To you my fellow citizens, I hold myself in a particular manner accountable for every part of my conduct in the exercise of a trust reposed in me by you, and should consider myself highly culpable if I was to withhold from you any information in my possession, the knowledge of which may be material to enable you to form a right judgment on questions wherein the happiness of yourselves and your posterity are involved. Nor shall I ever consider it an act of condescention when impeached in my public conduct, or character, to vindicate myself at your bar, and to submit myself to your decision. In conformity to these sentiments, which have regulated my conduct since my return from the Convention, and which will be the rule of my actions in the sequel, I shall at this time beg your indulgence, while I make some observations on a publication which the Landholder has done me the honour to address to me, in the Maryland Journal of the 29th of February last. In my controversy with that writer, on the subject of Mr. Gerry, I have already enabled you to decide, without difficulty, on the credit which ought to be given to his most positive assertions and should scarce think it worth my time to notice his charges against myself, was it not for the opportunity it affords me of stating certain facts and transactions, of which you ought to be informed, some of which were undesignedly omitted by me when I had the honour of being called before the House of Delegates. No “extreme modesty” on my part was requisite to induce me to conceal the “sacrifice of resentments” against Mr. Gerry, since no such sacrifice had ever been made, nor had any such resentments ever existed. The principal opposition in sentiment between Mr. Gerry and myself, was on the subject of representation; but even on that subject, he was much more conceding than his colleagues, two of whom obstinately persisted in voting against the equality of representation in the senate, when the question was taken in Convention upon the adoption of the conciliatory propositions, on the fate of which depended, I believe, the continuance of the Convention. In many important questions we perfectly harmonized in opinion, and where we differed, it never was attended with warmth or animosity, nor did it in any respect interfere with a friendly intercourse and interchange of attention and civilities. We both opposed the extraordinary powers over the militia, given to the general government. We were both against the re-eligibility of the president. We both concurred in the attempt to prevent members of each branch of the legislature from being appointable to offices, and in many other instances, although the Landholder, with his usual regard to truth and his usual imposing effrontery, tells me, that I “doubtless must remember Mr. Gerry and myself never voted alike, except in the instances” he has mentioned. As little foundation is there in his assertion, that I