The address which President Washington delivered before both houses of Congress, November 19, 1794, wherein he traced a causal connection between the Democratic Societies and the Whiskey Rebellion, characterizing the former as “self-created societies” which had “assumed a tone of condemnation” of measures adopted by the government, being actuated by “a belief that, by a more formal concert” they would be able to defeat those measures,[238] proved to be a mortal blow to these secret organizations, and in New England, as elsewhere throughout the country, had consequences beyond the disappearance of the Clubs. Eagerly and with unconcealed joy, Federalist editors and orators seized upon the President’s denunciation and turned it to immediate political account.[239] A flood of condemnation and answering vituperation was instantly released. The champions of Federalism were at pains to secure publication of the discussions which took place in the national congress respecting the precise character of the response to be made to the President’s address, with special reference to his condemnation of the Democratic Clubs.[240] They were at equal pains, also, to lay hold of the President’s pregnant phrase, “self-created societies,” and turn it to account: that phrase should be regarded as a designation equally applicable to the odious Jacobin Clubs of France.[241] Henceforth the whole democratic faction might reasonably be expected to work under cover “to unhinge the whole order of government, and introduce confusion, so that union, the constitution, the laws, public order and private right would be all the sport of violence or chance.”[242] Mortified and discomfited Republican editors made such response as they could. The members of the Clubs were declared to be independent citizens who were acting within their rights in so banding together. They were “proceeding in the paths of patriotic virtue with a composure and dignity which become men engaged in such important and timely services”;[243] whereas their opponents were men who hungered for the loaves and fishes of the government and who shared the secret fear that they would be discovered or have their plans deranged.[244] The continual harping of the Federalist press on the phrase “self-created societies” particularly touched the raw. Was not the Society of the Cincinnati self-created? And are not many of the members of that organization war-worn soldiers of the American Republic? In a state of society in which we see such veterans toiling for their daily sustenance, while other men, enjoying the hard-earned property of the former, riot in all the luxuries of life, how can one but exclaim, _O Tempora! O Mores!_[245] The national congress, moreover, might well be expected to be engaged in much more serious and timely business than to be burdening its sessions with discussions respecting the affairs of private societies.[246]