J52 



was so, and avows that ii ixas not $o ? If the name of Goil, under 

 Mr. Russell's pen, could not deter liim from converlinu; the past 

 into the future, that he might enjoy the honours of prophecy, and 

 couple with his trust in the Deity, his confidence in tltc valour of 

 the West, what excuse could 1 have for considering the declaration 

 of Mr. Russell as either more or less sincere for being backed by 

 his protest ? 



" To add a perfume to the violet 



*' Is wasteful and ridiculous excess." 



But if Mr. Russell, after delivering on the 22d of April his du- 

 plicate at the Department of State, and especially after he knew 

 that the orignal had been found, was no longer solicitous that either 

 of them should be communicated to the House, he had neither 

 given up the inclination, nor the intention of appearing before the 

 public, as the accuser of his colleagues of the majority at Ghent. 



He left the City of Washington on the 5th of May, the day after 

 the House of Representatives had received the President's answer 

 to the call of the 19th of April— with that answer the President 

 communicated to the House my report to him, which had been 

 accompanied by a copy of the duplicate left by Mr. Russell at the 

 Department for communication. But the President did not com- 

 municate the copy of the duplicate itself. He informed the Housei 

 that the original had also been found — that it had been marked as 

 B. private letter, by the writer himself — that it disclosed differences 

 of opinion which would naturally call for answers from those im- 

 plicated by it ; and that I, as one of them, had already requested 

 that it might be communicated, together with my remarks upon it. 

 Under those circumstances the President declined communicating 

 the letter called for, unless the House, upon a knowledge of them, 

 should desire it — in which case he informed them that it would be 

 communicated, together with my report upon it. 



All this was known to Mr. Russell when he left the city ; and it 

 is presumed that he also knew that the call for the letter would not 

 be renewed by the mover of the resolution of the 19th of April • 

 yet Mr. Russell went to Philadelphia, and there caused to be print- 

 ed in the National Gazette of the 10th of May. anotlier variety of 

 his letter of Uth February, 1815, from Paris, to Mr. Monroe — 

 still diflering from the original — differing also from the duplicate, 

 which he had delivered at the Department, but satisflictorily prov- 

 ing with what ingenuity he had told me that the two last leaves of 

 his original draft had not been found at Mendon, and that he had 

 been obliged to supply their contents in the duplicate from memo- 

 ry — the triplicate of the National Gazette was accompanied by an 

 editorial article, vouching for its authenticity as a copy — vouching 

 from good authority that Mr. Ptussell bad had no share in the call 

 (of the House of the 19th of April) for the private letter — and 

 commenting in a style, the apologetical character of which indicates 

 its origin, upon the privacy, which it urged was not secrecy, of the 

 letter ; upon the professions of Mr. Russell's respect for his col- 



