But did these measures obtain the force of laws by the mere act of the senate and house of representatives? Did not the President assent to them? If he did, how could the expression "two out of three branches of the legislature" be an obvious exception of him? But the letter speaks of the then existing legislature. "Against us _are_ two out of three branches of the legislature." The fact is notorious that the house of representatives was, at the date of the letter, opposed to the administration. Mr. Jefferson himself gives us this information. In September, 1795,[77] he terms the effort to carry the treaty with Great Britain into effect, "an attempt of a party who find _they have lost their majority in one branch of the legislature_ to make a law by the aid of the other branch and the executive under colour of a treaty," &c. Mr. Jefferson then has deprived himself of this explanation. He could not have intended to exclude the President by the phrase "two out of three branches of the legislature." [Footnote 77: Vol. iii. p. 316.] The same letter contains also the following expression,[78] "Mr. Pickering quotes the passage in the letter of the men who were Samsons in the field and Solomons in the council, but who had their heads shorn by the harlot England." "Now this expression also was perfectly understood by General Washington. He knew that I meant it for the Cincinnati generally; and that from what had passed between us at the commencement of that institution, I could not mean to include him." [Footnote 78: Vol. iv. p. 404.] In the letter to Mazzei these words obviously designate distinguished individuals, not whole classes of men, many of whom were unknown. "It would give you a fever were _I to name to you the apostates_ who have gone over to these heresies; men who were Samsons in the field and Solomons in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the harlot England." In addition to this apparent allusion to individuals, it may be asked, could Mr. Jefferson mean to say that every officer engaged in the war of our revolution (for almost every one of them was a member of the Cincinnati) was an apostate who had gone over to the heresies he was describing? Could he mean to say that all those who had passed their prime of manhood in the field fighting the battles of American independence, and of republicanism against England, had become apostates from the cause to which their lives had been devoted, and the vile instruments of the power it was their pride and boast to have overthrown? That they were in a body following their ancient chief in a course directly opposite to that glorious career by which they had elevated their country to its high rank among the nations of the earth?