"To this I may add, and very truly, that until the last year or two, I had no conception that parties would, or even could go the lengths I have been witness to; nor did I believe, until lately, that it was within the bounds of probability--hardly within those of possibility--that while I was using my utmost exertions to establish a national character of our own, independent as far as our obligations and justice would permit, of every nation of the earth; and wished by steering a steady course to preserve this country from the horrors of a desolating war, I should be accused of being the enemy of one nation and subject to the influence of another; and to prove it, that every act of my administration would be tortured, and the grossest and most insidious misrepresentations of them be made, by giving one side only of a subject, and that too in such exaggerated and indecent terms as could scarcely be applied to a Nero--to a notorious defaulter--or even to a common pick-pocket. "But enough of this--I have already gone further in the expression of my feelings than I intended." Of the numerous misrepresentations and fabrications which, with unwearied industry, were pressed upon the public in order to withdraw the confidence of the nation from its chief, no one marked more strongly the depravity of that principle which justifies the means by the end, than the republication of certain forged letters, purporting to have been written by General Washington in the year 1776. These letters had been originally published in the year 1777, and in them were interspersed, with domestic occurrences which might give them the semblance of verity, certain political sentiments favourable to Britain in the then existing contest. But the original fabricator of these papers missed his aim. It was necessary to assign the manner in which the possession of them was acquired; and in executing this part of his task, circumstances were stated so notoriously untrue, that, at the time, the meditated imposition deceived no person. In the indefatigable research for testimony which might countenance the charge that the executive was unfriendly to France, and under the influence of Britain, these letters were drawn from the oblivion into which they had sunk, it had been supposed forever, and were republished as genuine. The silence with which the President treated this as well as every other calumny, was construed into an acknowledgment of its truth; and the malignant commentators on this spurious text, would not admit the possibility of its being apocryphal.