great antipathy to run
foul of it on the other, and to make a part in the confederacy of
princes against human liberty." Thus, on all occasions, the secretary of
state ungenerously charged those of his official associates who could
not lovingly embrace the bloody French Jacobins as brothers, with
monarchical principles, and designs to subvert the government of the
United States. To Washington he expressed the same suspicions; and, from
his own record in his _Anas_, he appears to have been rebuked by the
president, and to have persisted in a most unfriendly course. "He [the
president] observed," he said, "that if anybody wanted to change the
form of our government into a monarchy, he was sure it was only a few
individuals, and that no man in the United States would set himself
against it more than himself; but that this was not what he was afraid
of--his fears were from another quarter--_that there was more danger of
anarchy being introduced_."

Washington, according to the same record, then spoke with great warmth
concerning the hostility of Freneau as manifested in his newspaper. He
despised all personal attacks upon himself; but, he said, not a solitary
act of the government had escaped the slanderer's assaults. He adverted
to the fact that Freneau (evidently for the impudent purpose of
insulting Washington) sent him three of his papers every day; and Mr.
Jefferson records these facts in a way that shows the enjoyment he
seemed to derive from such evidences of great annoyance displayed by the
president. "He was evidently sore and worn," wrote Mr. Jefferson, "and I
took his intention to be, that I should interpose in some way with
Freneau--perhaps withdraw his appointment of translating clerk in my
office. But I will not do it."

"It appears to us," says Mr. Irving,[51] "rather an ungracious
determination on the part of Jefferson to keep this barking cur in his
employ, when he found him so annoying to the chief, whom he professed,
and we believe with sincerity, to revere.[52] Neither are his reasons
for so doing satisfactory, savoring as they do of those strong political
suspicions already noticed. 'His [Freneau's] paper,' observed he, 'has
saved our constitution, which was galloping fast into monarchy, and has
been checked by no means so powerfully as by that paper. It is well and
universally known that it has been that paper which checked the career
of the monocrats. The president, not sensible of the designs of th