7385. REPUBLICANS, Loyalty of.—[continued].
He [President Washington]
said he believed the views of the republican
party were perfectly pure, but when
men put a machine into motion, it is impossible
for them to stop it exactly where they
would choose, or to say where it will stop.
That the Constitution we have is an excellent
one, if we can keep it where it is; that it was,
indeed, supposed there was a party disposed
to change it into a monarchical form, but
that he could conscientiously declare there
was not a man in the United States who
would set his face more decidedly against it
than himself. Here, I interrupted him, by
saying: “No rational man in the United
States suspects you of any other disposition;
but there does not pass a week, in which we
cannot prove declarations dropping from the
monarchical party that our government is
good for nothing, is a milk and water thing
which cannot support itself, we must knock
it down, and set up something of more energy.
” He said if that was the case, he
thought it a proof of their insanity, for that
the republican spirit of the Union was so
manifest and so solid, that it was astonishing
how any one could expect to move it.—
The Anas. Washington ed. ix, 166.
Ford ed., i, 257.
(Aug. 1793)
