The various high and important stations to which he was called by the public voice, were unsought by himself; and, in consenting to fill them, he seems rather to have yielded to a general conviction that the interests of his country would be thereby promoted, than to an avidity for power.
Neither the extraordinary partiality of the American people, the extravagant praises which were bestowed upon him, nor the inveterate opposition and malignant calumnies which he encountered, had any visible influence upon his conduct.

The cause is to be looked for in the texture of his mind.
In him, that innate and unassuming modesty which adulation would have offended, which the voluntary plaudits of millions could not betray into indiscretion, and which never obtruded upon others his claims to superior consideration, was happily blended with a high and correct sense of personal dignity, and with a just consciousness of that respect which is due to station.

Without exertion, he could maintain the happy medium between that arrogance which wounds, and that facility which allows the office to be degraded in the person who fills it.
It is impossible to contemplate the great events which have occurred in the United States under the auspices of Washington, without ascribing them, in some measure, to him.

If we ask the causes of the prosperous issue of a war, against the successful termination of which there were so many probabilities?
of the good which was produced, and the ill which was avoided, during an administration fated to contend with the strongest prejudices, that a combination of circumstances, and of passions, could produce?
of the constant favour of the great mass of his fellow citizens, and of the confidence which, to the last moment of his life, they reposed in him?
the answer, so far as these causes may be found in his character, will furnish a lesson well meriting the attention of those who are candidates for political fame.
Endowed by nature with a sound judgment, and an accurate discriminating mind, he feared not that laborious attention which made him perfectly master of those subjects, in all their relations, on which he was to decide: and this essential quality was guided by an unvarying sense of moral right, which would tolerate the employment, only, of those means that would bear the most rigid examination; by a fairness of intention which neither sought nor required disguise: and by a purity of virtue which was not only untainted, but unsuspected.
NOTES.
NOTE--No.

I._See Page 9._ _The following are copies of these interesting questions, and of the letter which enclosed them._ Philadelphia, 18th April, 1793.
SIR,--The posture of affairs in Europe, particularly between France and Great Britain, place the United States in a delicate situation, and require much consideration of the measures which will be proper for them to observe in the war between those powers.