by.  This letter served also as a model for many others.  The Boston address had a multitude of successors, and they were all answered in the same strain.  Washington was not a man to underrate popular feeling, for he knew that the strongest bulwark of the government was in sound public opinion.  On the other hand, he was one of the rare men who could distinguish between a temporary excitement, no matter how universal, and an abiding sentiment.  In this case he quietly resisted the noisy popular demand, believing that the sober second thought of the people would surely be with him; but at the same time the outcry against the treaty, while it could not make him waver in his determination to do what he believed to be right, caused him deep anxiety.  The day after he sent his answer to Boston he wrote to Randolph:—­

“I view the opposition which the treaty is receiving from the meetings in different parts of the Union in a very serious light; not because there is more weight in any of the objections which are made to it than was foreseen at first, for there is none in some of them, and gross misrepresentations in others; nor as it respects myself personally, for this shall have no influence on my conduct, plainly perceiving, and I am accordingly preparing my mind for it, the obloquy which disappointment and malice are collecting to heap upon me.  But I am alarmed at the effect it may have on and the advantage the French government may be disposed to make of, the spirit which is at work to cherish a belief in them that the treaty is calculated to favor Great Britain at their expense....  To sum the whole up in a few words I have never, since I have been in the administration of the government, a crisis, which, in my judgment, has been so pregnant with interesting events, nor one from which more is to be apprehended, whether viewed on one side or the other.”

He already felt that it might be necessary for him to return to Philadelphia at any moment; and, writing to Randolph to this effect two days later, he said:—­

“To be wise and temperate, as well as firm, the present crisis most eminently calls for.  There is too much reason to believe, from the pains which have been taken before, at, and since the advice of the Senate respecting the treaty, that the prejudices against it are more extensive than is generally imagined.  This I have lately understood to be the case in this quarter from men who are of no party, but well-disposed to the present administration.  Nor should it be otherwise, when no stone has been left unturned that could impress on the minds of the people the most arrant misrepresentation of facts; that their rights have not only been neglected, but absolutely sold; that there are no reciprocal advantages in the treaty; that the benefits are all on the side of Great Britain; and, what seems to have had more weight with them than all the rest, and to have been most pressed, that the treaty