I have been prevented from saving a brother, from receiving the dying blessings of a father, mother, and sister, and from soothing their last agonies by my cares; and this, sir, by your unwarrantable, unprecedented, and unfeeling interference. Your friends, when they accuse me of want of moderation towards you, are wonderfully mistaken. They do not reflect, or know, that I have never spoken of you without suppressing, as I do now, personal feelings that rise up within me, and swell my heart with indignation and resentment. The step you took was unauthorised by your own government. Whether our conduct in Ireland was right or wrong, you have no justification for yours. The constitution and laws of this country gave you no power to require of the British government that it should violate its faith, and withdraw from us its consent to the place we had fixed upon for our voluntary emigration; neither the president nor you were warranted to prevent our touching these shores.—These remarks I address, with all becoming respect, to ‘the first man in the country.’ Yet in fact, sir, I do not clearly see in what consists your superiority over myself. It is true you have been a resident minister at the court of St. James’; and, if what I have read in the public prints be true, and if you be apprised of my near relationship and family connexion with the late Sir John Temple, you must acknowledge that your interference as resident minister at the court of St. James’s, against my being permitted to emigrate to America, is a very curious instance of the caprice of fortune—but let that pass. To what extent I ought to yield to you for talents and information, is not for me to decide.—In no respect, however, do I feel your excessive superiority.—My private conduct and character are, I hope, as fair as yours—and even in those matters which I consider as trivial, but upon which aristocratic pride is accustomed to stamp a value, I should not be inclined to shrink from competition. My birth certainly will not humble me by the comparison; my paternal fortune was, probably, much greater than yours; the consideration in which the name I bear in my native country was held, was as great as yours is ever likely to be before I had an opportunity of contributing to its celebrity.