at that time of such a volatile disposition, that such a hasty attachment might possibly have been weakened, or it might have worn off by time; but the very course which he took, irrevocably fixed my fate as to marriage. I was of age, and I had always made up my mind that I was, and ought to be, my own master upon this subject. I am still of the same opinion; I still hold that parents have no right to make their children miserable by any arbitrary dictation upon a question of such vital importance as that of whom they shall marry. Parents have an undoubted right, nay it is an imperious duty which they owe to their children, to direct their choice with respect to suitable connections, and they have a right to interpose the authority of their advice and recommendation to their children. But the law of God and of man says[14], that the parties about to be united ought to exercise their own free choice. The law says that no person shall marry who is under age, without the consent of his or her parents; and the law has very justly drawn this line. The law, therefore, very properly contemplates that no parent shall have the absolute controul over the person of a child in this matter after that child has come of age. I have, probably, detained the reader much longer upon this subject than is either entertaining or edifying, but as this occurrence paved the way for that important part of my history, my marriage, I feel it a duty which I owe to myself, and to those who do me the honour to read these Memoirs, and more particularly to the Radicals, to be more explicit than I otherwise should be, if the venal press, and particularly the profligate Editors and Proprietors of that press, in order to gratify their political employers and partisans, had not, upon so many occasions, and with such brutal and savage coarseness, when they could neither answer my arguments nor contradict the truths that I promulgated, sought to cover their defeat and their infamy by accusing me of having deserted my wife, and left her to starve. Fearless of the consequences, I shall, therefore, as I go along, place the circumstances fairly and honestly before the public, and leave them to draw their own conclusions, as to the correctness, not to say any thing of the honesty, of the base assertions which are made by the toots of my political adversaries. At this moment, however, I will merely state briefly this fact, that, in the year 1802, more than eighteen years ago, I was separated from my wife by mutual consent. We had three children; two sons and a daughter. It was agreed that the daughter should live with the mother, and the sons with me; but that both mother and father should have free access to each of the children, and the children the same access to the parents; and as I made a most liberal settlement upon my wife, (the particulars of which I shall not withhold,) there has been no complaint uttered by either party; no living creature ever having