ial chair. "It is to virtues which
have commanded long and universal reverence, and services from which
have flowed great and lasting benefits, that the tribute of praise may
be paid, without the reproach of flattery; and it is from the same
sources that the fairest anticipations may be derived in favor of the
public happiness."

Both houses, likewise, in the face of the popular excitement in favor of
France, approved of the president's course in regard to that country and
its representative; and while the lower house was guarded in its terms
of approval of the proclamation of neutrality that had been so loudly
condemned by the partisan press, the senate pronounced it "a measure
well-timed and wise, manifesting a watchful solicitude for the welfare
of the nation and calculated to promote it."

Jefferson's official connection with Washington was now drawing to a
close. He had consented to remain in the cabinet until the end of the
current year. With the completion and submission of some able state
papers he finished his career as secretary of state. One of them was an
elaborate report called for by a resolution of Congress adopted in
February, 1791, on the state of trade of the United States with
different countries; the nature and extent of exports and imports, and
the amount of tonnage of American shipping. It also specified the
various restrictions and prohibitions by which American commerce was
embarrassed and greatly injured, and recommended the adoption of
discriminating duties, as against Great Britain, to compel her to put
the United States on a more equal footing, she having thus far
persistently declined to enter into any treaty stipulations on the
subject.

Jefferson's last official act was the administration of a deserved
rebuke to Genet. That meddling functionary had sent to him translations
of the instructions given him by the executive council of France,
desiring the president to lay them officially before both houses of
Congress, and proposing to transmit, from time to time, other papers to
be laid before them in like manner. "I have it in charge to observe,"
said Jefferson to Genet in a letter on the thirty-first of December,
"that your functions as the minister of a foreign nation here are
confined to the transactions of the affairs of your nation with the
executive of the United States; that the communications which are to
pass between the executive and legislative branches can not be a
subject for