4650. LIBELS, Jefferson and.—[further continued].
Our very long intimacy
as fellow laborers in the same cause, the
recent expressions of mutual confidence
which had preceded your mission [to France],
the interesting course which that had taken,
and particularly and personally as it regarded
yourself, made me anxious to hear from you
* * *. I was the more so, too, as I had myself,
during the whole of your absence, as well
as since your return, been a constant butt for
every shaft of calumny which malice and
falsehood could form, and the presses, public
speakers, or private letters disseminate. One
of these, too, was of a nature to touch yourself;
as if, wanting confidence in your efforts,
I had been capable of usurping powers committed
to you, and authorizing negotiations
private and collateral to yours. The real
truth is, that though Doctor Logan, the pretended
missionary, about four or five days before
he sailed for Hamburg, told me he was
going there, and thence to Paris, and asked
and received from me a certificate of his
citizenship, character, and circumstances of
life, merely as a protection, should he be molested
on his journey, in the present turbulent
and suspicious state of Europe, yet I
had been led to consider his object as relative
to his private affairs; and though, from an intimacy
of some standing, he knew well enough
my wishes for peace and my political sentiments
in general, he nevertheless received
then no particular declaration of them, no
authority to communicate them to any mortal,
nor to speak to any one in my name, or in
anybody's name, on that, or on any other
subject whatever; nor did I write by him a
scrip of a pen to any person whatever. This
he has himself honestly and publicly declared
since his return; and from his well-known
character and every other circumstance, every
candid man must perceive that his enterprise
was dictated by his own enthusiasm, without
consultation or communication with any one;
that he acted in Paris on his own ground,
and made his own way. Yet to give some
color to his proceedings, which might implicate
the republicans in general. and myself
particularly, they have not been ashamed to
bring forward a supposititious paper, drawn by
one of their own party in the name of Logan,
and falsely pretended to have been presented
by him to the government of France; counting
that the bare mention of my name
therein, would connect that in the eye of the
public with this transaction.—
To Elbridge Gerry. Washington ed. iv, 266.
Ford ed., vii, 325.
(Pa.,
Jan. 1799)
