For those opposed to Washington’s administration, the tone was entirely too high. The president’s bows were aloof and stiff. The guests were sycophantic, exhibiting the “cringing servility” of courtiers. All of it reeked of royalty. After attending a levee in December 1790, Senator William Maclay of Pennsylvania confessed to his diary the hope that Washington might just die. “If there is treason in the wish, I retract it,” he wrote. But if the president “were in Heaven,” he continued, “we would not then have him brought forward as the constant cover to every unconstitutional and irrepublican act.”