is affirmed, and its falsehood implied. Now a fact is always true. There
can be no false facts. What is here meant, is, that we pledge a faith
yet unsullied by falsehood, that the statements are true. Not that the
facts are _true_, but that they are facts. It is the passion (if I may
so express it) for conciseness, to speak of facts being true or false.
Now this is a peculiarity of Junius. In Let. 3 he says: "I am sorry to
tell you, Sir William, that in this article your first fact is false."
It is thus Mr. Paine frequently sacrifices both grammar and strict
definition to conciseness; but never to obscure the sense. An example
from the publicly acknowledged pen of Mr. Paine ought to be here
produced; I, therefore, give one from his letter to the Abbe Raynal,
which is as follows: "His _facts_ are coldly and carelessly stated.
They neither inform the reader, nor interest him. Many of them are
_erroneous_, and most of them are defective and obscure." Here
"erroneous facts," "false facts," and "facts for the truth of which we
pledge a faith unsullied by falsehood," are evidence of the same head
and hand. It is thus an author puts some peculiar feature of his soul on
paper unwittingly; and it lies there a fossil, till the critic,
following the lines of nature, gathers it up to classify, arrange, and
combine with others, and then to put on canvas, or in marble bust. It
may be well to remind the reader that the above peculiarity I can
nowhere find in Jefferson's writings.

I now call attention to the sentence: "But when a long train of abuses
and usurpations [begun at a distinguished period, and pursuing
invariably the same object] evinces a design to reduce them under
absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off
such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."

I have placed in brackets what has been interpolated by Jefferson. I
conclude this from the following reasons:

1. It breaks the measure.

2. It destroys the harmony of the period, and the sentence is
complete and harmonious without it.

3. "Begun at a distinguished period," is indefinite.

4. It refers to time, and is mixed up with other subject matter,
and is therefore in the wrong place.

5. It is tautology, for two sentences further on it is all
expressed in its proper place, in referring to the history of the
king.

In all of these particulars it is not like Mr. Paine, for he is never
gui