wly as men did
themselves. You can see that it was harder for people in Georgia or New
Hampshire to know what was going on in New York than it is now for
people in Oregon or Florida to know what is being done in Washington.
Where there is ignorance there is always more distrust and doubt. Men
found it not easy to give up public business to a Congress, far away,
that they did not know much about. Washington set himself earnestly at
work to try and have things done so carefully, so honestly, and so
wisely, that the people would learn to trust the national government,
and live happily under it.

The national government had been meant especially to do three things:
First, to raise money and pay the debts of all the States; second, to
see that the country was rightly dealt with by other countries, and that
other countries were justly treated by our own; and third, in a general
way to do for the common good what no one State could do by itself.

The government has now for nearly a hundred years done this work very
well, and that fact is largely due to the way George Washington began
it. He was President for eight years.

It would not be easy to tell all the things he did in that time which
have had a good effect ever since, but it will be well to remember a few
of the principal ones. He always insisted on the full and honest payment
of the public debt, that is, of money borrowed by the government to
carry on the war, and so forth. He believed that a nation must keep its
word as much as a man must, if it expects other people to deal fairly
with it.

In order that the government might pay its debts, it was necessary for
it to get money from the people by taxes, and President Washington
showed very early that no man or set of men were to be allowed to refuse
to pay a fair share of these taxes, as fixed by law.

The people chose the Congress, and the Congress decided how the taxes
should be paid. When that was done, there must be no further dispute
about paying. If the people did not like the laws Congress made, they
could elect men to Congress who would change the laws, but until the
laws were changed in this way, they must be obeyed.

A large number of persons in the State of Pennsylvania refused to pay a
tax ordered by Congress, called an excise tax, which was a certain sum
on every barrel of whiskey made in the country. When Washington learned
of this, he sent word to these people that if they did not obey the
laws, he