"I shall not," he said,
"whilst I have the honor to administer the government, bring a man
into any office of consequence knowingly, whose political tenets are
adverse to the measures which the general government are pursuing; for
this, in my opinion, would be a sort of political suicide. That it
would embarrass its movements is most certain." A terser statement of
the doctrine of party government it would be difficult to find, and
in the conduct of Monroe and the course of the opposition journals
Washington had ample proofs of the soundness of his theory.
If he had needed to be strengthened in his determination, his
opponents furnished the requisite aid. In February, 1796, the House
refused to adjourn on his birthday for half an hour, in order to go
and pay him their respects, as had been the pleasant custom up to that
time. The Democrats of that day were in no confusion of mind as to the
party to which Washington belonged, and they did not hesitate to put
this deliberate slight upon him in order to mark their dislike. This
was not the utterance of a newspaper editor, but the well-considered
act of the representatives of a party in Congress. Party feeling,
indeed, could hardly have gone further; and this single incident is
sufficient to dispel the pleasing delusion that party strife and
bitterness are the product of modern days, and of more advanced forms
of political organization.
Yet despite all these attacks there can be no doubt that Washington's
hold upon the masses of the people was substantially unshaken.
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