t to alarm them,
because it is difficult to prescribe bounds to the effect.[1]

[Footnote 1: Lodge, II, 236.]

By his refusal to take notice of these indecencies, Washington set a
high example. In other countries, in France and England, for example,
the victims of such abuse resorted to duels with their abusers: a very
foolish and inadequate practice, since it happened as often as not
that the aggrieved person was killed. In taking no notice of the
calumnies, therefore, Washington prevented the President of the United
States from being drawn into an unseemly duel. We cannot fail to
recognize also that Washington was very sensitive to the maintenance
of freedom of speech. He seems to have acted on the belief that it was
better that occasionally license should degenerate into abuse than
that liberty should be suppressed. He was the President of the first
government in the world which did not control the utterances of its
people. Perhaps he may have supposed that their patriotism would
restrain them from excesses, and there can be no doubt that the insane
gibes of the Freneaus and the Baches gave him much pain because they
proved that those scorpions were not up to the level which the new
Nation offered them.

As the time for the conclusion of Washington's second term drew near,
he left no doubt as to his intentions. Though some of his best friends
urged him to stand for reelection, he firmly declined. He felt that he
had done enough for his country in sacrificing the last eight years to
it. He had seen it through its formative period, and had, he thought,
steered it into clear, quiet water, so that there was no threatening
danger to demand his continuance at the helm. Many persons thought
that he was more than glad to be relieved of the increasing abuse of
the scurrilous editors. No doubt he was, but we can hardly agree that
merely for the sake of that relief he would abandon his Presidential
post. But does it not seem more likely that his unwillingness to
convert the Presidency into a life office, and so to give the critics
of the American experiment a valid cause for opposition, led him to
establish the precedent that two terms were enough? More than once in
the century and a quarter since he retired in 1797, over-ambitious
Presidents have schemed to win a third election and flattering
sycophants have encouraged them to believe that they could attain it.
But before they came to the test Washington's example--"no