pecting his
conduct, why is it that we do not see Mr. McHenry's verification of your
assertion, who was of the Committee for considering a proposition for the
debts of the union? Your reply to my second charge against this gentleman
may be soon dismissed. Compare his letter to the Legislature of his State
with your defence, and you will find that you have put into his mouth
objections different from anything it contains, so that if your
representation be true, his must be false. But there is another
circumstance which militates against your new friend. Though he was face
to face with his colleagues at the State Convention of Massachusetts,(48)
he has not ventured to call upon them to clear him either of this charge,
or that respecting the Continental money. But as the Public seemed to
require that something should be said on this occasion, an anonymous
writer denies that he made such a motion, and endeavours to abate the
force of my second allegation, merely by supposing that "his colleagues
were men of too much honor to assert that his reasons in Convention were
totally different from those which he has published."

But alas, his colleagues would not acquit him in this way, and he was of
too proud a spirit to ask them to do it in person.(49) Hence the charge
remains on its original grounds, while you, for want of proper concert,
have joined his accusers and reduced him to the humiliating necessity of
endeavouring to stifle your justification. These points being dismissed,
it remains only to reconcile the contradictory parts you have acted on the
great political stage. You entered the convention without a sufficient
knowledge in the science of government, where you committed a succession
of memorable blunders, as the work advanced. Some rays of light penetrated
your understanding, and enabled you (as has been shown) to assist in
raising some of its pillars, when the desire of having your name enrolled
with the other laborers drew from you that remarkable complaint so
expressive of vanity and conviction. But self-interest soon gained the
ascendant, you quickly comprehended the delicacy of your situation, and
this restored your first impressions in all their original force. You
thought the Deputy Attorney General of the United States for the state of
Maryland, destined for a different character, and that inspired you with
the hope that you might derive from a desperate opposition what you saw no
prospect of gaining by a co