s out of ten hastened
to mount the tricolour cockade, to learn the "Marseillaise," and to take
their glasses to the victory of the sister Republic. So strong was the
wave of popular enthusiasm that the United States might perhaps have
been drawn into active co-operation with France had France been better
served by her Minister.

Genet was a Girondin, and the Girondins, perhaps through that defect in
realism which ruined them at home, were not good diplomatists. It is
likely enough that the warmth of his reception deranged his judgment; at
any rate he misread its significance. He failed to take due account of
that sensitiveness of national feeling in a democracy which, as a
Frenchman of that time, he should have been specially able to
appreciate. He began to treat the resources of the United States as if
they had already been placed at the disposal of France, and, when very
properly rebuked, he was foolish enough to attempt to appeal to the
nation against its rulers. The attitude of the Secretary of State ought
to have warned him of the imprudence of his conduct. No man in America
was a better friend to France than Jefferson; but he stood up manfully
to Genet in defence of the independent rights of his country, and the
obstinacy of the ambassador produced, as Jefferson foresaw that it must
produce, a certain reaction of public feeling by which the Anglophil
party benefited.

At the close of the year 1793, Jefferson, weary of endless contests with
Hamilton, whom he accused, not without some justification, of constantly
encroaching on his colleague's proper department, not wholly satisfied
with the policy of the Government and perhaps feeling that Genet's
indiscretions had made his difficult task for the moment impossible,
resigned his office. He would have done so long before had not
Washington, sincerely anxious throughout these troubled years to hold
the balance even between the parties, repeatedly exerted all his
influence to dissuade him. The following year saw the "Whiskey
Insurrection" in Pennsylvania--a popular protest against Hamilton's
excise measures. Jefferson more than half sympathized with the rebels.
Long before, on the occasion of Shay's insurrection, he had expressed
with some exaggeration a view which has much more truth in it than those
modern writers who exclaim in horror at his folly could be expected to
understand--the view that the readiness of people to rebel against their
rulers is no bad test of