the trained statesmen allied with the great property holders. The former is the democratic ideal, the latter the aristocratic or paternal ideal. In varying degrees of intensity these two conceptions of government have been arrayed against each other through the entire history of our country. Party names have changed; men have called themselves Federalists, Republicans, Democrats, Whigs, Populists, Socialists; parties have emphasized scores of "paramount issues," such as a national bank, the tariff, state rights, the acquisition of new territory, curbing the trusts, the free coinage of silver, and the government ownership of the railroads. But underneath all these party issues lies the fundamental antagonism of the Jeffersonian and the Hamiltonian principles,-democracy or paternalism, jealous limitation of the powers granted to the national government or deliberate extension and confirmation of them.

THE REIGN OF FEDERALISM

205. The Reëlection of Washington. As the election of 1792 approached, Washington wished to exchange the cares of the presidency for his beloved acres of Mount Vernon, on the banks of the Potomac. But he yielded to Hamilton's entreaty and became a candidate for a second term. The financial policy of the Secretary of the Treasury had aroused bitter antagonism, and was rapidly consolidating the opposition party of Republicans, headed by Thomas Jefferson. If the strong hand of Washington should be withdrawn from the government at this critical moment, the work of three years might be ruined by the strife of parties before it had had time to prove its worth. Washington was the only man above the party discord. His election was again unanimous, but the Republican party proved its strength throughout the country by electing a majority to the House of Representatives of the third Congress (1793-1795).

206. The French Revolution. Washington had scarcely taken the oath of office a second time when news came of events in France which were to plunge Europe into twenty years of incessant warfare, to color the politics of the United States during the whole period, and even to involve us in actual wars with both France and England. The French people accomplished a wonderful revolution in the years 1789-1791. They reformed State and Church by sweeping

away many oppressive privileges and age-long abuses by the nobles and the clergy. But the enthusiasm for reform degenerated into a passion for destruction. Paris and the French government fell into the hands of a small group of ardent radicals, who overthrew the ancient monarchy, guillotined their king and queen, and inaugurated a "reign of terror" through the land by the execution of all those who were suspected of the slightest leanings toward aristocracy. The revolutionary French Republic undertook a defiant crusade against all the thrones of Europe, to spread the gospel of "liberty, equality, and fraternity." In the summer of 1793 it was at war with Prussia, Austria, England, and several minor kingdoms of western Europe.

207. Washington's Proclamation of Neutrality. Now France was our ally. Her government had been the first in Europe to recognize the independence of the United States, by the treaties of commerce and alliance of 1778. Her king had lent us large sums of money, and sent us men and ships, in the hope that he was contributing to the downfall of the British Empire. The treaty of alliance of 1778 pledged us to aid France in the defense of her possessions in the West Indies if they were attacked by a foreign foe, and to allow her the use of our ports for the ships she captured in war. But did the treaty with Louis XVI's government, made for mutual defense against England, pledge us, after both parties had made peace with England (1783), to support the French faction which had overthrown Louis XVI's government? The President thought not. Accordingly, with the unanimous assent of his cabinet, Washington issued on April 22, 1793, a proclamation of neutrality, which declared that it was the policy of the United States to keep aloof from the complicated hostilities of Europe.

208. Reasons for our Neutrality. The proclamation of neutrality was prompted by the state of our own country as well as by that of Europe. On our northwestern frontier the British were still in possession of a line of valuable fur posts extending along our side of the Great Lakes from Oswego to Mackinac, and were secretly encouraging the Indians to dispute the occupation of the Ohio valley with the emigrants from the Atlantic seaboard. To the south and southwest the Spaniards were inciting the Creeks and Cherokees of Florida against the inhabitants of Georgia and, by closing the mouth

of the Mississippi to our western shipping, were tempting the pioneers of Kentucky and Tennessee from their allegiance to the United States. To have joined France in her war against England and Spain, therefore, would have been to let loose the horrors of Indian massacre on our borders,1 to risk the permanent loss of our trading posts on the Great Lakes, and perhaps to throw the pioneer communities of the southwest into the arms of Spain, who offered them free use of the great river for the transportation of their hogs and grain. Neutrality was an absolute necessity for the maintenance of our territory and the amicable settlement of disputes then pending with our neighbors England and Spain.

