that the desire should be expressed with great. delicacy; the others were for peremptory terms. Knox was for sending him off at once, but this proposition was generally scouted. In the end it was agreed that a letter should be written to Gouverneur Morris, giving a statement of the case, with accompanying documents, that he might lay the whole before the executive council of France, and explain the reason for desiring the recall of Mr. Genet.

It was proposed that a publication of the whole correspondence, and a statement of the proceedings, should be made by way of appeal to the people. This produced animated debates. Hamilton spoke with great warmth in favor of an appeal. Jefferson opposed it. "Genet," said he, "will appeal also; it will become a contest between the President and Genet. Anonymous writers will take it up. There will be the same difference of opinion in public as in our cabinet-there will be the same difference in Congress, for it must be laid before them. It would work, therefore, very unpleasantly at home. How would it work abroad?'

Washington, already weary and impatient, under the incessant dissensions of his cabinet, was stung by the suggestion that he might be held up as in conflict with Genet, and subjected,

The President's Outburst

as he had been, to the ribaldry of the press.

355

At

this unlucky moment Knox blundered forth with a specimen of the scandalous libels already in circulation, a pasquinade lately printed, called the Funeral of George Washington wherein the President was represented as placed upon a guillotine, a horrible parody on the late decapitation of the French king. "The President," writes Jefferson, "now burst forth into one of those transports of passion beyond his control; inveighed against the personal abuse which had been bestowed upon him, and defied any man on earth to produce a single act of his since he had been in the government that had not been done on the purest motives.

"He had never repented but once the having slipped the moment of resigning his office and that was every moment since. In the agony of his heart he declared that he had rather be in his grave than in his present situation; that he had rather be on his farm than to be made emperor of the world-and yet, said he, indignantly, they are charging me with wanting to be a king!

"All were silent during this burst of feeling -a pause ensued-it was difficult to resume the question. Washington, however, who had recovered his equanimity, put an end to the difficulty. There was no necessity, he said,

for deciding the matter at present; the propositions agreed to, respecting the letter to Mr. Morris, might be put into a train of execution, and perhaps events would show whether the appeal would be necessary or not," *

*Jefferson's Works, ix., 164.

Chapter XXVIIT.

Threatened Dissolution of the Cabinet-Action between the Ambuscade and Boston - Triumphant Return of the Former to New York-A French Fleet Arrives Same Day-Excitement of the People -Genet arrives in the Midst of it-His Enthusiatic Reception-Is Informed by Jefferson of the Measures for his Recall-His Rage and Reply-Decline of his Popularity.

W

WASHINGTON had hitherto been annoyed and perplexed by having to manage a divided cabinet; he was now threatened with that cabinet's dissolution. Mr. Hamilton had informed him by letter, that private as well as public reasons had determined him to retire from office towards the close of the next session : probably with a view to give Congress an opportunity to examine into his conduct. Now came a letter from Mr. Jefferson, dated July 31st, in which he recalled the circumstances which had induced him to postpone for a while

his original intention of retiring from office at the close of the first four years of the republic. These circumstances, he observed, had now ceased to such a degree as to leave him free to think again of a day on which to withdraw ; "at the close, therefore, of the ensuing month of September. I shall beg leave to retire to scenes of greater tranquillity, from those for which I am every day more and more convinced that neither my talents, tone of mind, nor time of life fit me."

Washington was both grieved and embarrassed by this notification. Full of concern, he called upon Jefferson at his country residence near Philadelphia; pictured his deep distress at finding himself, in the present perplexing juncture of affairs, about to be deserted by those of his cabinet on whose counsel he had counted, and whose places he knew not where to find persons competent to supply; and, in his chagrin, again expressed his repentance. that he himself had not resigned as he had once meditated.

The public mind, he went on to observe, was in an alarming state of ferment; political combinations of various kinds were forming; where all this would end he knew not. A new Congress was to assemble, more numerous than the last, perhaps of a different spirit; the first