5490. MONROE (James), Presidential contest.—[continued].
I cannot, indeed, judge
what falsehoods may have been written or
told you; and that, under such forms as to command
belief. But you will soon find that so
inveterate is the rancor of party spirit among
us, that nothing ought to be credited but what
we hear with our own ears. If you are less
on your guard than we are here, at this moment,
the designs of the mischief-makers will not fail
to be accomplished, and brethren and friends
will be made strangers and enemies to each
other, without ever having said or thought a
thing amiss of each other. I presume that the
most insidious falsehoods are daily carried to
you, as they are brought to me, to engage us
in the passions of our informers, and stated so
positively and plausibly as to make even doubt
a rudeness to the narrator; who, imposed on
himself, has no other than the friendly view of
putting us on our guard. My answer is, invariably,
that my knowledge of your character
is better testimony to me of a negative, than
an affirmative which my informant did not
hear from yourself, with his own ears. In fact,
when you shall have been a little longer among
us, [343]
you will find that little is to be believed
which interests the prevailing passions, and happens
beyond the limits of our own senses. Let
us not, then, my dear friend, embark our happiness
and our affections on the ocean of slander,
of falsehood and of malice, on which our credulous
friends are floating. If you have been
made to believe that I ever did, said, or thought
a thing unfriendly to your fame and feelings,
you do me injury as causeless as it is afflicting
to me.—
To James Monroe. Washington ed. v, 255.
Ford ed., ix, 180.
(W.
March. 1808)
