e cloak
of charity neither became him nor fitted him.

Several years later, when Bache's paper, the "Aurora," printed some
material which Washington's enemies hoped would damage him, Jefferson
again took alarm and wrote to Washington to free himself from blame.
To him, the magnanimous President replied in part:

If I had entertained any suspicions before, that the queries,
which have been published in Bache's paper, proceeded from you,
the assurances you have given of the contrary would have removed
them; but the truth is, I harbored none. I am at no loss to
_conjecture_ from what source they flowed, through what channel
they were conveyed, and for what purpose they and similar
publications appear. They were known to be in the hands of Mr.
Parker in the early part of the last session of Congress. They
were shown about by Mr. Giles during the session, and they made
their public exhibition about the close of it.

Perceiving and probably hearing, that no abuse in the gazettes
would induce me to take notice of anonymous publications against
me, those, who were disposed to do me _such friendly offices_,
have embraced without restraint every opportunity to weaken the
confidence of the people; and, by having the whole game in their
hands, they have scrupled not to publish things that do not, as
well as those which do exist, and to mutilate the latter, so as to
make them subserve the purposes which they have in view.[1]

[Footnote 1: Ford, XIII, 229.]

Washington's opinion of the scurrilous crusade against him, he
expressed in the following letter to Henry Lee:

But in what will this abuse terminate? For the result, as it
respects myself, I care not; for I have a consolation within that
no earthly efforts can deprive me of, and that is, that neither
ambition nor interested motives have influenced my conduct. The
arrows of malevolence, therefore, however barbed and well pointed,
never can reach the most vulnerable part of me; though, whilst I
am up as a mark, they will be continually aimed. The publications
in Freneau's and Bache's papers are outrages in that style in
proportion as their pieces are treated with contempt and are
passed by in silence by those at whom they are aimed. The tendency
of them, however, is too obvious to be mistaken by men of cool
and dispassionate minds, and, in my opinion, ough