was so, and avows that it was not so? If the name of God, under Mr. Russell's pen, could not deter him from converting the past into the future, that he might enjoy the honours of prophecy, and couple with his trust in the Deity, his confidence in the valour of the West, what excuse could I have for considering the declaration of Mr. Russell as either more or less sincere for being backed by his protest?

"To add a perfume to the violet

"Is wasteful and ridiculous excess."

But if Mr. Russell, after delivering on the 22d of April his duplicate at the Department of State, and especially after he knew that the orignal had been found, was no longer solicitous that either of them should be communicated to the House, he had neither given up the inclination, nor the intention of appearing before the public, as the accuser of his colleagues of the majority at Ghent.

He left the City of Washington on the 5th of May, the day after the House of Representatives had received the President's answer to the call of the 19th of April-with that answer the President communicated to the House my report to him, which had been accompanied by a copy of the duplicate left by Mr. Russell at the Department for communication. But the President did not communicate the copy of the duplicate itself. He informed the House that the original had also been found-that it had been marked as a private letter, by the writer himself—that it disclosed differences of opinion which would naturally call for answers from those implicated by it; and that I, as one of them, had already requested that it might be communicated, together with my remarks upon it. Under those circumstances the President declined communicating the letter called for, unless the House, upon a knowledge of them, should desire it--in which case he informed them that it would be communicated, together with my report upon it.

All this was known to Mr. Russell when he left the city; and it is presumed that he also knew that the call for the letter would not be renewed by the mover of the resolution of the 19th of April ; yet Mr. Russell went to Philadelphia, and there caused to be printed in the National Gazette of the 10th of May, another variety of his letter of 11th February, 1815, from Paris, to Mr. Monroestill differing from the original-differing also from the duplicate, which he had delivered at the Department, but satisfactorily prov ing with what ingenuity he had told me that the two last leaves of his original draft had not been found at Mendon, and that he had been obliged to supply their contents in the duplicate from memory-the triplicate of the National Gazette was accompanied by an editorial article, vouching for its authenticity as a copy-vouching from good authority that Mr. Russell had had no share in the call (of the House of the 19th of April) for the private letter-and commenting in a style, the apologetical character of which indicates its origin, upon the privacy, which it urged was not secrecy, of the letter; upon the professions of Mr. Russell's respect for his col

leagues in the letter, and upon the frequency of such personal and A separate explanations in the annals of diplomacy--all this, upon the face of it, came directly or indirectly from Mr. Russell himself. The letter, as published in the National Gazette, was not marked private, as the original had been, which was now known from the President's message. It had discarded the panegyric upon the disfranchised fishermen-the self-eulogium for enlarged patriotism and subdued predilections and prepossessions-the prophetic inspirations, and the trust in God and in the valour of the West, which were in the duplicate and not in the original. It had stripped off all the cumulative epithets added in the duplicate to the charge of a wilful violation of instructions-it had even dismissed the charge of having violated their instructions relating to the Mississippi, as construed by themselves, and the emphatic citation of the explicit and implicit CANCELLED instructions of 15th April, 1813. But it had retained the interpolation of "we directly violated our instructions," and the substitution of "we could" for " I can," in that luminous exposition of atmospheric humidities and incessant fogs which had been discovered to have so nearly annulled the value of the Labrador fishery; and although the cancelled instructions were no longer cited in the text of the letter, yet to support the remnant of interpolated charge, that they had been violated, they were expressly subjoined as an appendage to the publication, with an abundance of italicised words to point out the heinousness of this violation; and this was after the interview in which I had shown to Mr. Russell at the Department, the record, not only of the letter of 4th October, 1814, to the Commissioners, which had not, but that of the letter of the 19th October, 1814, which had been received before the proposal, upon which the charge of violation rested, had been made to the British plenipotentiaries. The triplicate of the National Gazette had restored the postscript of the original, which had been dismissed from the duplicate, containing the three hopeful OTHER ways of proceeding devised by Mr. Russell's resources of negotiation, two months after the negotiation was over, instead of the course which we did pursue, the word other only being omitted. The triplicate of the National Gazette, in short, proved that the original draft from Mendon had been com plete; and that all its own interpolations, as well as those of the duplicate, and its omissions, had been owing, not to deficiencies of memory, but to superfluities of invention.

