It was a long letter of business, in which was inserted
a single paragraph only of political information as to the state of our
country. In this information there was not one word which would not
then have been, or would not now be approved by every republican in
the United States, looking back to those times, as you will see by a
faithful copy now enclosed of the whole of what that letter said on
the subject of the United States, or of its government. This paragraph,
extracted and translated, got into a Paris paper at a time when the
persons in power there were laboring under very general disfavor, and
their friends were eager to catch even at straws to buoy them up. 'To
them, therefore, I have always imputed the interpolation of an entire
paragraph additional to mine, which makes me charge my own country with
ingratitude and injustice to France. There was not a word in my letter
respecting France, or any of the proceedings or relations between this
country and that. Yet this interpolated paragraph has been the burden of
federal calumny, has been constantly quoted by them, made the subject
of unceasing and virulent abuse, and is still quoted, as you see, by Mr.
Pickering, (page 33,) as if it were genuine, and really written by me.
And even Judge Marshall makes history descend from its dignity, and the
ermine from its sanctity, to exaggerate, to record, and to sanction this
forgery.
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