foreign policy was a declaration to the world of a new national existence, and he strained every nerve to lift our politics from the colonial condition of foreign issues.  He wished all immigration to be absorbed and moulded here, so that we might be one people, one in speech and in political faith.  His last words, given to the world after the grave had closed over him, were a solemn plea for a home training for the youth of the Republic, so that all men might think as Americans, untainted by foreign ideas, and rise above all local prejudices.  He did not believe that mere material development was the only or the highest goal; for he knew that the true greatness of a nation was moral and intellectual, and his last thoughts were for the up-building of character and intelligence.  He was never a braggart, and mere boasting about his country as about himself was utterly repugnant to him.  He never hesitated to censure what he believed to be wrong, but he addressed his criticisms to his countrymen in order to lead them to better things, and did not indulge in them in order to express his own discontent, or to amuse or curry favor with foreigners.  In a word, he loved his country, and had an abiding faith in its future and in its people, upon whom his most earnest thoughts and loftiest aspirations were centred.  No higher, purer, or more thorough Americanism than his could be imagined.  It was a conception far in advance of the time, possible only to a powerful mind, capable of lifting itself out of existing conditions and alien influences, so that it might look with undazzled gaze upon the distant future.  The first American in the broad national sense, there has never been a man more thoroughly and truly American than Washington.  It will be a sorry day when we consent to take that noble figure from “the forefront of the nation’s life,” and rank George Washington as anything but an American of Americans, instinct with the ideas, as he was devoted to the fortunes of the New World which gave him birth.

There is another class of critics who have attacked Washington from another side.  These are the gentlemen who find him in the way of their own heroes.  Washington was a man of decided opinions about men as well as measures, and he was extremely positive.  He had his enemies as well as his friends, his likes and his dislikes, strong and clear, according to his nature.  The respect which he commanded in his life has lasted unimpaired since his death, and it is an awkward thing for the biographers of some of his contemporaries to know that Washington opposed, distrusted, or disliked their heroes.  Therefore, in one way or another they have gone round a stumbling-block which they could not remove.  The commonest method is to eliminate Washington by representing him vaguely as the great man with whom every one agreed, who belonged to no party, and favored all; then he is pushed quietly aside.  Evils and wrong-doing existed under his administration from the opposition point of view,