In this quartette of scoundrels may be added the notorious Thomas Paine, who, after exalting Washington to the seventh heaven of excellence, upon being refused by him an office that to confer upon him would have disgraced the nation, showered upon him the vilest denunciation. "As for you, sir," he wrote, addressing him, "treacherous in private friendship, and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any." That these attacks upon members of the government were the direct results of the teachings of Jefferson there is no room for doubt. That he encouraged and supported their authors has been proved beyond a doubt. He was one of the worst detractors of Great Britain. For fifty years he employed his pen in reviling the mother country. Then occurred one of the most remarkable instances of political death-bed repentance that the annals of statecraft have to show. He who had so often asserted that Great Britain was a nation powerless, decrepit, lost to corruption, eternally hostile to liberty, totally destitute of morality and good faith, and warned his countrymen to avoid intercourse with her lest they become contaminated by the touch; he who had yearned for her conquest by a military despot, and proposed to burn the habitations of her citizens, like the nests of noxious vermin, is suddenly found proclaiming "her mighty weight," lauding her as the protector of free government, and exhorting his fellow citizens to "sedulously cherish a cordial friendship with her." This change of heart was brought about by the announcement by Great Britain of the so-called "Monroe Doctrine." In Jefferson's letter to Monroe of October 24, 1823, he said: "The question presented by the letters you have sent me (the letters of Mr. Rush, reciting Mr. Canning's offer of British support against the attempt of the "Holy Alliance" to forcibly restore the revolted Spanish-American colonies to Spain), is the most momentous that has ever been offered to my contemplation since that of Independence. And never could we embark under circumstances more auspicious. By acceding to Great Britain's proposition we detach her from the bonds, bring her mighty weight into the scale of free government, and emancipate a continent at one stroke. With her on our side we need not fear the whole world. With her then we should most sedulously cherish a cordial friendship."