Kentucky Gazette And General Advertiser

TO ASA K. LEWIS.

NOTHING but a desire that truth should prevail against falsehood, and a wish that the public may be enabled to judge right on every subject, could have induced me to answer your last publication.

Your unjustifiable, scurrilous and wanton attack upon Judge Thruston, and two of the candidates for the Fayette circuit court clerkship, has very properly drawn upon you the resentment of some, and the contempt of many of your fellow citizens.

But as you have exhausted your honor in your first address, it is not surprising that you have set truth at defiance in your reply.

The truth of what I have asserted, I pledge myself to support; and to establish that part of my answer which you say is false, I refer to the annexed certificates of Gen. Levi Todd and Mr. Thomas January.

Your insinuations that I have been "ill advised, and am a pitiful object creeping from under the wing of a great man," I despise. They are beneath my notice; for its well known that I seldom consult any person as to what ought to be my conduct. I am capable of judging and acting for myself.

Having never received a liberal education, there is one part of your reply I do not understand. You ought to have given the English of your judicial phrase as you are pleased to call it, or those hard Latin and French words. You were educated at Princeton, and might have favored the public with their meaning.

Your smile of contempt I should have been glad to have seen. Instead of a smile I am induced to believe it was a ghastly grin.

As we both entertain a high opinion of public discernment, and as I think you deserving of as little notice or attention as you possibly can conceive due to me—conscious of the propriety of my conduct, I cheerfully submit to the impartial decision of our countrymen.

I now take my leave of you, with assurances that I will not again trouble the public on this occasion. But, sir, if you should think yourself injured, you know where I live.

THOS. BODLEY.

Lexington, May 28th, 1803.

ON the application of Mr. Thomas Bodley, I do certify that in all conversations I had with him respecting the appointment of a clerk to the Fayette circuit court, he refused to receive any stipulated sum to decline, but offered to determine by lot which of the candidates should fix a sum that he would give or take. Given under my hand this 30th day of May, 1803.

LEVI TODD.

DEAR SIR,

I regret that my statement of the conversation between us relative to the clerkship could not be published at length, but reference being had to it, I certify that you did not agree to decline in my favor for any fixed sum, nor was there any positive agreement between us.

Your's &c,

THOMAS JANUARY.

31st May, 1803.

Mr. THOMAS BODLEY.

Mr. January's statement, mentioned above is lodged at this office, and may be seen on application.