isturbed, to enjoy his well-earned fame; a
circumstance in my character you expected to derive considerable benefit
from in the controversy between us. For this point being once gained, every
suggestion, every article of charge against you, which has its foundation
and support in me, would naturally be referred to those fierce and
malignant passions you have so unsparingly bestowed on me, and no longer
rest upon the general credit and reputation I trust I have acquired and
maintained. But as I cannot, without injustice to myself, make this
concession to you, I must declare my general tenor of conduct to have been
far otherwise,--that in my private life I have been at peace and harmony
with all mankind; and in my public, at enmity only with such public men as
have disgraced their country by their vices or injured it by their crimes.

Wherein until the present, except in a single instance, have I drawn the
public attention by attacks upon the character of any man? and that
instance, an impostor, like yourself, who had got into a seat of honor. In
this, it was virtue to become his accuser.

If you rely upon _your_ instance, as affording a proof of my eagerness for
controversy, it will not answer your purpose. I have not brought you to the
public bar; for, whatever was the amount of your offences, I neither urged
nor wished a public inquiry; another has brought you there, and I appear
only as a witness against you, challenged and defied by yourself.

This being premised, I shall enter upon my subject, and reply to such parts
of your pamphlet as respect me, and therefore specially concern me to
notice.

Your remarks, you say, are with propriety addressed to me; because though
not the actual author, it is to me you are really indebted for the
insidious attempt on your reputation.

That the public may have the most authentic proofs of the manner in which I
have been involved in this controversy, I think it necessary here to insert
the original letters that passed in the course of our correspondence, last
fall, on this subject.

SIR,--I have, for a long time, treated the anonymous abuse
which disgraces our public papers with the contempt it
deserves. But in Oswald's paper, of last Saturday, are a set
of queries, signed Brutus, in which the author, not daring to
make an open assertion, has insinuated, that in 1776 I
meditated a desertion to the enemy. Though my soul rises with
indignation at the