age began to enfeeble his health, and the desires always strong in him for a quiet country life became more and more insistent, he felt that he could not accept a third term as President. He had, however, been so abused and vilified in the public press for several years, his character so aspersed, his motives so invariably questioned and misunderstood, that his modest and retiring nature shrank from announcing that he would not be a candidate for fear that his enemies would promptly impute to him vanity and conceit. In those days the Presidential electors were supposed to ballot in secret for candidates who had not previously announced to the people their willingness to accept election, and Washington rightly felt that, in declaring he sought no further political office, he would lay himself open to the charge of coveting what others had no intention of offering him. Such scruples seem to us, at this distance, strained and unnatural in his case, but the importance which Washington attached to them is evinced not only in his correspondence with Madison in 1792, but in the letters to Hamilton and others in the months when the Address itself was in preparation. As an expedient, he hit upon the idea of a" valedictory address," which, apparently occasioned by more general and permanent considerations, would thus make the statement of his unwillingness to become a Presidential candidate incidental to larger issues.

A second motive which played a great part in his decision was the desire to answer in some dignified and impressive manner the extraordinary campaign of vituperation which had been directed against him and his policy. For us who have been accustomed to think of the Farewell Address as delivered to a patriotic and affectionate nation, eager to receive from its most honored and revered statesman his parting words of counsel, it is a shock to learn that Washington meant it to be his justification before posterity for a policy which had been as roundly abused and more generally disapproved by contemporaries than perhaps any other ever initiated by an American statesman. Here again his own innate modesty made him hesitate to defend himself openly for fear he should reveal the depth of the wounds such hostility had caused him, and for fear lest his enemies should exult over an admission that he felt defense necessary. As he wrote Hamilton, the Address must defend him and his policy without making either him or his policy too prominent. Joined to these motives was the hope in Washington's mind

that he might still possess sufficient influence-which he seems at this time to have doubted-to restrain the people from an alliance with France which he believed imminent and both unwise and inexpedient.

In the last paragraphs of the Address itself, Washington has struck for us its keynote: "With me, a predominant motive has been to gain time to [sic] our country to settle and mature its yet recent institutions and to progress without interruption to that degree of strength and consistency which is necessary to give it, humanly speaking, the command of its own fortunes."

Throughout the years of his Presidency the fact which had been borne in upon him by events had been the weak and defenseless condition of the country. An aggregation of struggling people organized into States, deeply jealous of each other, loaded with foreign and domestic debt, with a credit scarcely established, and with neither army or navy, it seemed to him that our greatest problems were domestic, and our greatest necessity, sufficient time to solve them. He was afraid that the Constitution might not work, that the strong anti-Federalist party, hostile to it, might gain the upper hand and abolish it. A leader the malcontents had found in Thomas Jefferson, and active expression of their policies had appeared in the various newspapers which Jefferson subsidized. In Virginia and in the Mississippi Valley Washington knew an anti-national movement was being nourished by the men in his own councils. The Whiskey Rebellion against the authority of the Federal Government had, to be sure, been crushed, but the probability of other resistance was great.

And this country, weak, disorganized, and divided within itself, was, he saw, entirely dependent for its prosperity upon its foreign commerce. It produced what it could not consume and what it must sell either in the West Indies or in Europe. It had been accustomed to buy in Europe, chiefly in England, most of those commodities necessary to a civilized existence. By the sale of their own produce in the West Indies, American merchants had bought sugar and molasses which they carried to England and exchanged for manufactured goods needed in America. The dependence of the new Government and its people upon Europe was dire. What we raised could be sold only to European nations or to their colonies. What it was almost imperative for us to buy had to be obtained

from them. Just at this time, too, an extremely lucrative trade with France had sprung up in American grain, the first truly American product, except tobacco, to find sale in any quantity in Europe.

In the way of this exchange, upon which the prosperity of the whole country was seen directly to depend, stood Great Britain; English manufactured goods were those most desired; the British West Indian colonies furnished the best markets for American produce. Yet the recent Revolution and the events of the subsequent years had thoroughly embittered English statesmen and led them to maintain restrictions exceedingly onerous to their former colonists. That the British statesmen had much reason for their distrust Washington was forced to admit. The Treaty of 1783 had not been executed by the Americans; the Loyalists had been maltreated and their property confiscated, despite the promises in the Treaty; nearly all the private and public debts owed by Americans in England had been repudiated during or after the war; and there was genuine doubt abroad whether the new Government under the Constitution was likely to maintain its credit and observe its promises any better than had the States and the Confederation.

