In taking no notice of the calumnies, therefore, Washington prevented the President of the United States from being drawn into an unseemly duel.

We cannot fail to recognize also that Washington was very sensitive to the maintenance of freedom of speech.

He seems to have acted on the belief that it was better that occasionally license should degenerate into abuse than that liberty should be suppressed.

He was the President of the first government in the world which did not control the utterances of its people.

Perhaps he may have supposed that their patriotism would restrain them from excesses, and there can be no doubt that the insane gibes of the Freneaus and the Baches gave him much pain because they proved that those scorpions were not up to the level which the new Nation offered them.
As the time for the conclusion of Washington's second term drew near, he left no doubt as to his intentions.