406.] But were it otherwise, had Mr.Jefferson been as successful in the opinion of others as he would seem to be in his own, in proving that the phrases on which he reasons do not comprehend General Washington, what would be gained?
Would it follow that the word "executive" did not mean the President, or that it excluded General Washington who was President when the letter was written, and had been President during the whole time while the laws were enacted, and the measures carried into execution, which he so harshly criminates?
If the word "executive" must mean him, does it palliate the injury to be assured that the writer did not class him among "Samsons in the field" or "Solomons in council ?" It is matter of some surprise to find a letter written so late as June, 1824, on the political paragraph contained in the letter to Mazzei, the following averment.[81] "In this information there was not one word which would not then have been or would not now be approved by every republican in the United States, looking back to those times." [Footnote 81: Vol.iv.p.

402.] In June, 1834, then, twenty-eight years after this extraordinary letter was written, and twenty-three years after its principal object had ceased to thwart the policy, or be an obstacle to the ambition of any man, Mr.Jefferson could deliberately, and on full consideration permit himself to make this assertion, and thus in effect to repeat the charge that General Washington belonged to an "Anglican, monarchical, and aristocratical party whose _avowed_ object was to draw over us the substance as they had already done the forms of the British government,"-- and this too while the venerated object of the charge was the chief magistrate of this great republic, acting under the obligation of a solemn oath "faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States, and to the best of his ability to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution!" This unpleasant subject is dismissed.

If the grave be a sanctuary entitled to respect, many of the intelligent and estimable friends of Mr.Jefferson may perhaps regret that he neither respected it himself, nor recollected that it is a sanctuary from which poisoned arrows ought never to be shot at the dead or the living.
END OF VOLUME V..