d insult to the chief magistrate
and the government of the republic.

At about the same time, Henfield, one of the prisoners indicted, under
the advice of the attorney-general, for having enlisted on board the
French privateer at Charleston, was tried. The populace, instigated by
the opposition leaders, took the part of the prisoner, and the jury
acquitted him. At once the opposition press heaped obloquy upon the
administration, for having attempted what they were pleased to call an
unlawful measure. They asked, scornfully, "What law had been offended,
and under what statute was the indictment supported? Are the American
people already prepared to give to a proclamation the force of a
legislative act, and to subject themselves to the will of the executive?
But," they said, "if the people are already sunk to such a state of
degradation, are they to be punished for violating a proclamation which
had not been published when the offence was committed, if indeed it
could be termed an offence to engage with France combatting for liberty
against the combined despots of Europe?" And when the prisoner was
acquitted, the event was celebrated with extravagant marks of joy and
exultation.[57]

These events annoyed Washington exceedingly. He perceived the spirit of
the French Revolution animating his own people, making them regardless
of law and justice, and drunk with ideas that tended to anarchy and
confusion. He perceived the futility of attempts to enforce laws in
support of the doctrines of his proclamation of neutrality, and the
disposition of a large class of people to thwart that conservative
policy which he advised as being most conducive to the welfare of the
state. Yet, strong in his consciousness of rectitude, he swerved not a
line from his prescribed course of duty. "As it respects myself," he
said in a letter to Governor Lee on the twenty-first of July, "I care
not; for I have a consolation within, that no earthly efforts can
deprive me of; and that is, that neither ambitious nor interested
motives have influenced my conduct. The arrows of malevolence,
therefore, however barbed and well pointed, never can reach the most
vulnerable point of me; though, whilst I am up as a _mark_, they will be
continually aimed. The publications in Freneau's and Bache's papers are
outrages on common decency; and they progress in that style in
proportion as their pieces are treated with contempt, and are passed by
in silence, by those a