rom the measures of his own administration.
Nevertheless, he clung to his determination to govern without the
assistance of a party as such. When this, too, became impossible, he
still felt that the unanimity of his election required that he should
not declare himself to be the head of a party; but he had become
thoroughly convinced that under the representative system of the
Constitution party government could not be avoided. In his farewell
address he warned the people against the excesses of that party
spirit which he deplored; but he did not suggest that it could be
extinguished. Being a wise and far-seeing man, he saw that if party
government was an evil, it also was under a free representative
system, and in the present condition of human nature a necessary evil,
furnishing the only machinery by which public affairs could be carried
on.

In a time of deep political excitement and strong party feeling,
Washington was the last man in the world not to be decidedly on one
side or the other. He was possessed of too much sense, force, and
virility to be content to hold himself aloof and croak over the
wickedness of people, who were trying to do something, even if
they did not always try in the most perfect way. He was himself
preeminently a doer of deeds, and not a critic or a phrase-maker, and
we can read very distinctly in the extracts which have been brought
together in this chapter what he thought on party and public
questions. He was opposed to the party which had resisted all the
great measures of his administration from the foundation of the
government of the United States. They had assailed and maligned him
and his ministers, and he regarded them as political enemies. He
believed in the principles of that party which had supported the
financial policy of Hamilton and his own policy of neutrality toward
foreign nations. He was opposed to the party which introduced the
interests of France as the leading issue of American politics, and
which embodied the doctrines of nullification and separatism in the
resolutions of Kentucky and Virginia. In one word, Washington, in
policies and politics, was an American and a Nationalist; and the
National and American party, from 1789 to 1801, was the Federalist
party. It may be added that it was the only party which, at that
precise time, could claim those qualities. While he remained in the
presidency he would not declare himself to be of any party; but as
soon as this fetter