as yet any opposition to Washington
and represented its actual attempts to thwart the measures of the
Administration as efforts to counteract Washington's evil advisers. The
old constitutional tradition that the king can do no wrong, which still
lingered in American politics, tended to an analogous elevation of the
presidential office above the field of party strife, while leaving the
President's Cabinet advisers fully exposed to it, just as in the case of
the ministers of the Crown in England. Allowance must be made for the
effect of this tradition when judgment is passed on the political
activities of the period. Considered with regard to present standards of
political behavior, the course of Jefferson in fomenting opposition to the
Administration of which he was a part wears the appearance of despicable
intrigue. There was nothing mean or low about it, however, in the opinion
of himself and his friends, and even his enemies would have allowed it to
be within the rules of the game. Jefferson did his best to defeat in
Congress measures adopted by Washington on the advice of Hamilton, and he
also did his best to undermine Washington's confidence in Hamilton. In his
personal dealings with Washington, Jefferson had every advantage, for he
had Washington's ear and could, more readily than Hamilton, direct the
currents of unconscious influence that produce the will to believe. But
Jefferson's animosity kept tempting him to overplay his hand in a way that
was fatal in the face of an antagonist so keen and so dexterous as
Hamilton.

In a letter of May 23, 1792, Jefferson presented to Washington an
elaborate indictment of Hamilton's policy as a justification of his own
behavior in organizing an opposition party in Congress. He charged
Hamilton with subverting the character of the Government by his financial
measures, the logical consequence of which would be "a change from the
present republican form of government to that of a monarchy." Hence the
need for organizing "the Republican party who wish to preserve the
government in its present form." Washington thought over the matter, and--
according to Jefferson--reopened the subject in a personal interview on
July 10. Being now fully apprised of Jefferson's case, Washington himself
prepared a brief of it, divided into numbered sections, and applied to
Hamilton for a statement of his ideas upon the "enumerated discontents,"
framed so "that those ideas may be applied to the corres