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was this, to put to the test the sensibilities of the American people for their brave and beloved ally?

Finally, after a controversy of several months, in the whole course of which, the mingled effusions of arrogance and intemperance, were opposed to a moderation and forbearance which could not be betrayed into a single undignified expression, the American government came to the determination of desiring the recall of Mr. Genet. This delicate duty was executed by Mr. Jefferson, and in a manner which has doubtless united more suffrages in its favor, taking the world at large, than any other diplomatic performance on record. On the 16th of August, 1793, he addressed a letter to Mr. Morris, the Minister of the United States at Paris, containing an epitome of the whole correspondence, on both sides, assigning the reasons which rendered necessary the recall of Mr. Genet, and directing the case to be immediately laid before his government.

It This celebrated letter is an essay of sixteen pages, octavo. were vain to attempt a satisfactory analysis of its contents. To a full and dispassionate review of the transactions of Mr. Genet, and an unanswerable vindication of the principles upon which the administration had conducted itself in the controversy, assurances were added of an unwavering attachment to France, expressed in such terms of unaffected sensibility, as to impress the most callous with the sincerity of the heart from which they flowed. The concluding paragraphs are too remarkable not to require an insertion.

After introducing a series of quotations from Mr. Genet's correspondence, which he deemed too offensive to be translated into English, or to merit a commentary, the author proceeded in the following dignified strain :

"We draw a veil over the sensations which these expressions excite. No words can render them; but they will not escape the sensibility of a friendly and magnanimous nation, who will do us justice. We see in them neither the portrait of ourselves, nor the pencil of our friends; but an attempt to embroil both; to add still another nation to the enemies of his country, and to draw on both a reproach, which it is hoped will never stain the history of either. The written proofs, of which Mr. Genet was himself the bearer, were too unequivocal to leave a doubt that the French nation are constant in their friendship to us. The resolves of their National Convention, the letters of their Executive Council attest this truth, in terins which render it necessary to seek in some other hypothesis, the solution of Mr. Genet's machinations against our peace and friendship.

"Conscious, on our part, of the same friendly and sincere dispositions, we can with truth affirm, both for our nation and government, that we have never omitted a reasonable occasion of manifesting them. For I will not consider as of that character, opportunities of sallying forth from our ports to way-lay, rob, and murder defenceless merchants and others, who have done us no injury, and who were coming to trade with us in the confidence of our peace and amity. The violation of all the laws of order and morality which bind mankind together, would be an unacceptable offering to a just nation. Recurring then only to recent things, after so afflicting a libel we recollect with satisfaction, that in the course of two years, by unceasing exertions, we paid up seven years' arrearages and instalments of our debt to France, which the inefficiency of our first form of government had suffered to be accumulating: that pressing on still to the entire fulfilment of our engagements, we have facilitated to Mr. Genet the effect of the instalments of the present year, to enable him to send relief to his fellow citizens in France, threatened with famine: that in the first moment of the insurrection which threatened the colony of St. Domingo, we stepped forward to their relief with arms and money, taking freely on ourselves the risk of an unauthorized aid, when delay would have been denial that we have received, according to our best abilities, the wretched fugitives from the catastrophe of the principal town of that colony, who, escaping from the swords and flames of civil war, threw themselves on us naked and houseless, without food or friends, money or other means, their faculties lost and absorbed in the depth of their distresses: that the exclusive admission to sell here the prizes made by France on her enemies, in the present war, though unstipulated in our treaties, and unfounded in her own practice or in that of other nations, as we believe; the spirit manifested by the late grand jury in their proceedings against those who had aided the enemies of France with arms and implements of war; the expressions of attachment to his nation, with which Mr. Genet was welcomed on his arrival and journey from south to north, and our long forbearance under his gross usurpations and outrages of the laws and authority of our country, do not bespeak the partialities intimated in his letters. And for these things he rewards us by endeavors to excite discord and distrust between our citizens and those whom they have entrusted with their government, between the different branches of our government, between our nation and his. But none of these things, we hope, will be found in his power. That friendship which dictates to us to bear with his conduct yet a while, lest the interests of his nation here should suffer injury, will hasten them to replace an agent, whose dispositions are such a misrepresentation of theirs, and whose continuance here is inconsistent with order, peace, respect, and that friendly correspondence which we hope will ever subsist between the two nations.

His government will see too that the case is pressing. That it is impossible for two sovereign and independent authorities to be going on within our territory at the same time without collision. They will foresee that if Mr. Genet perseveres in his proceedings, the consequences would be so hazardous to us, the example so humiliating and pernicious, that we may be forced even to suspend his functions before a successor can arrive to continue them. If our citizens have not already been shedding each other's blood, it is not owing to the moderation of Mr. Genet, but to the forbearance of the govern

ment.

