[To Mrs. John Adams.]
Dear Madam,—Your favor of the 1st inst. was duly received, and I would not have again
intruded on you, but to rectify certain facts which seem not to have been presented to you under
their true aspects. [529]
My charities to Callender are considered as rewards for his calumnies. As
early, I think, as 1796, I was told in Philadelphia that Callender, the author of the “Political
Progress of Britain”, was in that city, a fugitive from persecution for having written that book,
and in distress. I had read and approved the book; I considered him as a man of genius, unjustly
persecuted. I knew nothing of his private character, and immediately expressed my readiness
to contribute to his relief, and to serve him. It was a considerable time after, that, on application
from a person who thought of him as I did, I contributed to his relief, and afterwards
repeated the contribution. Himself I did not see till long after, nor ever more than two or
three times. When he first began to write, he told some useful truths in his coarse way;
but nobody sooner disapproved of his writing than I did, or wished more that he would be
silent. My charities to him were no more meant as encouragements to his scurrilities, than
those I give to the beggar at my door are meant as rewards for the vices of his life, and to
make them chargeable to myself. In truth, they would have been greater to him, had he never
written a word after the work for which he fled from Britain. * * *
But another fact is, that “I liberated a wretch who was suffering for a libel against Mr.
Adams”. I do not know who was the particular wretch alluded to; but I discharged every
person under punishment or prosecution under the Sedition law, because I considered, and now
consider, that law to be a nullity, as absolute and as palpable as if Congress had ordered us to
fall down and worship a golden image; and that it was as much my duty to arrest its execution
in every stage, as it would have been to have rescued from the fiery furnace those who
should have been cast into it for refusing to worship the image. It was accordingly done in
every instance, without asking what the offenders had done, or against whom they had offended,
but whether the pains they were suffering were inflicted under the pretended Sedition law.
It was certainly possible that my motives for contributing to the relief of Callender, and
liberating sufferers under the Sedition law, might have been to protect, encourage, and reward
slander; but they may also have been those which inspire ordinary charities to objects
of distress, meritorious or not, or the obligation of an oath to protect the Constitution, violated
by an unauthorized act of Congress. Which of these were my motives, must be decided by a [530]
regard to the general tenor of my life. On this I am not afraid to appeal to the nation at large,
to posterity, and still less to that Being who sees Himself our motives, who will judge us from
His own knowledge of them, and not on the testimony of
“Porcupine” or Fenno.
You observe, there has been one other act of my administration personally unkind, and
suppose it will readily suggest itself to me. I declare on my honor, Madam, I have not the
least conception what act is alluded to. I never did a single one with an unkind intention.
* * *—
To Mrs. John Adams. iv, 555.
Ford ed., viii, 308.
(July 1804.)
