roper demands upon the treasury. He
concluded by saying, "Permit me to bring to your remembrance the
magnitude of your task. Without an unprejudiced coolness, the welfare of
the government may be hazarded; without harmony, as far as consists with
freedom of sentiment, its dignity may be lost. But, as the legislative
proceedings of the United States will never, I trust, be reproached for
the want of temper or of candor, so shall not the public happiness
languish for the want of my strenuous and warmest co-operation."

On the fifth of December, according to promise, Washington laid before
Congress the documents relating, not only to Genet and his mission, but
to negotiations with England and other European governments. In his
message accompanying these documents, after alluding to the general
feeling of friendship for the United States exhibited by the
representative and executive bodies of France, the president spoke as
follows of the insolent Genet:--

"It is with extreme concern I have to inform you, that the proceedings
of the person whom they have unfortunately appointed their minister
plenipotentiary here have breathed nothing of the friendly spirit of the
nation which sent him. Their tendency, on the contrary, has been to
involve us in war abroad, and discord and anarchy at home. So far as his
acts, or those of his agents, have threatened our immediate commitment
in the war, or flagrant insult to the authority of the laws, their
effect has been counteracted by the ordinary cognizance of the laws, and
by an exertion of the powers confided to me. Where their danger was not
imminent, they have been borne with from sentiments of regard to his
nation, from a sense of their friendship toward us, from a conviction
that they would not suffer us to long remain exposed to the action of a
person who has so little respected our mutual dispositions, and from a
reliance on the firmness of my fellow-citizens in their principles of
peace and order." He then alluded to the spoliations which had been
committed upon the commerce of the United States by the cruisers of the
belligerent powers, and the restrictions upon American commerce
attempted to be enforced by the commanders of British vessels pursuant
to instructions of their government. He also called attention to the
inexecution of the treaty of 1783, and the relations of the United
States and Spain.

"The message," says Hildreth, "as originally drafted by Jefferson,
containe