1081. CALUMNY, Silence under.—
Though I see the pen of the Secretary of the Treasury [Alexander Hamilton] plainly in the
attack on me, yet, since he has not chosen to
put his name to it, I am not free to notice it
as his. I have preserved through life a resolution,
set in a very early part of it, never to
write in a public paper without subscribing my
name, and to engage openly an adversary who
does not let himself be seen, is staking all
against nothing. The indecency, too, of newspaper
squabbling between two public ministers,
besides my own sense of it, has drawn
something like an injunction from another
quarter [President Washington]. Every
fact alleged under the signature of “An
American” as to myself, is false, and can be
proved so * * *. But for the present, lying
and scribbling must be free to those mean
enough to deal in them, and in the dark.—
To Edmund Randolph. Washington ed. iii, 470.
Ford ed., vi, 112.
(M.
1792)
