In the first burst of rejoicing over the uprising of the French people, no divisions were apparent; but the arrival of Genet was the signal for their beginning.  The extraordinary spectacle was then presented of an American party arrayed against the administration under the lead of the French minister, and with the strong, although covert sympathy of the Secretary of State.  The popular feeling in fact was so strongly with France that the new party seemed on the surface to have almost universal support.  The firm attitude of the administration and Washington’s unyielding adherence to his policy of neutrality gave them their first serious check, but also embittered their attacks.  In the first three years of the government almost every one refrained from attacking Washington personally.  The unlimited love and respect in which he was held were the principal causes of this moderation, but even those opponents who were not influenced by feelings of respect were restrained by a wholesome prudence from bringing upon themselves the odium of being enemies of the President.

The fiction that the king could do no wrong was carried to the last extreme by the Long Parliament when they made war on Charles in order to remove him from evil counselors.  It was, no doubt, the exercise of a wise conservatism in that instance; but in the United States, and in the ordinary condition of politics, such a position was of course untenable.  The President was responsible for his cabinet and for the measures of his administration, and it was impossible to separate them long, even when the chief magistrate was so great and so well-beloved as Washington.  Freneau, editing his newspaper from the office of the Secretary of State, seems to have been the first to break the line.  He passed speedily from attacks on measures to attacks on men, and among the latter he soon included the President.  Washington had had too much experience of slander and abuse during the revolutionary war to be worried by them.  But Freneau took pains to send him copies of his newspapers, a piece of impertinence which apparently led to a little vigorous denunciation, the account of which seems probable, although our only authority is in Jefferson’s “Ana.”  As the attacks went on and were extended, and when Bache joined in with the “Aurora,” Washington was not long in coming to the unpleasant conclusion that all this opposition proceeded from a well-formed plan, and was the work of a party which designed to break down his measures and ruin his administration.  All statesmen intrusted in a representative system with the work of government are naturally prone to think that their opponents are also the enemies of the public welfare, and Washington was no exception to the rule.  Such an opinion is indeed unavoidable, for a public man must have faith that his own measures are the best for the country, and if he did not, he would be but a faint-hearted representative, unfit to govern and unable to lead.  History has agreed