The Recorder

ANOTHER

OF DUANE'S FORGERIES.

Extract of a letter from a gentleman in Sea-land, to his friend in Pittsburgh, dated May 10, 1802.

"In no nation have the friends of liberty and integrity suffered more than in this, from that vile spirit of persecution. With regard to public affairs, the field is too ample for me to enter upon, especially on such a remnant of paper. Those of Britain in particular, are too bad to be touched. We look back without satisfaction, and forward without hope."

"I now rejoice, most sincerely, to find your country directed by that celebrated man, who has resolution to put into action those principles of the most enlightened policy, which, in the present depraved condition of mankind, have by many even enlightened men, been deemed impracticable; that of procuring to the community the greatest possible happiness, at the least possible expense; and he who has boldly and without hesitation or trepidation, laid the axe to the root of those tremendous overgrown trees, peculation and corruption.

"In his country, he who could seriously talk of the practicability of such things was derided, and almost considered as insane, until Jefferson verified them to the admiring world at large, and upon the most extensive scale."

Just as this piece was going to press, a countryman came in, and began to brag of this letter, and of the admiration that Jefferson, forsooth! enjoys in Britain. He was interrupted with the assurance that Duane wrote every word of it himself, and that this sentence in inverted commas was pillaged from the Political Progress of Britain.