from his own observation, and from inquiries made on the spot, what the people thought of the administration and its policies, and of the doings of Congress.  He was a keen observer and a good gatherer of information; for he was patient and persistent, and had that best of all gifts for getting at public opinion, an absolute and cheerful readiness to listen to advice from any one.  His travels all had the same result.  In the South as in New England he found that the people were pleased with the new government, and contented with the prosperity which began at once to flow from the adoption of a stable national system.

More credit, if anything, was given to it than it really deserved; for, as he had written to Lafayette before the Constitution went into effect, “Many blessings will be attributed to our new government which are now taking their rise from that industry and frugality into which the people have been forced from necessity.”  Whether this were true or not, the new government was entitled to the benefit of all accidents, and Washington’s correct conclusion was that the great body of the people were heartily with him and his administration.  But he was also quite aware that all the criticism was not friendly, and as the measures of the government one by one passed Congress, he saw divisions of sentiment appear, slight at first, but deepening and hardening with each successive contest.  Indeed, he had not been in office a year when he wrote a long letter to Stuart deploring the sectionalism which had begun to show itself.  The South was complaining that everything was done in the interest of the northern and eastern States, and against this idea Washington argued with great force.  He was especially severe on the unreasonable and childish character of such grievances, and he attributed the feeling in certain States largely to the outcries of persons who had come home disappointed in some personal matter from the seat of government.  “It is to be lamented,” he said, “that the editors of the different gazettes in the Union do not more generally and more correctly (instead of