quired concealment, his real and avowed
motives were the same; and his whole correspondence does not furnish a
single case, from which even an enemy would infer that he was capable,
under any circumstances, of stooping to the employment of duplicity.
No truth can be uttered with more confidence than that his ends were
always upright, and his means always pure. He exhibits the rare
example of a politician to whom wiles were absolutely unknown, and
whose professions to foreign governments, and to his own countrymen,
were always sincere. In him was fully exemplified the real
distinction, which forever exists, between wisdom and cunning, and the
importance as well as truth of the maxim that "honesty is the best
policy."

If Washington possessed ambition, that passion was, in his bosom, so
regulated by principles, or controlled by circumstances, that it was
neither vicious, nor turbulent. Intrigue was never employed as the
means of its gratification, nor was personal aggrandizement its
object. The various high and important stations to which he was called
by the public voice, were unsought by himself; and, in consenting to
fill them, he seems rather to have yielded to a general conviction
that the interests of his country would be thereby promoted, than to
an avidity for power.

Neither the extraordinary partiality of the American people, the
extravagant praises which were bestowed upon him, nor the inveterate
opposition and malignant calumnies which he encountered, had any
visible influence upon his conduct. The cause is to be looked for in
the texture of his mind.

In him, that innate and unassuming modesty which adulation would have
offended, which the voluntary plaudits of millions could not betray
into indiscretion, and which never obtruded upon others his claims to
superior consideration, was happily blended with a high and correct
sense of personal dignity, and with a just consciousness of that
respect which is due to station. Without exertion, he could maintain
the happy medium between that arrogance which wounds, and that
facility which allows the office to be degraded in the person who
fills it.

It is impossible to contemplate the great events which have occurred
in the United States under the auspices of Washington, without
ascribing them, in some measure, to him. If we ask the causes of the
prosperous issue of a war, against the successful termination of which
there were so many probabilities? of the good