He dealt with things with the same prudence and tact as with men; careful of his personal position, starting no premature or superfluous question; free from the restless desire to regulate every thing and control every thing; leaving the grand bodies of the State, the local governments, and the officers of his administration, to act in their appropriate spheres, and never, except in a case of clear and practical necessity, pledging his own opinion or responsibility. And this policy, so impartial, so cautions, so careful to embarrass neither affairs nor itself, was by no means the policy of an inactive, uncertain, ill-compounded administration, seeking and receiving its opinions and direction from all quarters. On the contrary, there never was a government more determined, more active, more decided in its views, and more effective in its decisions.
It had been formed against anarchy and to strengthen the federal union, the central power. It was entirely faithful to its office. At its very commencement, in the first session of the first Congress, numerous great questions arose; it was necessary to put the Constitution in vigorous action. { 118} The relations of the two branches of the Legislature with the President; the mode of communication between the President and the Senate in regard to treaties and the nomination to high offices; the organization of the judiciary; the creation of ministerial departments; all these points were discussed and regulated. A work of vast labor, in which the Constitution was, to some extent, given over a second time to the strife of parties. Without ostentation, without intrigue, without any attempt at encroachment, but provident and firm in the cause of the power which was intrusted to him, Washington, by his personal influence, by an adherence openly given to sound principles, had a powerful influence in causing the work to be carried on in the same spirit which presided over its beginning, and to result in the dignified and firm organization of the government.
His practice corresponded with his principles. Once fairly engaged with public business and parties, this man who, in the formation of his cabinet, showed himself so tolerant, enjoined and observed, in his administration, a strict unity of views and conduct. { 119} "I shall not, whilst I have the honor to administer the government, bring a man into any office of consequence knowingly, whose political tenets are adverse to the measures which the general government are pursuing; for this, in my opinion, would be a sort of political suicide." [Footnote 67]