Such is the true history of the tactics of Mr. Russell, in bringing before the House of Representatives and the nation, his impeachment of his colleagues, the majority of the Ghent mission-that it was such of me, is fully admitted by himself in the Boston Statesman, by styling me the adverse party, and in that publication he sufficiently indicates his disposition in the progress of his operations to concentrate his charges against me alone. Be it so. In my remarks upon the original and duplicate of his accusatory letter, I styled it a laborious tissue of misrepresentations. He complains of

this as of virulence and acrimony, which he boasts of not having returned. If virulence and acrimony had no other vehicle than harsh language, if they could be disguised under professions of unfeigned respect, however cautiously Mr. Russell had abstained from them in his original letter from Paris, he had been much less observant of that decorum in the duplicate, prepared with new relishes of crimination to suit the appetite of political hatred; and the publication in the Boston Statesman is by no means sparing either of virulence or acrimony against me. The whole tenour of his argument in the original letter, against his colleagues, was sneering and sarcastic. In the Boston Statesman, besides direct charges against me, of disingenuousness, of having made an unprincipled and unprovoked attack upon him, of disrespect to the House of Representatives, of infirmities of temper and taste, and of being a dreaming visionary, he tries even the temper of his wit to assail me, and by a heavy joke upon an expression used in my remarks, indulges his own instinct of misquoting my words to make them appear ridiculous. If this be Mr. Russell's mildness and moderation, it looks very much like the virulence and acrimony of others. In the transactions of human society, there are deeds of which no adequate idea can be conveyed in the terms of courtesy and urbanity; yet I admit the obligation of a public man to meet with coolness and self-command the vilest artifices, even of fraud and malignity, to rob him of the most precious of human possessions, his good name-"thrice happy they who master so their blood.' If in my former remarks upon Mr. Russell's Janus-faced letter, or in this refutation of his new and direct personal attack upon my reputation, I have, even in word, transgressed the rule of decency, which, under every provocation, it is still the duty of my station and of my character to observe, though, unconscious, myself, of the offence, I submit to the impartial judgment of others, and throw myself upon the candour of my country for its forgiveness. This paper has been confined to a demonstration of the frailty or the pliability of Mr. Russell's memory, in relation to facts altogether recent. As, upon an issue of facts, I do not even now ask that my word alone should pass for conclusive, statements of Mr. Brent and Mr. Bailey, relative to the production of Mr. Russell's letter before the House of Representatives, and to the incidents from which Mr. Russell has attempted to extort a charge of disingenuousness against me, are subjoined. My only wish is, that they should be attentively compared with Mr. Russell's narrative.

In another paper I shall prove that Mr. Russell's reminiscences of the proceedings at Ghent, bear the same character of imagination substituted for memory; and that what he calls "the real history of the transaction," [the fishery and Mississippi navigation proposal,] contradictory to the statement which I had made in my remarks, is utterly destitute of foundation.

Washington, 13th July, 1822.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

Mr. Brent's Statement.

On the 20th of April of the present year, I called upon Mr. Russell at his lodgings in this city, without the knowledge or direction of any other person whatever, to inquire of him, as I did, whether he could and would furnish the Department of State with a copy of his letter from Paris to the Secretary of State, which was referred to in a resolution that I supposed to be then on its passage (but which had actually passed the day before,) through the House of Representatives, upon the motion of Doctor Floyd, in case the said resolution should be adopted by the House, and a regular application were made to him for it; observing to him distinctly and particularly, however, that I had no authority to make such an application myself, and that my entire object was to ascertain the facts just stated. In answer to this inquiry, Mr. Russell informed me that his daughter had recently transmitted to him the draft of the letter in question; that he had it thereby in his power to give a transcript of it, and would set about making one immediately, which, when finished, he would deliver to the President. Upon which I remarked, that this seemed to be the proper course, the original having been addressed to him, the President, when Secretary of State. I then observed to Mr. Russell, that he had better deliver it as a duplicate than as a copy; that he knew the original was not to be found upon the files of the Department of State, and that this was the common form with regard to all such communications. He seemed pleased with the suggestion, and said that he would conform to it, without giving me the slightest intimation that he would prefer giving a copy, as such, or that he would furnish any other than a duplicate of the identical letter spoken of and referred to, which had been transmitted by him from Paris to the then Secretary of State. I was prompted by a double motive to this inquiry-first, by an habitual wish that the Department to which I belonged should always be prepared to furnish what might be required of it by the House of Representatives; and, secondly, by an apprehension that, if it were not so prepared in this particular case, unjust imputations might be made against the Head of that Department, which I was desirous of obviating. In this interview, Mr. Russell told me that it was at his instance Doctor Floyd had submitted his last resolution to the House of Representatives; that he was influenced, himself, by the wish that his letter should be communicated to Congress, for his justification as to the part he had taken in the negotiation of the treaty of Ghent, with regard to the fisheries; but that the same gentleman's first motion upon the same subject, was made without his knowledge or advice. On the 22d of the same month, Mr. Russell handed to me, in my room at the Department of State, in the absence of the Secretary, with a request that I would deliver it over to him, an open letter, marked "Duplicate," a copy of which was communicated by the President to the House of Representatives, on the 7th of May last; observing, when he did so, that he felt no particular solicitude about it, and requesting that it might be returned to him, if not used by the Department. A day or two afterwards this paper was put into the hands of Mr. Thomas Thruston, one of the clerks of the office, to be copied. Perceiving that it bore date at Paris, on the 11th of February, 1822, when Mr. Russell was known to be attending the session of Congress in this city, as a member of the House of Representatives, this young gentleman asked my advice whether he should insert that date in the copy or not; and I told him, without hesitation, to insert 1816 instead of 1822, as Mr. Russell had evidently, from inadvertence, made a mistake in the date. Mr. Thruston gave

