Part II:

The Real George Washington,

The Real George Washington, p.801

UNITED STATES, And the Fruits of Freedom.—I really believe that there never was so much labor and economy to be found before in the country as at the present moment. If they persist in the habits they are acquiring, the good effects will soon be distinguishable. When the people shall find themselves secure under an energetic government, when foreign nations shall be disposed to give us equal advantages in commerce from dread of retaliation, when the burdens [i.e., debts] of war shall be in a manner done away the sale of western lands, when the seeds of happiness which are sown here shall begin to expand themselves, and when everyone, under his own vine and fig tree, shall begin to taste the fruits of freedom, then all these blessings (for all these blessings will come) will be referred to the fostering influence of the new government....Indeed, I do not believe that Providence has done so much for nothing. It has always been my creed that we should not be left as an awful monument to prove "that mankind, under the most favorable circumstances for civil liberty and happiness, are unequal to the task of governing themselves, and therefore made for a master."—To the Marquis de Lafayette. Fitzpatrick 29:525. (1788.)