to
the close of the year. Retaining his purpose, he resigned his office
on the last day of December.

[Sidenote: He resigns.]

This gentleman withdrew from political station at a moment when he
stood particularly high in the esteem of his countrymen. His
determined opposition to the financial schemes which had been proposed
by the secretary of the treasury, and approved by the legislative and
executive departments of the government; his ardent and undisguised
attachment to the revolutionary party in France; the dispositions
which he was declared to possess in regard to Great Britain; and the
popularity of his opinions respecting the constitution of the United
States; had devoted to him that immense party whose sentiments were
supposed to comport with his, on most, or all of these interesting
subjects. To the opposite party he had, of course, become particularly
unacceptable. But the publication of his correspondence with Mr. Genet
dissipated much of the prejudice which had been excited against him.
He had, in that correspondence, maintained with great ability the
opinions embraced by the federalists on those points of difference
which had arisen between the two republics; and which, having become
universally the subjects of discussion, had in some measure displaced
those topics on which parties were previously divided. The partiality
for France that was conspicuous through the whole of it, detracted
nothing from its merit in the opinion of the friends of the
administration, because, however decided their determination to
support their own government in a controversy with any nation
whatever, they felt all the partialities for that republic which the
correspondence expressed. The hostility of his enemies therefore was,
for a time, considerably lessened, without a corresponding diminution
of the attachment of his friends. It would have been impracticable, in
office, long to preserve these dispositions. And it would have been
difficult to maintain that ascendency which he held over the minds of
those who had supported, and probably would continue to support, every
pretension of the French republic, without departing from principles
and measures which he had openly and ably defended.

[Sidenote: Is succeeded by Mr. Randolph.]

He was immediately succeeded by Mr. Edmund Randolph; and the office of
attorney general was filled by Mr. William Bradford, a gentleman of
considerable eminence in Pennsylvania.

{1794}

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