be heightened, but it had been aroused and excited by daily exercise. The president received me cordially, and my colleagues and the circle of principal citizens apparently with welcome. The courtesies of dinner-parties given me, as a stranger newly arrived among them, placed me at once in their familiar society. But I cannot describe the wonder and mortification with which the table conversations filled me. Politics were the chief topic, and a preference of kingly over republican government was evidently the favorite sentiment. An apostate I could not be, nor yet a hypocrite; and I found myself, for the most part, the only advocate on the republican side of the question, unless among the guests there chanced to be some member of that party from the legislative houses."

No one can glance over the memorials of the time without meeting on every side confirmation of this passage. The Hamiltonians, we perceive, were having it all their own way in New York; their immediate object being to surround the president with imposing ceremonial and court-like etiquette. Hamilton, strangely ignorant of human nature and of the people he aspired to serve, was infatuated with the idea of gradually reconciling them to the ludicrous pomp of a European court. When General Washington asked his opinion as to the etiquette of the president's house, he replied, that, though the notions of equality were yet too general and too strong to admit of "a proper distance" being maintained by the chief magistrate, still he must go as far in that direction as the people would endure, even to the point of incurring the risk of partial and momentary dissatisfaction. He recommended the adoption of the usual etiquette of the courts of Europe; except, that to remove the idea of too immense an inequality," which, he feared, would excite dissatisfaction and cabal, the president might invite a few high officials to dinner now and then; though, on such occasions, "the president should never remain long at the table;" that is, as I suppose, not sit and booze after the ladies had retired. The president was to be so august and inaccessible a personage, that a member of the House of Representatives should have no right to an interview with him, even on public business, nor any foreigner of lower rank than ambassador. Senators, Hamilton thought, should be entitled to an interview, as the peers of France and England might demand to speak to their sovereign face to face; and, besides, the people would be glad to know there was one body of men whose right to

approach the president.would be "a safeguard against secret combinations to deceive him."

All the writings of the time that most readily catch the eye are in this tone. The vice-president, John Adams, seized every occasion to dwell upon the necessity of decorating the head of the state with the most gorgeous properties. This son of New England, who had had a life-time's experience of the unquestioning obedience paid to the plainest citizen clad in the imperial purple of fair election or legal appointment, gave it as his opinion, that "neither dignity nor authority can be supported in human minds, collected into nations or any great numbers, without a splendor and majesty in some degree proportioned to them." He opposed the practice of styling the president His Excellency, for precisely the reason which made it a rule of the old French court to give every one some title of honor excepting alone the king. To style the president His Excellency, Mr. Adams thought, was to "put him on a level with a governor of Bermuda, or one of his own ambassadors, or a governor of any one of our States."

One would think, from reading the letters and newspapers of 1789 and 1790, that pickpockets and cut-throats could be driven, awestruck, from their evil courses, by the magnificence of the president's house and the splendor of his chariot. Jefferson reached New York on Sunday, March 21, 1790. In all probability, some one was polite enough to hand him the newspaper of the day before, the Gazette of the United States, the organ of the administration, full charged with the Hamiltonian spirit. If so, he may have espied this little essay, milk for babes, not yet fit for stronger food, which harmonized perfectly with the prevalent way of thinking:

"There must be some adventitious properties infused into the government to give it energy and spirit, or the selfish, turbulent passions of men can never be controlled. This has occasioned that artificial splendor and dignity that are to be found in the courts of so many nations. Some admiration and respect must be excited towards public officers, by their holding a real or supposed superiority over the mass of the people. The sanctions and penalties of law are likewise requisite to aid in restraining individuals from trampling upon and demolishing the government. It is confessed, that, in some situations a small degree of parade and solemnity, co-operating

with other causes, may be sufficient to secure obedience to the laws. In an early state of society, when the desires of men are few and easily satisfied, the temptations to trespass upon good order and justice are neither pressing nor numerous. Avarice and ambition increase with population; and in a large, opulent community the dazzling appendages and pompous formalities of courts are introduced to form a balance to the increasing ardor of the selfish passions, and to check that ascendency which aspiring individuals would otherwise gain over the public peace and authority."

In a file of the same paper, the new secretary of state could see many indications that some progress had been made toward investing the president with royal trappings. He could read announcements respecting the supply of the president's family, signed "Steward of the Household." Poems upon the president frequently appeared, which were as absurdly adulatory as the effusions by which the British poet-laureate earned his pipe of sack. A systematic attempt was made to give queenly pre-eminence to the president's excellent wife. The movements of that industrious little lady were chronicled very much in the style of the London Court newsman when he essays to inform the world of the manner in which the queen has managed to kill another day. Every week the Gazette contained a full budget of court news, not unfrequently giving half a column of such announcements as these:

"The most Honorable Robert Morris and Lady attended the theatre last evening."

"Monday last the Senate of the United States, with the VicePresident at their head, went in a body, in carriages, to the house of the President, and presented him with an address."

"We are informed that THE PRESIDENT, His Excellency the Vice-President, His Excellency the Governor of this State, and many other personages of the greatest distinction, will be present at the theatre this evening."

The following is the Gazette's account of the arrival in New York of Mrs. Washington, May 30, 1789:

"Wednesday, arrived in this city from Mount Vernon, Mrs. WASHINGTON, the amiable consort of THE PRESIDENT of the United States. Mrs. Washington from Philadelphia was accompanied by the Lady of Mr. Robert Morris. At Elizabethtown

Point she was met by the PRESIDENT, Mr. Morris, and several other gentlemen of distinction, who had gone there for that purpose. She was conducted over the bay in the President's barge, rowed by thirteen eminent pilots, in a handsome white dress; on passing the Battery a salute was fired; and on her landing she was welcomed by crowds of citizens, who had assembled to testify their joy on this happy occasion. The principal ladies of the city have, with the earliest attention and respect, paid their devoirs to the amiable consort of our beloved President, namely, the Lady of His Excellency the Governor, Lady Sterling, Lady Mary Watts, Lady Kitty Duer, La Marchioness de Brehan, the ladies of the Most Honorable Mr. Langdon, and the Most Honorable Mr. Dalton, the Mayoress, Mrs. Livingston of Clermont, Mrs. Chancellor Livingston, the Miss Livingstons, Lady Temple, Madame de la Forest, Mrs. Montgomery, Mrs. Knox, Mrs. Thompson, Mrs. Gerry, Mrs. Edgar, Mrs. M'Comb, Mrs. Lynch, Mrs. Houston, Mrs. Griffin, Mrs. Provost, the Miss Bayards, and a great number of other respectable characters. Although the President makes no formal invitations, yet the day after the arrival of Mrs. Washington, the following distinguished personages dined at his house, en famille: Their Excellencies the VicePresident, the Governor of this State, the Ministers of France and Spain, and the Governor of the Western Territory, the Honorable Secretary of the United States for Foreign Affairs, the Most Honorable Mr. Langdon, Mr. Wingate, Mr. Izard, Mr. Few, and Mr. Muhlenberg, Speaker of the Honorable House of Representatives of the United States. The President's levee yesterday was attended by a very numerous and most respectable company. The circumstance of the President's entering the drawing-room at three o'clock, not being universally known, occasioned some inaccuracies as to the time of attendance."

The president, though he was the farthest possible from relishing parade, had a particular aversion to familiar manners, and was half persuaded of the necessity of a certain state and ceremony in the intercourse between the head of a state and its citizens. Mr. Van Buren has preserved, in his work on our Political Parties, an anecdote of Washington, that throws light on his willingness to submit to the court etiquette advised by Hamilton. The story was related by Hamilton to Mr. John Fine of Ogdensburgh, who gave it to Mr. Van Buren. Mr. Fine recorded it thus:

"When the Convention to form a Constitution was sitting in Philadelphia in 1787, of which General Washington was president, he had stated evenings to receive the calls of his friends. At an interview between Hamilton, the Morrises, and others, the former remarked that Washington was reserved and aristocratic even to his intimate friends, and allowed no one to be familiar with him. Gouverneur Morris said that was a mere fancy, and he could be as familiar with Washington as with any of his other friends. Hamilton replied, "If you will, at the next reception evening, gently slap him on the shoulder, and say, 'My dear General, how happy I am to see you look so well!' a supper and wine shall be provided for you and a dozen of your friends." The challenge was accepted. On the evening appointed, a large number attended; and at an early hour Gouverneur Morris entered, bowed, shook hands, laid his left hand on Washington's shoulder, and said, "My dear General, I am very happy to see you look so well!" Washington withdrew his hand, stepped suddenly back, fixed his eye on Morris for several minutes with an angry frown, until the latter retreated abashed, and sought refuge in the crowd. The company looked on in silence. At the supper, which was provided by Hamilton, Morris said, "I have won the bet, but paid dearly for it, and nothing could induce me to repeat it."

It was not difficult to bring a gentleman of this reserved cast of character, who shrank from familiarities, to consent to being hedged about with etiquette. And there really seemed to prevail a mania to extol, exalt, and royalize the president. Indeed, Mr. Jefferson calls it, somewhere, "a frenzy." If the president attended a ball, the managers must needs cause a platform to be erected at one end of the ball-room, several steps high, with a sofa upon it, and conduct thither the president and his "consort." An attempt was made to have the president's head engraved upon the coinage about to be issued by the new government. The levees were arranged and conducted exactly as at the palace of St. James; and, when the president rode abroad on any official errand, he used what was called the state carriage, a cream-colored chariot drawn by six horses, and attended by white servants, in liveries of white cloth trimmed with scarlet.

All of which, we can now see, proves the innocence of the Hamil