Jefferson answered the President in a much more lengthy letter, defending his conduct and repeating his charges of corruption, conspiracy, and treason which he had so often made before.' I quote only one or two sentences: "I have never inquired what number of sons, relatives, and friends of Senators, Representatives and printers, or other useful partisans, Colonel Hamilton has provided for among the hundred clerks of his department, the thousand excisemen at his nod, and spread over the Union; nor could ever have imagined that the man who has the shuffling of millions backwards and forwards from paper into money, and money into paper, from Europe to America, and America to Europe; the dealing out of Treasury secrets among his friends in what shape and measure he pleases; and who never slips an occasion of making friends with his means, that such an one, I say, would have brought forward a charge against me for having appointed the poet, Freneau, a translating clerk to my office with a salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a year." He added, referring to Hamilton's career, that "from the moment history could stoop to notice him, it was a tissue of machinations against the liberty of a country which had not only received and fed him, but heaped its honors on his head."

Such a letter as this would hardly be tolerated in our time in a politician of any standing, much less a member of the Cabinet; and yet Jefferson continued to hold the post of Secretary of State for more than a year after it was written.

16 Writings of Jefferson, 101.

Knox, Secretary of War, always sided with Hamilton. Of Randolph, the Attorney-General, a fellow-Virginian, Jefferson said: "He always contrives to agree in principle with me, but in conclusion with the other [Hamilton]. . He generally gives his principles to the one party, and his practice to the other; the oyster to one, the shell to the other." Or, as he expressed it on another occasion, referring to the Cabinet councils, "Our votes were generally two-and-a-half against oneand-a-half."

Freneau, the clerk of the Department of State alluded to, was a noted character of that stormy political period. He had a varied experience; was well educated and possessed quite a reputation as a poet; made several voyages as a sea captain; but finally settled down as an editor. With letters from James Madison, his old college friend, and other prominent Virginians, he secured an appointment from Secretary Jefferson as clerk in the Department of State, and became the editor of a newspaper which was an organ of Jefferson's party. His bitter personal abuse was quite irritating to the President, as will be seen from the following extracts from the notes of Jefferson which he afterwards published. At a Cabinet meeting Washington observed: "That

rascal Freneau sent him three copies of his papers every day, as if he thought he would become the distributer of his papers; that he could see in this nothing but an impudent design to insult him; he ended in this high tone."2 Again, on another day: "He

1 6 Writings of Jefferson, 251.

21 Writings of Jefferson, 254.

adverted to a piece in Freneau's paper of yesterday; he said he despised all their attacks on him personally.

. . He was evidently sore and warm, and I took his intention to be, that I should interpose in some way with Freneau, perhaps withdraw his appointment of translating clerk to my office. But I will not do it." 1

When this vilification was going on Freneau made oath that none of the abusive articles were written by Jefferson; but later in life he recanted this oath, and said that Jefferson wrote or dictated them, and showed a file of his paper with the articles marked which he said were those of the Secretary of State. His declarations are hardly worthy of credence, but it was such a man that was retained in office by a member of the Cabinet while daily pouring out abuse upon the President.

In establishing the foreign relations on a permanent basis, adjusting them to the new federal government, and meeting and disposing of the questions which had been transmitted from the Confederation, and the new ones which were constantly arising, the Secretary of State found much to occupy his attention, aside from the domestic and party questions in which he was an interested participant. His dispatches are valuable, not only because they laid the foundation of American diplomacy, but because they are his own composition, the work of the department in those days not being, as now, divided among the assistant secretaries.

The first subject relating to foreign affairs which called for the action of the Senate during the first

1 Writings of Jefferson, 231.

Congress under the Constitution was a consideration of the consular treaty with France, which Mr. Jefferson, as minister in Paris, had negotiated. The first consular convention had been signed by Dr. Franklin in 1784, but it had been disapproved by the Continental Congress, and Mr. Jefferson had been instructed to negotiate one free from its objectionable features. This he had done in 1788, and in the first year of the new government it came before the Senate for ratification. Mr. Jay, still acting as Secretary of State, advised its approval, though not yet free from objection, and the Senate gave its advice and consent to its ratification. And thus began the participation of the Senate in the long series of treaty negotiations of the government.

One of the earliest effects of the adoption of the Constitution was seen in the rapid improvement of the public credit. In September, 1789, Mr. Jefferson reported from Paris to Secretary Jay that the credit of the United States at Amsterdam, then the money centre of the world, had become the first on that exchange, England at that time not being a borrower; that our bonds had risen to 99, theretofore at 93; that several individuals and companies in France, England, and Holland were then negotiating for large parcels of our debt; and that in the present state of our credit every dollar of the debt would be transferred to Europe in a short time. This was in gratifying contrast to the reports which he and Mr. Adams had been sending from Europe a short time before. Hamilton, in his first statement of the public credit and national debt called 1 2 Dip. Cor. (1783–89) 326.

for by Congress, showed that this foreign debt amounted to $11,710,378; that there were arrears of interest to the amount of over a million and a half of dollars; and that several installments of the French loan were already overdue and unpaid. Under his skillful management a sudden change occurred in our financial status ; the revenues of the government rapidly increased; and not only were the arrears of interest wiped out, and the future interest promptly met, but the Treasury was enabled to anticipate and pay off the entire indebtedness before it fell due.

No more striking confirmation could be had of the wisdom of a strong federal government under the Constitution. But its healthful influence was not confined to the public credit. Foreign commerce assumed a marvelous expansion; the exports were rapidly increased; shipbuilding was greatly enlarged; not only were American vessels seen in every port in Europe, but a profitable trade was opened with India, China, and Russian America. The ship Columbia, Captain Gray, to whose enterprise we are mainly and primarily indebted for our Pacific possessions by the discovery of the Columbia River, in 1791 made the first voyage of an American vessel around the world. The historian of the period writes: "Already on almost every sea the stars and stripes began to wave."

Such were some of the indications in our foreign relations of the new career which was opening up to the country under the reformed government. To Hamilton, more than any other single individual, is due this

1 4 Hildreth's History U. S. 277.