Jefferson pleaded his repugnance to public life, and especially the
uneasiness of the position in which he was placed. He and Hamilton were
bitter enemies, and his course, he said, had caused "the wealthy
aristocrats, the merchants connected closely with England, the
newly-created paper factions," to bear him peculiar hatred. Thus
surrounded, he said, his "words were caught, multiplied, misconstrued,
and even fabricated and spread abroad," to his injury. Disclaiming any
knowledge of the views of the republican party at that time, he gave it
as his opinion that they would be found strong supporters of the
government in all measures for the public welfare; that in the next
Congress they would attempt nothing material but to make that body
independent; and that though the manoeuvres of Mr. Genet might produce
some embarrassment, he would be abandoned by the republicans and all
true friends of the country the moment they knew the nature and tendency
of his conduct.

The want of candor exhibited by Mr. Jefferson in these assurances,
recorded by his own pen, must have been plainly visible to Washington.
The idea that the secretary, the head and front of the republican party,
should be ignorant of their "views," and that the "party" would desert
Genet when they should know "the nature of his conduct," when that party
were his continual backers and supporters, is simply absurd; and it is
difficult to believe that Washington on that occasion, as Mr. Jefferson
says, actually asserted his belief "in the purity of the motives" of
that party.[58]

Jefferson consented to remain longer in the cabinet, and wrote the
vigorous and high-toned letter to Gouverneur Morris on the subject of
Genet's recall--a letter forming one of the most admirable state papers
ever issued from that department. That letter gave Genet great umbrage,
and in his comments he bitterly reproached Jefferson because he had
allowed himself to be made "an ungenerous instrument" of attack upon
him, after having made him believe that he was his friend, and
"initiating him into the mysteries which had influenced his hatred
against all those who aspired to absolute power." It seems, from other
remarks of Genet, that the tone of Jefferson's private conversations
with the minister upon public topics had differed materially from that
of his official communications. Genet intimated this when he said that
"it was not in his character to speak, _as many people do_, in one wa