(All footnotes on pages covered by Note No. XVIII are references to the correspondence of Thomas Jefferson.)
A letter from Mr. Jefferson to Mr. Mazzei, an Italian who had passed some time in the United States, was published in Florence, and republished in the Moniteur, with some severe strictures on the conduct of the United States, and a remark "that the French government had testified its resentment by breaking off communication with an ungrateful and faithless ally until she shall return to a more just and benevolent conduct. No doubt," adds the editor, "it will give rise in the United States to discussions which may afford a triumph to the party of good republicans, the friends of France.
"Some writers, in disapprobation of this wise and necessary measure of the Directory, maintain that, in the United States, the French have for partisans only certain demagogues who aim to overthrow the existing government. But their impudent falsehoods convince no one, and prove only, what is too evident, that they use the liberty of the press to serve the enemies of France."
Mr. Jefferson, in his correspondence,[59] has animadverted on the preceding note with such extreme bitterness, as to impose on its author the necessity of entering into some explanations. Censure from a gentleman who has long maintained an unexampled ascendency over public opinion, can not be entirely disregarded.
The offence consists in the reference to the letter written by him to Mr. Mazzei, which was published in Florence, and republished in Paris by the editor of the Moniteur, then the official paper of the Directory. In this letter, Mr. Jefferson says, a paragraph was interpolated which makes him charge his own country with ingratitude and injustice to France.
By the word "country," Mr. Jefferson is understood to allude to the government, not to the people of America.
This letter, containing the sentence now alleged to be interpolated, was published throughout the United States in the summer of 1797. It became immediately, as may well be supposed, the subject of universal conversation. The writer, and the individual to whom it particularly alludes, filled too large a space in the public mind for such a paper not to excite general attention and deep interest. It did excite both.
Had it been fabricated, Mr. Jefferson, it was supposed, could not have permitted it to remain uncontradicted. It came in a form too authentic, the matter it contained affected his own reputation and that of the illustrious individual who is its principal subject, too vitally to permit the imputation to remain unnoticed. It would not, it could not have remained unnoticed, if untrue. Yet its genuineness was never questioned by Mr. Jefferson, or by any of his numerous friends. Not even to General Washington, as is now avowed, was it ever denied. Had it been denied to him, his strong sense of justice and of right would have compelled him to relieve the reputation of the supposed writer from a charge of such serious import.
It was, of course, universally received as a genuine letter. An open avowal of it could not have added to the general conviction.
The letter having this irresistible claim on the general confidence, no one part of it was entitled to less credit than every other. The interpolation of a particular sentence was neither suggested nor suspected. The whole was published in Europe and republished in America as the letter of Mr. Jefferson, with his name subscribed. The genuineness of no part of it was ever called into question. How then could the public or any individual have ventured to select a particular sentence, and to say—this is spurious?