it that date accordingly, and made a correspondent alteration in the paper itself, which he was transcribing, under the impression that he was likewise authorized to do so, and that it would never produce criticism of any sort. When Mr. Adams came to be apprized of these circumstances, particularly of the alteration in the date of the "duplicate" paper, he manifested and expressed much surprise and displeasure upon the occasion. But Mr. Russell, whom I saw immediately after they happened, and to whom I communicated what had

been done, expressed his full and entire approbation of it; and the next day he brought to the office the draught from which he stated the "duplicate" was prepared by him, bearing date Paris, 11th February, 1815, which he particularly showed to me, as a corroborative justification to the Department of State for the alteration that had been made in the date of his paper. It was then, I think, that I informed him of the substitution which had been made in the office copy of the year 1815 for that of 1816, to correct our own mistake; and he authorized and requested me to have a like alteration made in his " duplicate," which was accordingly done. Mr. Russell, upon this occasion, again expressed his indifference as to the determination of the Executive with regard to this "duplicate," and repeated his request that it should be returned to him if not used.

In one of our conversations I asked him why he had delivered that paper to me, and not to the President, to whom he had said he would deliver it? His reply was, that he had done so because he deemed that course most respectful to the Department of State, being under the impression, notwithstanding my declaration to the contrary, that I had sounded him upon the subject of the paper in question by authority, (meaning, I presumed, by direction of the Secretary of State,) and that it was actually required at the Department of State.

In a conversation between Mr. Russell and myself, on the 1st May, in Mr. Bailey's room, at the Department of State, in the presence and hearing of that gentleman, he fully and expressly admitted and confirmed the correctness of the statement given in this paper of the conversation between us of the 20th of April, at his lodgings, with regard to the facts that the call of Doctor Floyd for his letter had been made at his suggestion, and that I mentioned to him I had no authority to make an application to him for a copy of that letter, and that I made none.

Washington, 10th July, 1822.

Mr. Bailey's Statement.

DANIEL BRENT.

Several days after the passage of the resolution of the House of Representatives of the United States, of 17th January, 1822, moved by Mr. Floyd, and calling on the President for copies of certain papers relative to the negotiations at Ghent, but before the copies had been communicated to the House, Mr. Russell, of the House, called at my room in the Department of State, and expressed a wish to see a letter addressed by himself, separately, at Ghent, to the then Secretary of State. He stated that the present Secretary of State had mentioned the letter to him, and had desired to know whether it was his (Mr. Russell's) wish that this letter should be communicated to the House with other papers embraced by the above call, or not. This letter, (a short one, dated "Ghent, 25th December, 1814,") was accordingly shown to Mr. Russell by me, in a volume containing the original communications from our Plenipotentiaries at Ghent, which had been bound and lettered in the Department several years before. Mr. Russell, on reading the letter, said that he saw no objection to the communication of it, and asked me if I saw any. The reply was, that none was seen. He said that the concluding paragraph, as it related to his return to Sweden, and not at all to the negotiations at Ghent, did not require to be communicated to the House. I requested him to mark such part as he wished communicated. This he did; and, conformably to this, the copy was made, by subsequent direction of the Secretary of State, and thus it appears in the printed copy, p. 50. At the same time, or very soon after, (I do not remember which,) Mr. Russell expressed a wish that the letter might be found and communicated, which, in his letter of 25th December, 1814, he intimated his intention of writing. The wish was repeated at subsequent times, both at my room and elsewhere; and much desire was manifested by him on the subject. Mr. Russell and myself together, as well as myself separately, examined at different times the