ournals, or to any other authority? Let the Landholder
turn to his eighth number, addressed to the Honourable Mr. Gerry; let him
blush, unless incapable of that sensation, while he reads the following
passage: "Almost the whole time during the sitting of the Convention, and
until the Constitution had received its present form, no man was more
plausible and conciliating on every subject than Mr. Gerry," &c. Thus
stood Mr. Gerry, till towards the close of the business he introduced a
motion respecting the redemption of paper money. The whole time of the
sitting of the Convention was not almost past. The Constitution had not
received its present form, nor was the business drawing towards a close,
until long after I took my seat in Convention. It is therefore proved by
the Landholder himself that Mr. Gerry did not make this motion at any time
before the ninth day of June. Nay more, in the paper now before me he
acknowledges that in his eighth number he meant (and surely no one ought
to know his meaning better than himself) to fix Mr. Gerry's apostacy to a
period within the last thirteen days. Why then all this misrepresentation
of my absence at Baltimore and New York? Why the attempt to induce a
belief that the Convention had been engaged in business from the
fourteenth of May, and the insinuation that it might have happened in
those periods? And why the charge that in not stating those facts I had
withheld from the public information necessary to its forming a right
judgment of the credit which ought to be given to my evidence. But, Sir, I
am really at a loss which most to admire--the depravity of this writer's
heart, or the weakness of his head. Is it possible he should not perceive
that the moment he fixes the time of Mr. Gerry's motion to the last
thirteen days of the Convention, he proves incontestably the falsehood and
malice of his charges against that gentleman--for he has expressly stated
that this motion and the rejection it received was the cause, and the sole
cause, of his apostacy; that "before, there was nothing in the system, as
it now stands, to which he had any objection, but that afterwards he was
inspired with the utmost rage and intemperate opposition to the whole
system he had formerly praised;" whereas I have shown to the clearest
demonstration, that a considerable time before the last thirteen days, Mr.
Gerry had given the most decided opposition to the system. I have shown
this by recital of facts, whic