Philadelphia, September 3, 1782.
TO GENERAL JOSEPH REED.
In the first part of your late publication, which is no less an invective against me, than it is a defence of yourself, you have, with sufficient art, insisted on my remarkably contentious, factious,[D] and jealous spirit, which suffers no man, undisturbed, to enjoy his well-earned fame; a circumstance in my character you expected to derive considerable benefit from in the controversy between us. For this point being once gained, every suggestion, every article of charge against you, which has its foundation and support in me, would naturally be referred to those fierce and malignant passions you have so unsparingly bestowed on me, and no longer rest upon the general credit and reputation I trust I have acquired and maintained. But as I cannot, without injustice to myself, make this concession to you, I must declare my general tenor of conduct to have been far otherwise,—that in my private life I have been at peace and harmony with all mankind; and in my public, at enmity only with such public men as have disgraced their country by their vices or injured it by their crimes.
Wherein until the present, except in a single instance, have I drawn the public attention by attacks upon the character of any man? and that instance, an impostor, like yourself, who had got into a seat of honor. In this, it was virtue to become his accuser.
If you rely upon your instance, as affording a proof of my eagerness for controversy, it will not answer your purpose. I have not brought you to the public bar; for, whatever was the amount of your offences, I neither urged nor wished a public inquiry; another has brought you there, and I appear only as a witness against you, challenged and defied by yourself.
This being premised, I shall enter upon my subject, and reply to such parts of your pamphlet as respect me, and therefore specially concern me to notice.
Your remarks, you say, are with propriety addressed to me; because though not the actual author, it is to me you are really indebted for the insidious attempt on your reputation.
That the public may have the most authentic proofs of the manner in which I have been involved in this controversy, I think it necessary here to insert the original letters that passed in the course of our correspondence, last fall, on this subject.