ng, but one cannot
help feeling that on this occasion at least it had a particular
significance. It was not George Washington writing from Mount Vernon,
but the President, who represented the whole country, pointing out
to the people of Boston that the day of small things and of local
considerations had gone by. This letter served also as a model for
many others. The Boston address had a multitude of successors, and
they were all answered in the same strain. Washington was not a man to
underrate popular feeling, for he knew that the strongest bulwark of
the government was in sound public opinion. On the other hand, he
was one of the rare men who could distinguish between a temporary
excitement, no matter how universal, and an abiding sentiment. In this
case he quietly resisted the noisy popular demand, believing that the
sober second thought of the people would surely be with him; but at
the same time the outcry against the treaty, while it could not make
him waver in his determination to do what he believed to be right,
caused him deep anxiety. The day after he sent his answer to Boston he
wrote to Randolph:--

"I view the opposition which the treaty is receiving from the
meetings in different parts of the Union in a very serious light;
not because there is more weight in any of the objections which
are made to it than was foreseen at first, for there is none in
some of them, and gross misrepresentations in others; nor as it
respects myself personally, for this shall have no influence on
my conduct, plainly perceiving, and I am accordingly preparing my
mind for it, the obloquy which disappointment and malice are
collecting to heap upon me. But I am alarmed at the effect it may
have on and the advantage the French government may be disposed to
make of, the spirit which is at work to cherish a belief in them
that the treaty is calculated to favor Great Britain at their
expense.... To sum the whole up in a few words I have never,
since I have been in the administration of the government,
a crisis, which, in my judgment, has been so pregnant with
interesting events, nor one from which more is to be apprehended,
whether viewed on one side or the other."

He already felt that it might be necessary for him to return to
Philadelphia at any moment; and, writing to Randolph to this effect
two days later, he said:--

"To be wise and temperate, as well as