Yet to the harassed President it was clear that without a navy we could not coerce Great Britain's fleet; that such access as we had to the West Indies and to Europe in general we must obtain with her consent. As Hamilton wrote to Washington in 1794: ""Tis our error to overrate ourselves and underrate Great Britain; we forget how little we can annoy; how much we may be annoyed." Washington therefore concluded that the United States must preserve peace at all costs and was urged thereto "by motives of policy, interest, and every other consideration, that ought to actuate a people situated and circumstanced as we are, already deeply in debt, and in a convalescent state from the struggle we had been engaged in ourselves."

This period of probation, when America's weakness thrust upon her a policy of circumspection and political isolation, was estimated by Washington and Hamilton at not less than twelve nor probably more than twenty years. In the Farewell Address Washington thus phrased this notion: "The period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance when we may choose peace or war as our interests guided by justice shall counsel."

Shortly before he had written: "If this country is preserved in tranquillity twenty years longer, it may bid defiance in a just cause to any Power whatever; such in that time will be its population, wealth, and resources."

The idea of no entangling alliances seems to have originated in negative conclusions. It was not that Washington felt that no alliance could be beneficial. The strength of the British sea power and the probable continuance of its supremacy, the extent of American dependence upon Europe, made cordial relations with Great Britain essential, and an alliance with that country was therefore prima facie expedient and desirable. The closer our contact (always assuming that we retained our political independence) the more advantageous the relation would be for both countries. But he saw that this alliance was one which the state of the public mind both in England and in the United States made impossible; the Revolution almost prevented the conclusion of any favorable understanding between the Governments.

At the same time, both he and Hamilton felt-and their idea descended as a tradition-that England's own interests would compel her in the long run to sanction practically that extent of intercourse with Europe and the British dominions which was imperative for America. Nor were they blind to the fact that England's own interests were a better foundation for American privileges than any paper alliance. To develop more cordial relations, to make possible for Great Britain concessions without loss of self-respect, to facilitate, where possible by diplomatic methods, arrangements and concessions: such must be the policy of the United States. A reconquest by England Washington scouted, not only as impossible of success, but as a move which the British themselves would not attempt. The one European Power which could reach America, which in fact held America in her hands, he believed was already convinced that conquest was unwise. Eminently desirable for the rapid promotion of American commerce, an alliance with Great Britain's sea power was fortunately neither imperative for defense nor essential to ensure the continuance of that minimum of economic privilege upon which the prosperity of the country depended. In her own interests Great Britain must perforce concede in practice that minimum which we could not dispense with, and in time the growth of the United States.

might make possible the exaction of more, or an alteration of sentiment in both countries might result in an amicable adjustment.

But at all costs, Washington felt, the United States must not further antagonize the sea power and thus risk the loss of that minimum of privilege. Under the stress of war or urged by resentment and passion, Great Britain might rescind that, and from its loss calamity must ensue. A commercial crisis at that precise juncture Washington felt would overturn the Constitution and put into an overwhelming majority the anti-national forces, already hostile to his own policies and the great measures of Hamilton for the funding of the debt and the establishment of the public credit at home and abroad. Yet such an alliance the great majority of the American people, led by Jefferson, seemed firmly determined to make. France, who had aided us during the Revolution and with whom we had signed a defensive treaty, was now at war in Europe with Great Britain, Austria, and the majority of the smaller states. For America, demonstrations in favor of France were common; Jefferson and his partisans declared that the existing treaty and the honor of the nation alike counseled assistance to those who had before helped us. So great was the popular enthusiasm and so vigorous were the expressions of hostility to Great Britain, so determined were the attempts to force Washington's hand and compel an alliance with France or a war with England, that the President was hard pressed to resist.

Both he and Hamilton felt, however, that to ally with France was suicide. The prosperity of the United States depended upon an access to the West Indies and to Europe which the British fleet could interdict completely. The consequences of a restriction of privilege had already demonstrated how terrible would be the result of its complete loss. Alliance with England was out of the question, but favorable commercial terms and at least a certain tolerance were essential. Nor did there seem to be a remote possibility of assisting France while the British fleet ruled the sea. Hamilton even contended that France had aided us during the Revolution solely to advance her own interests, and that we therefore owed her no debt of gratitude. In the end, Washington issued a proclamation of neutrality; snubbed Genêt and replied in friendly but reserved tone to the fervid letters from Paris; and sent Jay to England to negotiate as favorable and