Mr. Adams then proceeds to reply to all the charges brought against him by Alexander Smyth, analyzing and explaining every vote which he had made the subject of animadversion fully and successfully. The close of his defence is as follows: "Fellow-Citizens: I have explained to you the reasons and real motives of all the votes which your representative, General Alexander Smyth, has laid to my charge, in a printed address to you, and to which unusual publicity has been given in the newspapers. I am aware that, in presenting myself before you to give this explanation, my conduct may again be attributed to unworthy motives. The best actions may be, and have been, and will be, traced to impure sources, by those to whom troubled waters are a delight. If, in many cases, when the characters of public men are canvassed, however severely, it is their duty to suffer and be silent, there are others, in my belief many others, wherein their duty to their country, as well as to themselves and their children, is to stand forth the guardians and protectors of their own honest fame. Had your representative, in asking again for your votes, contented himself with declaring to you his intentions concerning me, you never would have heard from me in answer to him. But when he imputes to me a character and disposition unworthy of any public man, and adduces in proof mere naked votes upon questions of great public interest, all given under the solemn sense of duty, impressed by an oath to support the constitution, and by the sacred obligations of a public trust, to defend myself against charges so groundless and unprovoked is, in my judgment, a duty of respect to you, no less than a duty of self-vindication to me. I declare to you that not one of the votes which General Smyth has culled from an arduous service of five years in the Senate of the Union, to stigmatize them in the face of the country, was given from any of the passions or motives to which he ascribes them; that I never gave a vote either in hostility to the administration of Mr. Jefferson, or in disregard to republican principles, or in aversion to republican patriots, or in favor of the slave-trade, or in denial of due protection to commerce. I will add, that, having often differed in judgment upon particular measures with many of the best and wisest men of this Union of all parties, I have never lost sight either of the candor due to them in the estimate of their motives, or of the diffidence with which it was my duty to maintain the result of my own opinions in opposition to theirs."