heir own country, justifying
the former at the expense of the latter; when every act of their own
government is tortured, by constructions they will not bear, into
attempts to infringe and trample upon the Constitution with a view to
introduce monarchy; when the most unceasing and the purest exertions
which were making to maintain a neutrality ... are charged with being
measures calculated to favor Great Britain at the expense of France,
and all those who had any agency in it are accused of being under
the influence of the former and her pensioners; when measures are
systematically and pertinaciously pursued, which must eventually
dissolve the Union or produce coercion; I say, when these things have
become so obvious, ought characters who are best able to rescue their
country from the pending evil to remain at home?...

"Vain will it be to look for peace and happiness, or for the security
of liberty or property, if civil discord should ensue. And what else
can result from the policy of those among us, who, by all the measures
in their power, are driving matters to extremity, if they cannot be
counteracted effectually? The views of men can only be known, or
guessed at, by their words or actions. Can those of the _leaders_ of
opposition be mistaken, then, if judged by this rule? That they are
followed by numbers, who are unacquainted with their designs and
suspect as little the tendency of their principles, I am fully
persuaded. But if their conduct is viewed with indifference, if there
are activity and misrepresentations on one side and supineness on
the other, their numbers accumulated by intriguing and discontented
foreigners under proscription, who were at war with their own
government, and the greater part of them with _all_ governments, they
will increase, and nothing short of omniscience can foretell the
consequences."

It would have been difficult to draw a severer indictment of the
opposition party than that given in this letter, but there is one
other letter even more striking in its contents, without which no
account of the relation of Washington to the two great parties which
sprang up under his administration would be complete. It was addressed
to Governor Trumbull of Connecticut, was written on July 21, 1799,
less than six months before his death, and although printed, has
been hidden away in the appendix to the "Life of Benjamin Silliman."
Governor Trumbull, who bore the name and filled the office of
Was