his
intellect, and among his papers is a memorandum concluding as follows:

"But when the hazards of the Revolutionary War had ended, by the
establishment of our Independence, why was the knowledge of General
Washington's comparatively defective mental powers not freely divulged?
Why, even by the enemies of his civil administration were his abilities
very tenderly glanced at? --Because there were few, if any men, who
did not revere him for his distinguished virtues; his modesty--his
unblemished integrity, his pure and disinterested patriotism. These
virtues, of infinitely more value than exalted abilities without them,
secured to him the veneration and love of his fellow citizens at large.
Thus immensely popular, no man was willing to publish, under his hand,
even the simple truth. The only exception, that I recollect, was the
infamous Tom Paine; and this when in France, after he had escaped the
guillotine of Robespierre; and in resentment, because, after he had
participated in the French Revolution, President Washington seemed
not to have thought him so very important a character in the world,
as officially to interpose for his relief from the fangs of the French
ephemeral Rulers. In a word, no man, however well informed, was willing
to hazard his own popularity by exhibiting the real intellectual
character of the immensely popular Washington."

1 Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 11., p. 171.

How can this ignorance of an astute man, Secretary of State under
Washington and Adams, be explained? Had Washington hidden the letters
showing on their face that he _had_ "officially interposed" for Paine by
two Ministers?

Madison, writing to Monroe, April 7, 1796, says that Pickering had
spoken to him "in harsh terms" of a letter written by Paine to the
President. This was a private letter of September 20, 1795, afterwards
printed in Paine's public Letter to Washington. The Secretary certainly
read that letter on its arrival, January 18, 1796, and yet Washington
does not appear to have told him of what had been officially done in
Paine's case! Such being the secrecy which Washington had carried from
the camp to the cabinet, and the morbid extent of it while the British
Treaty was in negotiation and discussion, one can hardly wonder at his
silence under Paine's private appeal and public reproach.

Much as Pickering hated Paine, he declares him the only man who ever
told the simple truth about Washington. In the