It would be considered almost sacrilege were we to republish here the many attacks that were made upon George Washington, when President of the United States, on account of the odor of aristocracy with which he had become so strongly impregnated before the Revolution, and which clung to him like the scent of the roses to the shattered vase. While there can be no doubt, of course, in the minds of us all, that Washington was pre-eminently a patriot, with a firm and steadfast faith in the doctrine of the rights of the people; still, he belonged to a section, to a State, that had been settled by Cavaliers who believed that they were somewhat better by birth than the Pilgrims of New England. And, having been born and educated in that atmosphere, it is small wonder that his character should have been somewhat attainted by his surroundings. Upon Washington’s elevation to the Presidential chair he surrounded the executive mansion with more of the air of ceremony and evidences of “caste” than were pleasant to the mass of the people. He was attacked, during his first and second terms, by pamphleteers, who, in most scurrilous articles, wrote of him as one designing to perpetuate aristocracy and “caste” in our country. The debt of gratitude which the new Republic and the people thereof owed Washington was too great for any effect to be produced similar to the revolution in 1892. However, an impression was made; reluctantly, John Adams, Washington’s Vice-President, was elected as second President of the Union. This reluctance became apparent by his failure to be re-elected four years later. A Minister from the United States to England always seems to become a suspicious object in the minds of the people of America. No man ever added to his popularity by being sent as Minister to the Court of St. James. John Adams, who was our first Minister, was but the beginning of a long list of unfortunates. In fact, the American people will heartily endorse the opinion of that great statesman, James G. Blaine, which is being so vigorously advocated by the New York _Herald_, that foreign Ministers are expensive and useless appendages of this Republic. The election of John Adams was occasioned more by the reflected glory of Washington and the gratitude of the people, which, like the rays of the declining sun, became diminished as it sunk behind the horizon of time. In Thomas Jefferson, the people, even thus early in the history of our nation, saw _their_ friend. His simplicity of life, purity of character, and honesty of purpose, surrounded his name with the same halo, in the sight of the people, as that with which the names of Jackson, Lincoln and Cleveland have since been made luminous. Though Jefferson was called a Republican, still, to the people, he was a Democrat in the sense that democracy means equality.