in that city, a fugitive
from persecution for having written that book, and in distress. I
had read and approved the book; I considered him as a man of genius,
unjustly persecuted. I knew nothing of his private character, and
immediately expressed my readiness to contribute to his relief, and to
serve him. It was a considerable time after, that, on application from
a person who thought of him as I did, I contributed to his relief, and
afterwards repeated the contribution. Himself I did not see till long
after, nor ever more than two or three times. When he first began to
write, he told some useful truths in his coarse way; but nobody sooner
disapproved of his writing than I did, or wished more that he would be
silent. My charities to him were no more meant as encouragements to his
scurrilities, than those I give to the beggar at my door are meant
as rewards for the vices of his life, and to make them chargeable to
myself. In truth, they would have been greater to him, had he never
written a word after the work for which he fled from Britain. With
respect to the calumnies and falsehoods which writers and printers at
large published against Mr. Adams, I was as far from stooping to any
concern or approbation of them, as Mr. Adams was respecting those of
Porcupine, Fenno, or Russell, who published volumes against me for
every sentence vended by their opponents against Mr. Adams. But I never
supposed Mr. Adams had any participation in the atrocities of these
editors, or their writers. I knew myself incapable of that base warfare,
and believed him to be so. On the contrary, whatever I may have thought
of the acts of the administration of that day, I have ever borne
testimony to Mr. Adams's personal worth; nor was it ever impeached in my
presence, without a just vindication of it on my part. I never supposed
that any person who knew either of us, could believe that either of us
meddled in that dirty work. But another fact is, that I 'liberated a
wretch who was suffering for a libel against Mr. Adams.' I do not know
who was the particular wretch alluded to; but I discharged every person
under punishment or prosecution under the sedition law, because I
considered, and now consider, that law to be a nullity, as absolute and
as palpable as if Congress had ordered us to fall down and worship a
golden image; and that it was as much my duty to arrest its execution
in every stage, as it would have been to have rescued from the fiery
f