he nation.

The debate on this question was animated, vehement, and argumentative;
all the party passions were enlisted in it; and it was protracted
until the 24th of March, when the resolution was carried in the
affirmative by sixty-two to thirty-seven voices. The next day, the
committee appointed to present it to the chief magistrate reported his
answer, which was, "that he would take the resolution into
consideration."

The situation in which this vote placed the President was peculiarly
delicate. In an elective government, the difficulty of resisting the
popular branch of the legislature is at all times great, but is
particularly so when the passions of the public have been strongly and
generally excited. The popularity of a demand for information, the
large majority by which that demand was supported, the additional
force which a refusal to comply with it would give to suspicions
already insinuated, that circumstances had occurred in the negotiation
which the administration dared not expose, and that the President was
separating himself from the representatives of the people, furnished
motives, not lightly to be over-ruled, for yielding to the request
which had been made.

[Illustration: George Washington

_From the profile portrait by James Sharples_

_Sharples painted two pictures of Washington--this portrait showing
him in the costume of a country gentleman, distinguished as being the
only profile of the First President ever painted, and a full face
presentation of him in military dress, reproduced in Volume IV of this
work._

_Sharples, an English painter by birth, was recommended by the great
George Romney as being equipped to produce a work "worthy of the
greatest of Americans." His success is attested by the praise of
Washington's adopted son, who declared the Sharples portraits to be
"the truest likenesses ever made," and by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who saw
the pictures later in England and wrote: "I would willingly have
crossed the Atlantic, if only to look on these portraits."_

Courtesy Herbert L. Pratt]

But these considerations were opposed by others which, though less
operative with men who fear to deserve the public favour by hazarding
its loss, possess an irresistible influence over a mind resolved to
pursue steadily the path of duty, however it may abound with thorns.

That the future diplomatic transactions of the government might be
seriously and permanently affected by establishing the p