Even Washington once was led to remark that "the publica-
tions in Freneau's [The National Gazette] and Bache's [The General
Advertiser] papers were outrages on common decency." They
were, especially the latter. When Washington retired from the
presidency The General Advertiser, in its issue for Monday,
March 6, 1797, incorrectly dated March 5, thus expressed itself
in an editorial comment disguised as correspondence:
" Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation," was the pious ejaculation of a man who be- held a flood of happiness rushing in upon mankind If ever there was a time that would license the reiteration of the exclamation that time is now arrived; for the man who is the source of all the misfor- tunes of our country, is this day reduced to a level with his fellow-citi- zens, and is no longer possessed of power to multiply evils upon the United States If ever there was a period for rejoicing this is the moment every heart in unison with the freedom and happiness of the people ought to beat high with exultation, that the name of Wash- ington from this day ceases to give a currency to political iniquity, and to legalize corruption a new era is now opening up upon us, an era which promises much to the people; for public measures must now stand upon their own merits, and nefarious projects can no longer be supported by a name: when a retrospect is taken of the Washingtonian administration for eight years, it is a subject of the greatest astonish- ment that a single individual should have cankered the principles of republicanism in an enlightened people, just emerged from the gulf of despotism, and should have carried his designs against the public liberty so far as to have put in jeopardy its very existence Such, however, are the facts, and with these staring us in the face, this day ought to be a Jubilee in the United States.
Yet this comment was mild compared with the coarser utter- ances of previous issues which ought not to be reprinted because of their vulgarity. Federalists were accustomed to speak of The General Advertiser as being "misconducted" first by "Bennie Bache" and later by "Willie Duane."
PRESS DIVIDED OVER BRITISH TREATY
Much of this newspaper hostility toward Washington, it may be remarked incidentally, grew out of the British Treaty of
