Retaining his purpose, he resigned his office on the last day of December.
[Sidenote: He resigns.] This gentleman withdrew from political station at a moment when he stood particularly high in the esteem of his countrymen.

His determined opposition to the financial schemes which had been proposed by the secretary of the treasury, and approved by the legislative and executive departments of the government; his ardent and undisguised attachment to the revolutionary party in France; the dispositions which he was declared to possess in regard to Great Britain; and the popularity of his opinions respecting the constitution of the United States; had devoted to him that immense party whose sentiments were supposed to comport with his, on most, or all of these interesting subjects.

To the opposite party he had, of course, become particularly unacceptable.

But the publication of his correspondence with Mr.Genet dissipated much of the prejudice which had been excited against him.
He had, in that correspondence, maintained with great ability the opinions embraced by the federalists on those points of difference which had arisen between the two republics; and which, having become universally the subjects of discussion, had in some measure displaced those topics on which parties were previously divided.

The partiality for France that was conspicuous through the whole of it, detracted nothing from its merit in the opinion of the friends of the administration, because, however decided their determination to support their own government in a controversy with any nation whatever, they felt all the partialities for that republic which the correspondence expressed.