WHAT WASHINGTON THOUGHT OF A THIRD TERM. By Robert S. Rantoul. A paper read before the Essex Institute at Academy Hall, Salem, April 24, 1899, and before the Massachusetts Society of Sons of the Revolution, at Boston, November 27, 1900. What Washington thoughtof a third consecutive term in the Presidency has little interest just now, save as a receding if not already remote historical problem. Washington has been dead a hundred years. The political status changes. There are, as the century closes, but two men who have been twice elected to the Presidency and one of them was not elected to successive terms. But there have been times during the century when it was far from being a mere moot question ; when it figured as an active factor in the making up of public opinion. Such times may come again. At these times it has been uniformly assumed, without much examination, by the political press of the country, and by partisans anxious to defeat some third- term aspirant, that the judgment of Washington was made up on principle against a third term. Nothing could be more groundless than such an assumption. The arguments HI8T. COLL. VOL. XXXVII 21 (321)
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