ent from anything it contains, so that if your representation be true, his must be false. But there is another circumstance which militates against your new friend. Though he was face to face with his colleagues at the State Convention of Massachusetts, he has not ventured to call upon them to clear him either of this charge, or that respcting the Continental money. But as the Public seemed to require that something should be said on this occasion, an anonymous writer denies that he made such a motion, and endeavours to abate the force of my second allegation, merely by supposing that “his colleagues were men of too much honor to assert that his reasons in Convention were totally different from those which he has published.”
But alas, his colleagues would not acquit him in this way, and he was of too proud a spirit to ask them to do it in person.[1] Hence the charge remains on its original grounds, while you, for want of proper concert, have joined his accusers and reduced him to the humiliating necessity of endeavouring to stifle your justification. These points being dismissed, it remains only to reconcile the contradictory parts you have acted on the great political stage. You entered the convention without a sufficient knowledge in the science of government, where you committed a succession of memorable blunders, as the work advanced. Some rays of light penetrated your understanding, and enabled you (as has been shown) to assist in raising some of its pillars, when the desire of having your name enrolled with the other laborers drew from you that remarkable complaint so expressive of vanity and conviction. But self-interest soon gained the ascendant, you quickly comprehended the delicacy of your situation, and this restored your first impressions in all their original force. You thought the Deputy Attorney General of the United States for the state of Maryland, destined for a different character, and that inspired you with the hope that you might derive from a desperate opposition what you saw no prospect of gaining by a contrary conduct. But I will venture to predict, that though you were to double your efforts, you would fail in your object. I leave you now to your own reflections, under a promise, however, to give my name to the public, should you be able to procure any indifferent testimony to contradict a single fact I have stated.
- ↑ I will not say this writer makes a distinction between a thing done in convention and a thing done in committee. Be this as it may, he confesses more than Mr. Martin; for it seems that Mr. Gerry proposed that “the public debt should stand on the same ground it now stands on by the articles of confederation.” He might have subjoined that Mr. Gerry prefaced this motion by observing that it was the same in substance as his first, in as much as it included his first. But notwithstanding this motion was readily agreed to without his explanation being contradicted, yet he never afterwards favoured the convention with a look of peace, or a word of reconcilement.
