7911. SLANDER, Answer to.—[continued].
I ascribe these hard expressions
to the ardor of his zeal for the public
good, and as they contain neither argument nor
proof, I pass them over without observation.
Indeed, I have not been in the habit of noticing
these morbid ejections of spleen either with or
without the names of those venting them. But
I have thought it a duty on the present occasion
to relieve my fellow citizens and my country
from the degradation in the eyes of the world
to which this informer is endeavoring to reduce
it by representing it as governed hitherto by a
succession of swindlers and speculators. Nor
shall I notice any further endeavors to prove
or to palliate this palpable misinformation. I
am too old and inert to undertake minute investigations
of intricate transactions of the
last century; and I am not afraid to trust to the
justice and good sense of my fellow-citizens
on future as on former attempts to lessen me
in their esteem.—
To Ritchie and Gooch. Washington ed. vii, 242.
Ford ed., x, 211.
(M.
1822)
