At length, in 1793, Wayne was appointed commander of the forces in the north-west, and by one terrible blow prostrated the Indians and restored peace.

Congress having changed the place of sitting from New York to Philadelphia-it met at the latter place in the fore part of December, 1790. The National Bank, established this session, awakened much opposition, but Washington, after mature deliberation, approved the project. With Congress he was deeply engaged during the winter in completing various plans of policy, and labored unceasingly to perfect the government.

When Congress adjourned in the spring, he made a trip to the Southern States, going as far south as Savannah. The whole journey of eighteen hundred and eighty-seven miles, was made with the same horses and carriage. His presence everywhere was hailed with delight, and he returned more and more convinced that a great and glorious future was before his country.

At the next session of Congress, the elements of those two terrible factions, Federalists and Democrats, began to develop themselves more fully, and filled Washington with the gravest fears. Hamilton and Jefferson, represented those two classes of opinions and feelings in the country, and soon assumed a hostile attitude to each other. The former was for concentrating more power in the central government, by removing it from the separate states-the latter for taking more power from the federal government and bestowing it on the states. Seeing the bitterness of feeling which these different views caused between his Secretary of the State and of the Treasury, and fearing the animosity that it would create in the country, Washington used all his influence to bring about some reconciliation or compromise. His letters and appeals to each breathed the spirit of kindness and patriotism, but nothing could allay the fire which had been kindled, and it blazed on fiercer and

fiercer till the overthrow of the Federalists, in the war of 1812, ended the strife. Against himself, as the leader of the Federalists, all the venom and malignity of the Democrats were levelled.

In a letter, speaking of the political animosity which had pursued him, he says, "Until within the last year or two I did not believe that parties would or ever could go the length I have been witness to; nor did I believe, until lately, that it was within the bounds of probability, hardly within those of possibility, that, while I was using my utmost exertions to establish a national character of our own, independent, as far as our obligations and justice would permit, of every nation of the earth, and wished by steering a steady course, to preserve this country from the horrors of a desolating war, I should be accused of being the enemy of one nation, and subject to the influence of another; and to prove it, that every act of my administration would be tortured, and the grossest and most invidious misrepresentations of them be made, by giving one side only of a subject, and that too in such exaggerated and indecent terms as could scarcely be applied to a Nero, a notorious defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket. But enough of this. I have already gone further in the expression of my feelings than I intended." It seems hardly possible, at this day, that men could have been found so lost to reason, truth and virtue, as to load Washington with aspersions such as he here himself declares were heaped upon him. But political malignity always becomes personal, and is just as deep and unsparing.

When the term of his administration drew to a close, he hoped that he would be permitted to retire to private life and spend the remnant of his days in quietness and peace. His known reluctance to accept the first nomination, created great fear among all parties, lest he should utterly refuse to accept a second. The hatred of faction gave way

to alarm in view of the disaster that might follow his desertion of the helm of state. Those who afterward became his enemies urged him not to think of retiring, declaring that his commanding influence and wisdom were indispensable in order to fix firmly and forever, that which had only settled into transient repose, and if he did not remain the whole tottering fabric would fall. By all that was dear to the Union, they besought him not to expose it at last to overthrow. They knew that Washington's weak side was his patriotism, and they plied it with appeals and arguments in turn, till at length he yielded, and on the fourth of March, 1793, was again inaugurated President of the United States.

For the last three years the rumblings of the coming earthquake in France, had startled Europe from her long repose, and Washington watched the progress of events with the deepest interest, not only from the principles that were involved, but because the fate of Lafayette, he knew, would be that of republicanism. At length the Bastile fell, and Lafayette, through Tom Paine, sent to him the key of that strong fortress of tyranny and secret dungeon of oppressed men. The National Assembly also wrote him a letter, closing with "May the individuals of the two nations connect themselves by a mutual affection, worthy of the friendship which unites the two men, at this day most illustrious by their exertions for liberty, Washington and Lafayette." But the joy which the apparent regeneration of France had occasioned, gave way to alarm as the car of revolution rolled on in blood, and soon Europe was in arms to arrest its farther progress. England at length having joined the crusade for the overthrow of liberty, declared war against France: This threatened to augment most seriously the difficulties that surrounded the commencement of Washington's second administration. He immediately submitted to the cabinet several queries respecting the