Persons who like to trace the sardonic element in history—­the element which seems to laugh derisively at the ineffectual efforts of us poor mortals to establish ourselves and lead rational lives in the world as it is—­can find few better examples of it than these early years of the American Republic.  In the war which brought about the independence of the American Colonies, England had been their enemy and France their friend.  Now their instinctive gratitude to France induced many, perhaps a majority of them, to look with effusive favor on France, although her character and purpose had quite changed and it was very evident that for the Americans to side with France would be against sound policy and common sense.  Neutrality, the strictest neutrality, between England and France was therefore the only rational course; but the American partisans of these rivals did their utmost to render this unachievable.  Much of Washington’s second term see-sawed between one horn and the other of this dilemma.  The sardonic aspect becomes more glaring if we remember that the United States were a new-born nation which ought to have been devoting itself to establishing viable relations among its own population and not to have been dissipating its strength taking sides with neighbors who lived four thousand miles away.

In the autumn of 1793 Jefferson insisted upon resigning as Secretary of State.  Washington used all his persuasiveness to dissuade him, but in vain.  Jefferson saw the matter in its true light, and insisted.  Perhaps it at last occurred to him, as it must occur to every dispassionate critic, that he could not go on forever acting as an important member of an administration which pursued a policy diametrically opposed to his own.  After all, even the most adroit politicians must sometimes sacrifice an offering to candor, not to say honesty.  At the end of the year he retired to the privacy of his home at Monticello, where he remained in seclusion, not wholly innocuous, until the end of 1796.  Edmund Randolph succeeded him as Secretary of State.

Whether it was owing to the departure of Jefferson from the Cabinet or not, the fact remains that Washington concluded shortly thereafter the most difficult diplomatic negotiation of his career.  This was the treaty with England, commonly called Jay’s Treaty.  The President wished at first to appoint Hamilton, the ablest member of the Cabinet, but, realizing that it would be unwise to deprive himself and his administration of so necessary a supporter, he offered the post to John Jay, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.  The quality, deemed most desirable, which it was feared Jay might lack, was audacity.  But he had discretion, tact, and urbanity in full share, besides that indefinable something which went with his being a great gentleman.

The President, writing to Gouverneur Morris, who had recently been recalled as Minister to France, said: