Daily National Intelligencer

REFUTATION
A statement, in print, has been put into the hands of many members of Congress, purporting to be "A statement of facts, shewing why the bill reported by the District Columbia committee, in favor of the Potomac Company, touching, and materially affecting private right, should not be passed." That statement having wantonly and unwarrantably arraigned the character of the Potomac Company, the representatives of that Company would justly be deemed unfaithful guardians of its rights and reputation, to suffer this calumny to pass unnoticed; and yet it requires nothing more than an attentive perusal of the statement, to find in it a refutation of its own charges. It first recites the law under which the Company held authority to condemn ground for a canal and locks, as well as an acre for a toll-house establishment, and then charges the Company with violation of private right in the condemnation of what the law authorizes. Admits the authority, and denies the right to exercise it; for it is not pretended that more ground is embraced in the condemnations made, than was warranted by law : and whether it was done in one or a dozen condemnations, is immaterial. If the Company found it necessary to erect a temporary toll-house on the margin of the canal, did that destroy the right to provide for the more comfortable and convenient accommodation of a confidential character. entrusted with the care and operation of the locks, and collection of tolls ? It is said, that, in these transactions, great ingenuity and forced construction of law was practised. In this particular the person at whose instance the statement has been made, is admitted to possess a perfect knowledge of the doings of which he complains, he being at the time one of the Directors of the Company, & an active and influential coadjutor in what he now calls enormities He forgets, however, to relate the extraordinary operations of genius which enabled him to reconcile at that time. what he now affects to reprobate. Whether the change has been produced by his subsequent purchase of land adjoining the canal and locks, or on some better reason, is for him to answer.
The statement refutes its own charges in relation to the condemnations complained of, it only remains to rebut the charges of fraud contemplated by the present Directors in their petition to Congress; and in doing this, it can only be necessary to disavow any wish or intention, on the part of the Company. to ask or exercise the powers to infringe or disturb private right or possession; and to refer to the letter and tenor of their petition, to shew and prove that all they have asked, or do crave in that application, is a legislative sanction to any purchase they can make of such land as may be offered for sale, and to sell or improve it for manufacturing purposes, in common with lands now held by the Company along the canal. That fraud can lurk in a proposition so plain and undisguised, can only be imagined by those whose own habits create a distrust of all others.
The manager of the efforts made to excite prejudices against the Potomac Company. for speculative purposes no doubt, has verbally asked, " Why do the Company purchase the land adjoining the canal, now offered for sale ?" Is not the answer furnished in the petition to Congress for power to hold what the Company wish to purchase? There is delusion in this interrogatory, and the art and ingenuity exercised in exciting sympathies towards " a number of fatherless children," on unfounded charges of design to rob them of eventual support, is a refinement on the extraordinary ingenuity so said to have been practised on former occasions, and worthy of the character denounced by this reformed Director, who will find that all the mystery he employs does not shield him from the imputation of views, which, in his charitable irony, he ascribes to the present
DIRECTORS.
Georgetown, March 16-