retirement with the longing of “a wave-worn mariner,” and that he should reserve any further fighting that he had to do until he was out of office.  Soon after he followed this letter with another, containing a collection of extracts from his own correspondence while in Paris, to show his devotion to the Constitution.  One is irresistibly reminded by all this of the Player Queen—­“The lady protests too much, methinks.”  Washington had not accused Jefferson of lack of loyalty to the Constitution, indeed he had made no accusations against him of any kind; but Jefferson knew that his own position was a false one, and he could not refrain from taking a defensive tone.  Washington, in his reply, said that he needed no proofs of Jefferson’s fidelity to the Constitution, and reiterated his earnest desire for an accommodation of all differences.  “I will frankly and solemnly declare,” he said, “that I believe the views of both of you to be pure and well-meant, and that experience only will decide with respect to the salutariness of the measures which are the subjects of dispute....  I could, and indeed was about to, add more on this interesting subject, but will forbear, at least for the present, after expressing a wish that the cup which has been presented to us may not be snatched from our lips by a discordance of action, when I am persuaded there is no discordance in your views.”

The difficulty was that there was not only discordance in the views of the two secretaries, but a fundamental political difference, extending throughout the people, which they typified.  The accommodation of views and the support of the Constitution could only mean a support of Washington’s administration and its measures.  Those measures not only had the President’s approval, but they were in many respects peculiarly his own, and in them he rightly saw the success and maintenance of the Constitution.  But, unfortunately for the interests of harmony, these measures were either devised or ardently sustained by the Secretary of the Treasury.  They were not the measures of the Secretary of State, and received from him either lukewarm support or active, if furtive, hostility.  The only peace possible was in Jefferson’s giving in his entire adherence to the policies of Washington and Hamilton, which were radically opposed to his own.  In one word, a real, profound, and inevitable party division had come, and it had found the opposing chiefs side by side in the cabinet.

Against this conclusion Washington struggled hard.  He had come in as the representative and by the votes of the whole people, and he shrank from any step which would seem to make him lean on a party for support in his administration.  He had made up his cabinet with what he very justly considered the strongest material.  He believed that a breaking up of the cabinet or a change in its membership would be an injury to the cause of good government, and he was so entirely single-minded in his own views and wishes, that, with