209. "Citizen" Edmond Genêt. A few days before the proclamation of neutrality was issued "Citizen Genêt" arrived at Charleston, South Carolina, as minister of the French Republic to the United States. Genêt had no idea that America could remain neutral. He was coming quite frankly in order to use our ports as the base of naval war against the British West Indies, and to instruct this. government in its proper conduct as the ally of the "sister republic" of France. His journey from Charleston to Philadelphia was a continuous ovation of feasting, oratory, and singing of the "Marseillaise" by the Republicans, who hated England as the source of the "aristocratic" ideas of Hamilton and the other Federalists. Genêt was vain and rash. His head was turned by Republican adulation. His conduct became outrageous for a diplomat. He issued his orders to the French consuls in America as if they were his paid agents and spies. He used the columns of the Republican press for frenzied appeals to faction. He scolded our President and secretaries for not learning from him the true meaning of democracy. He defied the proclamation of neutrality by openly bringing captured British ships into our ports and fitting them out as privateers to prey on English commerce in the West Indies. He even addressed his petulant letters to Washington, and when reminded by the Secretary of State

1 The Indians south of Lake Erie, already excited over the immigration of the whites into Ohio, had ambushed a force of 1400 led by General St. Clair in 1791 and allowed but 50 to escape from the field uninjured. Lord Dorchester, governor of Canada, openly encouraged the Indian chiefs, telling them that war between England and America was imminent and that the Americans would be driven off the Indian lands. In the autumn of 1794 Gen eral Anthony Wayne defeated the Indians severely in the battle of the Fallen Timbers (sixty miles south of Detroit) and compelled them by the Treaty of Greenville (1795) to relinquish most of Ohio to the whites.

that the President did not communicate directly with ministers of foreign countries, he threatened to appeal to the people of the United States to judge between George Washington and himself. Such conduct was too impertinent for even the warmest Republican sympathizers with France to stand. At the request of the administration Genêt was dismissed. His behavior had brought discredit on the extreme Republicans and strengthened the hands of the Federalists.

210. Strained Relations with Great Britain. A more serious problem for the administration of Washington than the maintenance of neutrality was the preservation of peace with England. We have already seen how British garrisons still held fortified posts on our shores of the Great Lakes. The value of the fur trade at the posts was over $1,000,000 annually, and the excuse Great Britain gave for not surrendering them was that American merchants owed large debts in England at the time of the treaty of 1783, which our government had not compelled them to pay. We, on our side, complained that the British, on the evacuation of our seaports at the close of the Revolution, had carried off a number of our slaves in their ships; had closed the West Indian ports to our trade; had refused to send a minister to our country; and, at the outbreak of the war with France in 1793, had begun to stop our merchantmen on the high seas to search them for deserters from the British navy, and had actually "impressed" into British service many genuine American citizens. The exasperated merchants of New England joined with the Republican friends of France in demanding war with England. A bill to stop all trade with Great Britain (a "Nonintercourse Act") was defeated in the Senate only by the casting vote of Vice President Adams, who wrote that many in the country were "in a panic lest peace should continue." At a hint from Washington, Congress would have declared war on Great Britain.

211. The Jay Treaty. But Washington was determined to have peace. He nominated John Jay, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, as special envoy 'to Great Britain to negotiate a new treaty. Jay sailed in May, 1794, and returned about a year later with the best terms he could obtain from the British ministry. England agreed to evacuate the fur posts by the first of June, 1796, and to submit to arbitration the questions of disputed boundaries, damages to