This is my belief of it; it is that
on which I have acted; and had it been a mere contest who should
be permitted to administer the government according to its genuine
republican principles, there has never been a moment of my life, in
which I should not have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family,
my farm, my friends, and books.
You expected to discover the difference of our party principles in
General Washington's Valedictory, and my Inaugural Address. Not at all.
General Washington did not harbor one principle of federalism. He was
neither an Angloman, a monarchist, nor a separatist. He sincerely wished
the people to have as much self-government as they were competent to
exercise themselves. The only point in which he and I ever differed
in opinion, was, that I had more confidence than he had in the natural
integrity and discretion of the people, and in the safety and extent to
which they might trust themselves with a control over their government.
He has asseverated to me a thousand times his determination that the
existing government should have a fair trial, and that in support of
it he would spend the last drop of his blood. He did this the more
repeatedly, because he knew General Hamilton's political bias, and
my apprehensions from it. It is a mere calumny, therefore, in the
monarchists, to associate General Washington with their principles.
But that may have happened in this case which has been often seen in
ordinary cases, that, by often repeating an untruth, men come to
believe it themselves.
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