lit] 



drii^inal, that bis argument to demonstrate the abro3;a(ion of the 

 treaty of 1783, by the war, and the consequent discontinuance of the 

 fishing privilege, would not be ascribed to any hostility to those in- 

 terested in it — the mingled emotions at the bottom of the soul of 

 the writer, betrayed by these self-accusing and self-extolling varia- 

 tions from his letter as it had been originally written, excited ia 

 my mind a sentiment too much cheered with merriment, and too much 

 mitigated by compassion, for anger to have in it any part. But when, 

 in place of a paragraph in the original letter, expressly declaring 

 that he had believed with the majority that the propositions relat- 

 ing to the navigation of the Mississippi and to the hsheries " violated 

 in no zvay our instructions,^^ I found foisted into the duplicate a pa- 

 ragraph, accusing the majority not only of the violation of their 

 instructions, but of a wilful and wanton violation of them, as un- 

 derstood by themselves ; and to support this interpolated charge, a 

 cancelled paragraph of instructions solemnly cited, of which he 

 had, within two months, obtained from the archives of the Depart- 

 ment two successive copies — let me candidly confess that the senti- 

 ment uppermost in my mind was indignation. Mr. Russell com- 

 ments upon the infirmities of my temper, and says, that when 

 afterwards I pointed out to him, face to face, these palterings of 

 his own liand-writing, and gave him proof, from the records of the 

 Department, that the instructions cited by him in support of his 

 charge against his colleagues, had been cancelled at the time to 

 which the charge applied, I was not in a humour to listen to him 

 even with civility. This I deny. I did listen to him with civility. 

 The reason that he assigned to me for the variance between his ori- 

 ginal and his duplicate was, that the whole of the original draft, 

 for which he had sent to Mendon, had not been found, and that he 

 had been obliged to make up the two last leaves from memory. 

 He said, too, that there was no material variation o^' facts, as re- 

 presented in the two papers. He said, as he says in ihc Bo^ston 

 Statesman, that he had ielt himself at liberty to alter the paper to 

 make his case better for the public eye. He said he had never 

 written against me anonymously in the newspapers, and intimated 

 that, in the year 1816, when 1 was in Europe, there had appeared 

 in the Boston Centinel a paragraph, charging him with having 

 been willing, at Ghent, to give up the fisheries — a thing of which I 

 had never before heard. He assured me that, in bringing his letter 

 before the public, his motive had not been to combine with my 

 enemies to ruin my reputation. To all this I did listen with j)er- 

 fect civility and composure ; and the last words with which I parted 

 from him, however painful to him and myself, were not wanting in 

 civility. They are clearly impressed upon my memory, and I 

 trust they are upon his. He is at liberty to publish them if he 

 thinks fit, as they were spoken. I should not have alluded to them 

 here but for his charge of incivility, which is as groundless as all 

 the other charges of which he has been the willing bearer against 

 me. 



