To the young nation just starting thus unnoticed and unheeded, Washington believed that honorable peace was essential, if a firm establishment of the new government, and of a respectable and respected position in the eyes of the world, was ever to be attained; and it was toward England, therefore, as the source of most probable trouble, that Washington turned to begin his foreign policy.  The return of John Adams had left us without a minister at London, and England had sent no representative to the United States.  The President, therefore, authorized Gouverneur Morris, who was going abroad on private business, to sound the English government informally as to an exchange of ministers, the complete execution of the treaty of peace, and the negotiation of a commercial treaty.  The mission was one of inquiry, and was born of good and generous feelings as well as of broad and wise views of public policy.  “It is in my opinion very important,” he wrote to Morris, “that we avoid errors in our system of policy respecting Great Britain; and this can only be done by forming a right judgment of their disposition and views.”

What was the response to these fair and sensible suggestions?  On the first point the assent was ready enough; but on the other two, which looked to the carrying out of the treaty and the making of a treaty of commerce, there was no satisfaction.  Morris, who was as high-spirited as he was able, was irritated by the indifference and hardly concealed insolence shown to him and his business.  It was the fit beginning of the conduct by which England for nearly a century has succeeded in alienating the good-will of the people of the United States.  Such a policy was neither generous nor intelligent, and politically it was a gross blunder.  Washington, however, was too great a man to be disturbed by the bad temper and narrow ideas of English ministers.  After his fashion he persevered in what he knew to be right and for his country’s interest, and in due time a diplomatic representation was established, while later still, in the midst of difficulties of which he little dreamed at the outset, he carried through a treaty that removed the existing grievances.  In a word, he kept the peace, and it lasted long enough to give the United States the breathing space they so much needed at the beginning of their history.

The greatest perils in our foreign relations came, as it happened, from another quarter, where peace seemed most secure, and where no man looked for trouble.  The government of the United States and the French revolution began almost together, and it is one of the strangest facts of history that the nation which helped so powerfully to give freedom to America brought the results of that freedom into the gravest peril by its own struggle for liberty.  When the great movement in France began, it was hailed in this country with general applause, and with a sympathy as hearty as it was genuine, for every one felt that France