330 WHAT WASHINGTON THOUGHT OF A THIRD TERM. in the Presidential office possessed any hold on his convictions at this time, it was the first of reasons which would have been brought forward now, because it was in its nature final. With a point of political honor in his mind which, if soundly conceived, was conclusive, Washington would not have been casting about amongst grounds of personal inclination and of domestic convenience to justify a step he felt to be of international and historic import. Jefferson reports that his " disinclination to a second term was becoming more and more fixed.” To Madison he pleads age, failing powers, want of aptitude for legal and constitutional questions, fatigues and discomforts, making the situation at times scarcely bearable. He found himself " unable to dispose his mind to a continuance,” so much so that his inclination prompted him, he said, to go home to his farm, take his spade in hand and work for his bread, rather than remain in office. In one instance, so great was his irritation, he allowed himself to write that, while he was willing to be the servant of the public, he was notwilling to be its slave. To Edmund Randolph and Henry Lee and David Humphries there are letters to the same effect a little later, but nowhere is there a hint that an objection could be urged on principle to a plurality of terms. And we may well remember here that Jefferson and Madison were both disciples of a political creed which might well have prompted them to conceive and urge upon him such an objection. If we suppose them, or either of them, to have been jealous at heart of the peerless supremacy attained by Washington, and impatient for his sun to set, the slightest intimation from the President of a doubt in his own mind as to the propriety of a second term would certainly have been eagerly taken up by them and made the most of. I must assume that Washington, at the close of his first term, was thoroughly weary*of office, finding the business of it irksome, the personal disparagement incident to it most offensive,—" tranquillity and retirement an irresistible passion.” With the sensitiveness of a soldier, he felt stung by unjust criticisms to which the dignity of his position forbade him to reply. Only the
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