this silence of Washington concerning the fate of Paine, whom he
acknowledged to be an American citizen, was mainly due to his fear
of offending England, which had proclaimed Paine. The "outlaw's"
imprisonment in Paris caused jubilations among the English gentry,
and went on simultaneously with Jay's negotiations in London, when any
expression by Washington of sympathy with Paine (certain of publication)
might have imperilled the Treaty, regarded by the President as vital.

So anxious was the President about this, that what he supposed had been
done for Paine by Morris, and what had really been done by Monroe,
was kept in such profound secrecy, that even his Secretary of State,
Pickering, knew nothing of it. This astounding fact I recently
discovered in the manuscripts of that Secretary.(1) Colonel Pickering,
while flattering enough to the President in public, despised his
intellect, and among his papers is a memorandum concluding as follows:

"But when the hazards of the Revolutionary War had ended, by the
establishment of our Independence, why was the knowledge of General
Washington's comparatively defective mental powers not freely divulged?
Why, even by the enemies of his civil administration were his abilities
very tenderly glanced at? --Because there were few, if any men, who
did not revere him for his distinguished virtues; his modesty--his
unblemished integrity, his pure and disinterested patriotism. These
virtues, of infinitely more value than exalted abilities without them,
secured to him the veneration and love of his fellow citizens at large.
Thus immensely popular, no man was willing to publish, under his hand,
even the simple truth. The only exception, that I recollect, was the
infamous Tom Paine; and this when in France, after he had escaped the
guillotine of Robespierre; and in resentment, because, after he had
participated in the French Revolution, President Washington seemed
not to have thought him so very important a character in the world,
as officially to interpose for his relief from the fangs of the French
ephemeral Rulers. In a word, no man, however well informed, was willing
to hazard his own popularity by exhibiting the real intellectual
character of the immensely popular Washington."

1 Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 11., p. 171.

How can this ignorance of an astute man, Secretary of State under
Washington and Adams, be explained? Had Washington hidden the letters
showing on t