CHAPTER XIV.

HIS LATEST YEARS IN CONGRESS.

GENET was at last got rid of, but the evil that he did lived after him. His presence had provoked an outbreak, to some degree, of the phenomena of the French Revolution, which, however significant they might be in the upheaval of an old monarchical despotism, were an unwholesome growth among a simple people, where one man was as good as another before the law; where, from the first settlement of the country, all had largely possessed the advantages of a popular government; and where any other than a republican government for the future was well-nigh impossible. For men to address each other as "citizen," as if the word had the new significance in America that it had just gained in France; to swear eternal fidelity to liberty, equality, and fraternity, as if these were lately discovered rights, which had been denied the common people for centuries by kings and nobles, who had always lived in the next street in inconceivable luxury wrung from the blood and sweat of the poor; to form Jacobin Clubs pledged to the suppression of

the tyranny of aristocrats in a country where, as Samuel Dexter said of New England, there was hardly a man rich enough to own a carriage, and few so poor as not to own a horse; for men thus to ape those revolutionary ways, which meant so much in Paris, may have seemed at the moment, to sober-minded people, more fantastic than harmful. It was harmful, however, insomuch as it substituted sentiment for common sense, and made enthusiasm, not reason, the guide of conduct. A character was given to political conflict which obtained for years to come. There was, it is true, a certain manliness about it in remarkable contrast with that maudlin sentimentality of our time, which is rather inclined to ask pardon of the rebels of the late civil war for having put them to the trouble of getting up a rebellion. It was a conflict, nevertheless, more of party passion than of principle, wherein it is impossible to see that either party was absolutely right, or either absolutely wrong. The Francomania phase of it disappeared for a time in John Adams's administration; but it revived again, and gave intensity and virulence to the political struggles, in the first decade of this century. Then it was that men went about their daily affairs with cockades on their hats as distinctive party badges. In their social as well as in their business relations they were Neighbors differing

governed by party affinities.

in politics would hardly speak to each other, and

each was always ready to accept the other's political crookedness as the measure of his possible depravity in everything else. They would hardly walk on the same side of the street; or sail in the same packet; or ride in the same stage-coach; or buy their groceries at the same shop; or listen to the preaching of the gospel from the same pulpit; indeed, if the preacher was known to have pronounced political opinions, he was held, by those who did not agree with him, as one from whose shoulders the clerical gown should be torn.

Gratitude to France had not yet even become traditional, and it was intensified by the deepest sympathy for a people struggling for what, by their aid, Americans had so recently gained. Added to this was the old hatred to England, which England as carefully nursed as if it were her settled policy, by exciting Indian hostilities on the borders, by outrages on the high seas, and by an interference with American commerce, exercised with as little consideration of the rights of an independent nation as if the States were still colonies in revolt. Never did a party find, ready-made and close at hand, so many elements of popularity; and these being appealed to as Genet appealed to them, it was easy to set the country in a blaze. When the Administration was determined that he should be recalled, and the Republican leaders were anxious to get rid of him, as they could not restrain him, Jefferson opposed, in a meeting of the cabinet,

the proposition to ask for his recall, lest such popular indignation should be aroused as would enable the French minister to defy the Government itself. The seed sowed by such a man, on such a soil, bore fruit a thousand-fold for almost a generation. It is not to be wondered at that the Federalists could not long hold their own against a party that did not ask the people to think, but bade them only to remember, — much, indeed, that ought to be remembered, and to feel. That is always so much easier to do than the other, and it is always so much easier to appeal effectually to sentiment than to reflection, that the wonder rather is that the Federalists could hold their own so long as they did. All things were against them but one. Washington, though altogether above any partisan bias, as he believed to be the imperative duty of the chief magistrate of the nation, conducted his administration by the principles which distinguished the Federalists. He was neither, as he intimated to Jefferson, so careless as not to know what was done, nor such a fool as not to understand why it was done; and so greatly was he revered for his exalted character, so universal was the confidence in his integrity, sagacity, and sound judgment, that, so long as he remained President, the party that surrounded him was immovable as a mountain. His policy was to stave off a rupture with England, and, if possible, to bring that power into pacific and rational

relations with the United States. The government aimed to keep itself clear of entanglement with all foreign politics; to maintain that perfect neutrality which should violate no treaties, offend no national friendships, provoke no jealousies, and leave England and France to fight their own battles, content that the United States should be an impartial spectator. Thirty years afterward, when the Federal party had ceased to exist under that title, this was announced as the true American policy, and was thenceforth known as "The Monroe Doctrine," though the merit, even of re-discovery, did not belong to President Monroe.

In nine cases out of ten, perhaps in ninety-nine out of a hundred, the wisest statesmanship is the knowledge when and how to compromise. Certainly that was all John Jay, whom the President sent to England to make a treaty, could do. The treaty was a bad one; that is, it was not such an one as any President and Senate would have dared to consent to for the last sixty years; it was not so good an one as that which Monroe and Pinkney negotiated ten years later, and which President Jefferson, lest it should help England and hurt France, then quietly locked up in his desk without permitting the Senate even to know of its existence; nor was it so bad as the treaty of peace made with England in 1814. But it was undoubtedly the best that could be done at the time. The question was between it and nothing; and the