Ii5 



Department a duplicate of it, and says I was at liberty to publish it 

 or not, as it might suit my feelings and interests. Mr. Russell is 

 not so ignorant of the duties of a Secretary of State as not to know 

 that, in the usual course of business, the resolution of the House 

 was referred by the President to the Department of State for a 

 report, and that when once his letter had been delivered by himself 

 at the Department, it was my indispensable duty to report a copy 

 of it to the President for communication to the House. Had it di- 

 rectly charged me with treason to my country, as it indirectly did 

 little less, my only and inflexible duty as Secretary of State was, to 

 report it to the President for communication to the House. By the 

 terms of the resolution of the House, the President indeed might 

 have withheld it from the House, if in his judgment the communi- 

 cation would be injurious to the public interest : but of that, the 

 President, and not I, was the judge. Suppose even that the Presi- 

 dent, in forming his judgment, had thought proper to consult my 

 opinion upon it, with what face could 1 advise that it should be 

 withheld ? If the letter was not a tissue of misrepresentations, the 

 Secretary of State, and the Minister of the United States in France, 

 were men unfit to hold any station whatever in the service of their 

 country ; and that was the impression evidently intended to bepro^ 

 duced by the letter, at least throughout the largest and most grow- 

 ing section of the Union. Upon what pretence could / have advis- 

 ed" the President to withhold the communication as injurious to the 

 public interest ? It there was truth in the letter, its contents could 

 not he too soon known to Congress and to the nation. It was fitting 

 that the conspirators against the peaceful and unoflfending inhabit- 

 ants of the Western Country, should be unmasked before the pub- 

 lic, and that the world of the West should be apprized of the whole 

 extent of their obligations to the great confider in their valour and 



in God. 



On receiving the paper, therefore, my only duty was to report a 

 copy of it to the President, for communication to the House, in an- 

 swer to their call. Qn perusal of it, I found that it was marked 

 duplicare. but not private, and that it bore date *' Paris, 11 Febru- 

 ary, 1822." 



My first impression certainly was, that the error of this date was 

 in the time, and not in the place. I supposed it an inadvertency, 

 such as not unfrequently happens in copying papers of date other 

 than the current year, which in the hurry of writing is substituted 

 unconsciously for the date of the original. I did not then perceive 

 that the word copy had been written close at the side of the word 

 duplicate, and scraped out. The erasure had been made with a 

 cautious and delicate hand ; its attenuation of the texture of the pa- 

 per, was not perceptible to an unsuspecting eye ; and in the fresh- 

 ness of the ink when performed, must have appeared to be com- 

 plete. In the progress of blackening, incidental to ink after it has 

 been some days written upon paper, the traces of the word goon 

 became perceptible, and are now apparent upon its face. Both the 



