Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 4 (of 16)United States. Congress
History
Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 4 (of 16)
United States. Congress
Law -- United States; United States -- Politics and government
was one man on it whose honesty my persecutors feared; and, to get him
off, a wretch falsely swore that the summoned juryman had expressed
to him something like an opinion that I could not be found guilty.
I will not here dwell upon the judge's denial to me of a challenge
upon the jury--as great a crime as any Judge Chase was charged with.
I look for an investigation of this business when all the features
of it shall come fairly to public view. Should that investigation be
refused at this time, I shall not fail to look for it at some future
time. I can never forgive the unjust stigma that has been placed on
my character; and should justice be refused me during my whole life,
I will leave it with my children and theirs to seek it. When my
enemies wounded my feelings, robbed me of my property, and affected
temporarily my reputation, I consoled myself that my friends would
soon be in power, and they would make every thing right. My wounded
honor would be consoled; the wound would be healed--a share at least
of the property of which I had been deprived, would be reimbursed.
How cruelly have I been thus far disappointed! Generous men, at the
time I suffered, said it is enough for you to bear the mortification
of the temporary insult--we will share with you the loss of property.
Under this impression much money was collected, the greater part of
which went to relieve oppressed Republican printers--it has all been
charged to me. I never asked, nor would I have received a cent of this
gratuity, could I have avoided it without insulting the benevolent
views of the good man (Gen. Stevens Thompson Mason, deceased) who set
the subscription on foot. That good man gave me a list of those to
whom he considered me beholden, and the amount; while the thing was
fresh in every one's mind I made a compliment, which he considered
ample, and more than ample, to every one of those on that list that was
within my reach; to those few that remain on that list uncompensated,
I feel beholden and much indebted. As the thing has grown old, and as
I have come in contact with those gentlemen, I have felt myself in an
embarrassed, awkward situation, from which I wished to be relieved by
being able to say to them, the public have restored your money--here
it is--it is yours, not mine. Judging other men to have feelings like
myself, I am at a loss how to get rid of the obligation I feel, in any
other way than the restoration of their money when it comes in a way
they cannot refuse it. From this source my anxiety for the restoration
of the money unjustly taken from me, arises more than any other; and
on every review of the subject, I am bound to say that I have been
more cruelly treated by the neglect of a duty to which my friends had
pledged themselves, when they declared me innocent and patriotic,
than by enemies who thought me guilty, and found me goading them in
their progress toward the destruction of the liberty and republicanism
of this country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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