In the very last note of his book, he says, 'A letter from
Mr. Jefferson to Mr. Mazzei, an Italian, was published in Florence, and
republished in the Moniteur, with very severe strictures on the conduct
of the United States.' And instead of the letter itself, he copies
what he says are the remarks of the editor, which are an exaggerated
commentary on the fabricated paragraph itself, and silently leaves to
his reader to make the ready inference that these were the sentiments of
the letter. Proof is the duty of the affirmative side. A negative cannot
be possibly proved. But, in defect of impossible proof of what was not
in the original letter, I have its press-copy still in my possession. It
has been shown to several, and is open to any one who wishes to see it.
I have presumed only that the interpolation was done in Paris. But I
never saw the letter in either its Italian or French dress, and it may
have been done here, with the commentary handed down to posterity by the
judge. The genuine paragraph, re-translated through Italian and French
into English, as it appeared here in a federal paper, besides the
mutilated hue which these translations and re-translations of it
produced generally, gave a mistranslation of a single word, which
entirely perverted its meaning, and made it a pliant and fertile text of
misrepresentation of my political principles. The original, speaking of
an Anglican, monarchical, and aristocratical party, which had sprung
up since he had left us, states their object to be 'to draw over us
the substance, as they had already done the forms of the British
government.
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