Secretary of State. The popular feeling in fact
was so strongly with France that the new party seemed on the
surface to have almost universal support. The firm attitude of the
administration and Washington's unyielding adherence to his policy of
neutrality gave them their first serious check, but also embittered
their attacks. In the first three years of the government almost every
one refrained from attacking Washington personally. The unlimited love
and respect in which he was held were the principal causes of this
moderation, but even those opponents who were not influenced by
feelings of respect were restrained by a wholesome prudence from
bringing upon themselves the odium of being enemies of the President.

The fiction that the king could do no wrong was carried to the last
extreme by the Long Parliament when they made war on Charles in order
to remove him from evil counselors. It was, no doubt, the exercise of
a wise conservatism in that instance; but in the United States, and
in the ordinary condition of politics, such a position was of course
untenable. The President was responsible for his cabinet and for the
measures of his administration, and it was impossible to separate them
long, even when the chief magistrate was so great and so well-beloved
as Washington. Freneau, editing his newspaper from the office of the
Secretary of State, seems to have been the first to break the line. He
passed speedily from attacks on measures to attacks on men, and among
the latter he soon included the President. Washington had had too much
experience of slander and abuse during the revolutionary war to be
worried by them. But Freneau took pains to send him copies of his
newspapers, a piece of impertinence which apparently led to a little
vigorous denunciation, the account of which seems probable, although
our only authority is in Jefferson's "Ana." As the attacks went on and
were extended, and when Bache joined in with the "Aurora," Washington
was not long in coming to the unpleasant conclusion that all this
opposition proceeded from a well-formed plan, and was the work of
a party which designed to break down his measures and ruin his
administration. All statesmen intrusted in a representative system
with the work of government are naturally prone to think that their
opponents are also the enemies of the public welfare, and Washington
was no exception to the rule. Such an opinion is indeed unavoidable,
for a public man must h