THE FIRST AMERICAN PRESIDENT The inauguration of Washington on April 30, 1789, brought a new type of administration into the world.

The democracy which it initiated was very different from that of antiquity, from the models of Greece and of Rome, and quite different from that of the Italian republics during the Middle Age.

The head of the new State differed essentially from the monarchs across the sea.

Although there were varieties of traditions and customs in what had been the Colonies, still their dominant characteristic was British.

According to the social traditions of Virginia, George Washington was an aristocrat, but in contrast with the British, he was a democrat.
He believed, however, that the President must guard his office from the free-and-easy want of decorum which some of his countrymen regarded as the stamp of democracy.