moment's credit
to the stuff which was crowded in all sorts of forms into the public
papers, or to the thousand speeches they put into my mouth, not a word
of which I had ever uttered. I was not insensible at the time of
the views to mischief, with which these lies were fabricated. But my
confidence was firm, that neither yourself nor the British government,
equally outraged by them, would believe me capable of making the editors
of newspapers the confidants of my speeches or opinions. The fact
was this. The treaty was communicated to us by Mr. Erskine on the day
Congress was to rise. Two of the Senators inquired of me in the evening,
whether it was my purpose to detain them on account of the treaty. My
answer was, 'that it was not: that the treaty containing no provision
against the impressment of our seamen, and being accompanied by a
kind of protestation of the British ministers, which would leave that
government free to consider it as a treaty or no treaty, according
to their own convenience, I should not give them the trouble of
deliberating on it.' This was substantially, and almost verbally, what
I said whenever spoken to about it, and I never failed when the occasion
would admit of it, to justify yourself and Mr. Pinckney, by expressing
my conviction, that it was all that could be obtained from the British
government; that you had told their commissioners that your government
could not be pledged to ratify, because it was contrary to their
instructions; of course, that it should be considered but as a projet;
and in this light I stated it publicly in my message to Congress on the
opening of the session. Not a single article of the treaty was ever made
known beyond the members of the administration, nor would an article of
it be known at this day, but for its publication in the newspapers,
as communicated by somebody from beyond the water, as we have always
understood. But as to myself, I can solemnly protest, as the most sacred
of truths, that I never, one instant, lost sight of your reputation and
favorable standing with your country, and never omitted to justify your
failure to attain our wish, as one which was probably unattainable.
Reviewing, therefore, this whole subject, I cannot doubt you will become
sensible, that your impressions have been without just ground. I cannot,
indeed, judge what falsehoods may have been written or told you; and
that, under such forms as to command belief. But you will soon find