Washington, with his strong, calm judgment and his penetrating vision, was less affected than any of those who had followed and sustained him; but he was by no means untouched, and if we try to put ourselves in his place, his views seem far from unreasonable.  He had at the outset wished well to the great movement in France, although even then he doubted its final success.  Very soon, however, doubts changed to suspicions, and suspicions to conviction.  As he saw the French revolution move on in its inevitable path, he came to hate and dread its deeds, its policies, and its doctrines.  To a man of his temper it could not have been otherwise, for license and disorder were above all things detestable to him.  They were the immediate fruits of the French revolution, and when he saw a party devoted to France preaching the same ideas in the United States, he could not but feel that there was a real and practical danger confronting the country.  This was why he felt that we needed an energetic policy, and it was on this account that he distrusted the President’s renewed effort for peace.  The course of the opposition, as he saw it, threatened not merely the existence of the Union, but wittingly or unwittingly struck at the very foundations of society.  His anxiety did not make him violent, as was the case with lesser men, but it convinced him of the necessity of strong measures, and he was not a man to shrink from vigorous action.  He was quite prepared to do all that could be done to maintain the authority of the government, which he considered equivalent to the protection of society, and for this reason he approved of the Alien and Sedition acts.

In the process of time these two famous laws have come to be universally condemned, and those who have not questioned their constitutionality have declared them wrong, inexpedient and impolitic, and the immediate cause of the overthrow of the party responsible for them.  Everybody has made haste to disown them, and there has been a general effort on the part of Federalist sympathizers to throw the blame for them on persons unknown.  Biographers, especially, have tried zealously to clear the skirts of their heroes from any connection with these obnoxious acts; but the truth is, that, whether right or wrong, wise or unwise, these laws had the entire support of the ruling party from the President down.  Hamilton, who objected to the first draft because it was needlessly violent, approved the purpose and principle of the legislation; and Washington was no exception to the general rule.  He was calm about it, but his approbation was none the less distinct, and he took pains to circulate a sound argument, when he met with one, in justification of the Alien and Sedition acts.[1] In November, 1798, Alexander Spotswood wrote to him, asking his judgment on those laws.  As the writer announced himself to be thoroughly convinced of their unconstitutionally, Washington, with a little sarcasm, declined to enter