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t to alarm them, because it is difficult to prescribe bounds to the effect.[1] [Footnote 1: Lodge, II, 236.] By his refusal to take notice of these indecencies, Washington set a high example. In other countries, in France and England, for example, the victims of such abuse resorted to duels with their abusers: a very foolish and inadequate practice, since it happened as often as not that the aggrieved person was killed. In taking no notice of the calumnies, therefore, Washington prevented the President of the United States from being drawn into an unseemly duel. We cannot fail to recognize also that Washington was very sensitive to the maintenance of freedom of speech. He seems to have acted on the belief that it was better that occasionally license should degenerate into abuse than that liberty should be suppressed. He was the President of the first government in the world which did not control the utterances of its people. Perhaps he may have supposed that their patriotism would restrain them from excesses, and there can be no doubt that the insane gibes of the Freneaus and the Baches gave him much pain because they proved that those scorpions were not up to the level which the new Nation offered them. As the time for the conclusion of Washington's second term drew near, he left no doubt as to his intentions. Though some of his best friends urged him to stand for reelection, he firmly declined. He felt that he had done enough for his country in sacrificing the last eight years to it. He had seen it through its formative period, and had, he thought, steered it into clear, quiet water, so that there was no threatening danger to demand his continuance at the helm. Many persons thought that he was more than glad to be relieved of the increasing abuse of the scurrilous editors. No doubt he was, but we can hardly agree that merely for the sake of that relief he would abandon his Presidential post. But does it not seem more likely that his unwillingness to convert the Presidency into a life office, and so to give the critics of the American experiment a valid cause for opposition, led him to establish the precedent that two terms were enough? More than once in the century and a quarter since he retired in 1797, over-ambitious Presidents have schemed to win a third election and flattering sycophants have encouraged them to believe that they could attain it. But before they came to the test Washington's example--"no
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