Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1912-03-08
Washington in Politics.
CHARLES l. BUTTON.

The name Washington suggests the
vision of a tall dignified gentleman in
black silk, buckled slippers, knee
breeches and powdered queue the
best dressed, the most awe-inspiring,
the grandest of the men who have made
American history.
To associate Washington with poll.
tics seems sacrilege, for the word pol.
itics has one tainted meaning while
Washington was both without faint and
wholly above politics. While the Con-
stitutional Convention, over which he
presided, gave us in the American Con-
sttution what Lowell has described as
perhaps the most remarkable monu-
ment of political wisdom known to his
tory" whose outworkings required
politics, Washington left his loved and
well earned repose at Mount Vernon to
attend the convention and later to be-
come our first president against his
will in compliance with the united call
of his countrymen. Meanwhile it had
been demonstrated that the thirteen
Independent state governments result
ant from the Revolution were going
from bad to worse. The salvation of
his country demanded that real nation
al government be established and he
yielded to the call. Parties had not
been born. He alone of our presidents
knew no partisan affiliations.
During his administration Thomas
Jefferson, his secretary of state, found
ed the Democratic party and Alexander
Hamilton, his secretary of the treasury,
founded the Federaist party whose
tenets are inherited by the present Re-
publican party.
Washington felt keenly that his was
the pioneer work of creating precedents
for the benefit of less talented sue
cessors of avoiding the pitfalls of the
experiment of this new country with a
new kind of government. Realizing
that his office combined in one person
the duties of both king and prime min
lister, he saw that these were too large
and too frought with danger to allow
one man to hold the office for life.
Such high office should be relinquished
to younger man before dotage. He
felt his own years, being 65, and de-
clined third election that he might see
another safely and peacefully installed
before he died. The significance of
this is not that he refused a third term
but that he refused to let the office
become life one. That he continued
ready to respond to his country's call is
shown by his again leaving his beloved
quetude the following year in order to
take command of the American army
against France.
His most precious legacy was the
farewell warning, lest we enter into any
entangling alliances with foreign ma
tions, "a warning resulting in policy
that has rendered America the trusted
friend of every nation.
Wendall Phillips, with the extrava-
gance of the orator, declared that Tous-
saint l. Ouverture was greater man
than Washington, "for Washington
held slaves" But Phillips failed to
state how fortunate were those slaves.
Washington. like most of the Virginia
statesmen of his day, was opposed to
slavery. He regarded his slaves as a
trust, treated them as a father, and
emancipated them by his will.
The lofty commanding figure of
Washington fired the youthful enthusi-
asm of Lafayette, and behold bloody
revolution and republic in France!
More than century later, it inspired
Mr.. Sun Vat Sen and his young COM
patriots, and behold Republic in China!
And if our Republic continues to be
the most prosperous and best governed
country of the world, we may hope that
all other nations may become Republi-
can.