[Illustration:  LAFAYETTE]

The unfriendly act was noted, so that Lafayette would understand that no tame submission was intended, and yet no resentment was expressed.  The same tone can be noticed in a widely different direction.  Washington foresaw that the troubles in France, sooner or later, would involve her in war with England.  The United States, as the former allies of the French, were certain to attract the attention of the mother country, and so he watched on that side also with equal caution.  England, if possible, was to be made to understand that the American policy was not dictated by anything but the interests and the dignity of the United States, and their resolve to hold aloof from European complications.  In June, 1792, he wrote to Morris:  “One thing, however, I must not pass over in silence, lest you should infer from it that Mr. D. had authority for reporting that the United States had asked the mediation of Great Britain to bring about a peace between them and the Indians.  You may be fully assured, sir, that such mediation never was asked, that the asking of it never was in contemplation, and I think I might go further and say that it not only never will be asked, but would be rejected if offered.  The United States will never have occasion, I hope, to ask for the interposition of that power, or any other, to establish peace within their own territory.”

Here is again the same note, always so true and clear, that the United States are not colonies but an independent nation.  So far as it was in the power of the President, this was something which should be heard by all men, even at the risk of much reiteration.  It was a fact not understood at home and not recognized abroad, but Washington proposed to insist upon it so far as in him lay, until it was both understood and admitted.

Meantime the flames were ever spreading from Paris, consuming and threatening to consume the heaped up rubbish of centuries, and also burning up many other more valuable things, as is the way with great fires when they get beyond control.  Many persons were interested in the things of worth now threatened with destruction, and many others in the rubbish and the tyrannous abuses.  It was clear that war of a wide and far-reaching kind could not be long put off.  In March, 1793, Washington wrote:  “All our late accounts from Europe hold up the expectation of a general war in that quarter.  For the sake of humanity, I hope such an event will not take place.  But if it should, I trust that we shall have too just a sense of our own interest to originate any cause that may involve us in it.”