o would change the form of government to a monarchy. But
if there were only ten men in the country whose opinions, in the
estimate of Jefferson and Madison, were not worth much, Washington was
among them. The affection and reverence, with which he was regarded by
the people, they would have been glad to appeal to on behalf of their
own party; but it is easy to read between the lines in Jefferson's
"Ana," and in his and Madison's correspondence, that they looked upon
the President as the dupe of his secretary of the treasury. Not that
they were ever wanting in terms of respect and even of veneration for
the President, but the tone was often one of pitiful regret almost akin
to contempt.

"I am extremely afraid," Madison wrote to Jefferson, "that the President
may not be sufficiently aware of the snares that may be laid for his
good intentions by men whose politics at bottom are very different from
his own." Again he says, a few days later: "I regret extremely the
position into which the President has been thrown. The unpopular cause
of Anglomany is openly laying claim to him. His enemies, masking
themselves under the popular cause of France, are playing off the most
tremendous batteries on him.... It is mortifying to the real friends of
the President that his fame and his influence should have anything to
apprehend from the success of liberty in another country, since he owes
his preeminence to the success of it in his own. If France triumphs, the
ill-fated proclamation will be a millstone, which would sink any other
character and will force a struggle even on his." Yet it is certain that
Washington was not in the least doubt as to his own political
principles; that he was never in danger of being inveigled into the
betrayal of those principles, whatever they might be; and that he was
quite capable of due care for his own reputation.

If Madison did not know that these tears over Washington, if sincere,
were quite uncalled for, Jefferson was not in the least deceived. He
records in his "Ana" that the President, referring to certain articles
that had recently appeared in Freneau's "Gazette," said that "he
considered those papers as attacking him [Washington] directly; for he
must be a fool indeed to swallow the little sugar-plums here and there
thrown out to him; that in condemning the administration of the
government they condemned him, for if they thought there were measures
pursued contrary to his sentiments, they mus