nce more abroad in the world, I began to find that I was
not the only one who had conceived an unfavourable opinion of Mr.
Washington; it was evident that his character was on the decline as well
among Americans as among foreigners of different nations. From being the
chief of the government, he had made himself the chief of a party;
and his integrity was questioned, for his politics had a doubtful
appearance. The mission of Mr. Jay to London, notwithstanding there
was an American Minister there already, had then taken place, and was
beginning to be talked of. It appeared to others, as it did to me, to
be enveloped in mystery, which every day served either to increase or to
explain into matter of suspicion.

In the year 1790, or about that time, Mr. Washington, as President,
had sent Gouverneur Morris to London, as his secret agent to have some
communication with the British Ministry. To cover the agency of Morris
it was given out, I know not by whom, that he went as an agent from
Robert Morris to borrow money in Europe, and the report was permitted
to pass uncontradicted. The event of Morris's negociation was, that Mr.
Hammond was sent Minister from England to America, Pinckney from
America to England, and himself Minister to France. If, while Morris was
Minister in France, he was not a emissary of the British Ministry and
the coalesced powers, he gave strong reasons to suspect him of it. No
one who saw his conduct, and heard his conversation, could doubt his
being in their interest; and had he not got off the time he did, after
his recall, he would have been in arrestation. Some letters of his had
fallen into the hands of the Committee of Public Safety, and enquiry was
making after him.

A great bustle had been made by Mr. Washington about the conduct of
Genet in America, while that of his own Minister, Morris, in France, was
infinitely more reproachable. If Genet was imprudent or rash, he was not
treacherous; but Morris was all three. He was the enemy of the French
revolution, in every stage of it. But notwithstanding this conduct
on the part of Morris, and the known profligacy of his character, Mr.
Washington in a letter he wrote to him at the time of recalling him on
the complaint and request of the Committee of Public Safety, assures
him, that though he had complied with that request, he still retained
the same esteem and friendship for him as before. This letter Morris was
foolish enough to tell of; and, as his