"Lay the case then immediately before his government. Ac company it with assurances, which cannot be stronger than true, that our friendship for the nation is constant and unabating; that faithful to our treaties, we have fulfilled them in every point to the best of our understanding; that if in any thing, however, we have construed them amiss, we are ready to enter into candid explanations, and to do whatever we can be convinced is right; that in opposing the extravagances of an agent, wlose character they seem not sufficiently to have known, we have been urged by motives of duty to ourselves and justice to others, which cannot but be approved by those who are just themselves; and finally, that after independence and self-government, there is nothing we more sincerely wish than perpetual friendship with them.”

This impressive appeal to the justice and magnanimity of France, was successful. Genet was recalled, and his place supplied by Mr. Fauchet, who arrived in the United States in February, 1794.

On the last day of December, 1793, Mr. Jefferson resigned the office of Secretary of State, and retired from political life. This was not a sudden resolution on his part; nor an unexpected event to his country. The political disagreement between himself and the Secretary of the Treasury, added to his general disinclination to office, was the cause of his retirement. This disagreement, originating in a fundamental difference of opinion, was aggravated by subsequent collisions in the cabinet, was reflected back upon the people, and aggravated, in turn, the agitations and animosities between the republicans and federalists, of which they were respectively the leaders.

On his first introduction upon the political theatre in New York, the general appearance of things, it will be recollected, inspired Mr. Jefferson with distressing presages of the course which the administration would take, and of the result of his connection with it. The pompous levees of the President, forced on him by the high

flying aristocracy with which he was surrounded, the evening parties of the Vice President, Secretary of War, and others, which were flaming imitations of the pageantry and sycophantry of royalism; and above all, the general tone of the table conversations, in which a preference of kingly over republican government was evidently the favorite sentiment, filled him with indescribable wonder and mortification. Then followed those scenes of corruption in the Legislature, and of gambling in the public paper, through the country, over which every lover of his country must weep, as the first and foulest stains upon her political escutcheon. Then came the National Bank, with the eternal precedent fixed upon us, of legislative expositions of the constitution subservient to the will and pleasure of the majority in place, then the excise law, and the commencement of a system of internal taxation, which is the peculiar opprobium of despotism.

No sooner had these measures passed, by which the course of administration was clearly indicated, than Mr. Jefferson came to the determination of relinquishing his connection with the government. Having discovered in a letter from the President, while on a journey to the south, that he intended to resign the administration at the end of his first term, he decided on making that the date of his own retirement. This resolution was formed so early as April, 1791; and first communicated to the President in February, 1792. The intelligence came like a shock on the mind of General Washington. He had long been aware of the fatal schism in his cabinet, and had labored with unceasing anxiety, to effect a reconciliation; but that this unhappy circumstance should bring on the retirement of either party, was a calamity which he was not prepared to expect. Washington loved Jefferson; he almost reverenced his talents; and, as a man and private counsellor, had more confidence in him than any other human being. The private conversations held between these two great public servants, at different periods during their official connection, attest the sincerity of their attachment to each other, and the fervor of their devotion to country. While both were incessantly sighing for retirement, each endeavored to dissuade the other from it, as an irremediable public calamity.

These several conversations, which place the characters of both in a most amiable and interesting light, shall be grouped together,

their substance faithfully stated, and nearly in the language in which they were uttered. The first of them was on the 29th of February, 1792. The President had invited Mr. Jefferson to breakfast with him; and after conducting him to a private room, said, in an affectionate tone, that he had felt much concern at an expression which dropped from him yesterday, and which indicated an intention of retiring when he should. That as to himself, many motives obliged him to it. He had, through the whole course of the war, and most particularly at the close of it, uniformly declared his resolution never to act again in any public station; that he had already twice retired under that firm resolution; that were he to continue longer in public life it might give occasion to say, that having tasted the sweets of office, he could not subsist without them. That he really felt himself growing old, his bodily health less firm, his memory, always bad, becoming worse, and perhaps the other faculties of his mind showing a decay to others, of which he was insensible himself; that this apprehension particulaly oppressed him; that he found, moreover, his activity lessened, business more irksome, and tranquillity become an irresistable passion. That he did not believe his presence necessary, since there were so many other characters who would do the business as well or betThat however much he felt himself obliged, for these reasons, to retire, he should consider it as unfortunate if that event should bring on the retirement of the great officers of the government; and that this might produce a shock on the public mind of dangerous consequence.

ter.

Mr. Jefferson told him, that no man had ever had less desire of entering into public offices than himself; that the circumstance of a perilous war, which brought every thing into danger, and called for all the services which every citizen could render, had induced him to undertake the administration of the government of Virginia; that he had both before and after refused repeated appointments of Congress to go abroad in that sort of office, which, if he had consulted his own gratification, would always have been most agreeable to him; that on resigning the government of Virginia, at the end of two years, he had retired with a firm resolution never more to appear in public life. That a domestic loss, however, occurred, which made him fancy that a temporary absence and change of scene would be expedient for him; that he consequently accepted