In June, 1788, Washington wrote to Lafayette: "I expect, that many blessings will be attributed to our new government, which are now taking their rise from that industry and frugality into the practice of which the people have been forced from necessity.

I really believe that there never was so much labour and economy to be found before in the country as at the present moment.

If they persist in the habits they are acquiring, the good effects will soon be distinguishable.

When the people shall find themselves secure under an energetic government, when foreign Nations shall be disposed to give us equal advantages in commerce from dread of retaliation, when the burdens of the war shall be in a manner done away by the sale of western lands, when the seeds of happiness which are sown here shall begin to expand themselves, and when every one (under his own vine and fig-tree) shall begin to taste the fruits of freedom--then all these blessings (for all these blessings will come) will be referred to the fostering influence of the new government.

Whereas many causes will have conspired to produce them." A few months later a similar opinion was expressed by Crevecoeur in writing to Jefferson: "Never was so great a change in the opinion of the best people as has happened these five years; almost everybody feels the necessity of coercive laws, government, union, industry, and labor....