"
The difficulty was that there was not only discordance in the views of
the two secretaries, but a fundamental political difference, extending
throughout the people, which they typified. The accommodation of views
and the support of the Constitution could only mean a support of
Washington's administration and its measures. Those measures not
only had the President's approval, but they were in many respects
peculiarly his own, and in them he rightly saw the success and
maintenance of the Constitution. But, unfortunately for the interests
of harmony, these measures were either devised or ardently sustained
by the Secretary of the Treasury. They were not the measures of the
Secretary of State, and received from him either lukewarm support
or active, if furtive, hostility. The only peace possible was in
Jefferson's giving in his entire adherence to the policies of
Washington and Hamilton, which were radically opposed to his own. In
one word, a real, profound, and inevitable party division had come,
and it had found the opposing chiefs side by side in the cabinet.
Against this conclusion Washington struggled hard. He had come in as
the representative and by the votes of the whole people, and he shrank
from any step which would seem to make him lean on a party for support
in his administration. He had made up his cabinet with what he very
justly considered the strongest material. He believed that a breaking
up of the cabinet or a change in its membership would be an injury to
the cause of good government, and he was so entirely single-minded
in his own views and wishes, that, with all his knowledge of human
nature, he found it difficult to understand how any one could differ
from him materially.
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