r of it! This business seems to have
commenced in an evil hour, and under unfavorable auspices. I wish
mischief may not tread in all its steps, and be the final result of
the measure. A wide door was open, through which a retreat might have
been made from the first _faux pas_, the shutting of which, to those
who are not behind the curtain and are as little acquainted with
the secrets of the cabinet as I am, is, from the present aspect of
European affairs, quite incomprehensible." He hoped but little good
from the mission, although it had his fervent wishes for its success,
expressed repeatedly in letters to members of the cabinet; and while
he was full of apprehension, he had a firm faith that all would end
well.

For this anxiety, indeed, there was abundant reason. A violent change
of policy toward France, the disorders occasioned by political
dissensions at home, and the sudden appearance of the deadly doctrine
of nullification, all combined to excite alarm in the mind of a man
who looked as far into the future and as deep beneath the surface of
things as did Washington. It was then that he urged Patrick Henry to
reenter public life, and exerted his own influence wherever he could
to check the separatist movement set on foot by Jefferson. He was
deeply disturbed, too, by the tendencies of the times in other
directions. The delirium of the French Revolution was not confined
to France. Her soldiers bore with them the new doctrines, while far
beyond the utmost reach of her armies flew the ideas engendered in
the fevered air of Paris. Wherever they alighted they touched men and
stung them to madness, and the madness that they bred was not confined
to those who believed the new gospel, but was shared equally by those
who resisted and loathed it. Burke, in his way, was as much crazed as
Camille Desmoulins, and it seemed impossible for people living in the
midst of that terrific convulsion of society to retain their judgment.
Nowhere ought men to have been better able to withstand the contagion
of the revolution than in America, and yet even here it produced the
same results as in countries nearly affected by it. The party
of opposition to the government became first ludicrous and then
dangerous, in their wild admiration and senseless imitation of ideas
and practices as utterly alien to the people of the United States as
cannibalism or fire-worship. Then the Federalists, on their side, fell
beneath the spell. The overthrow