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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

TO TIMOTHY PICKERING, SECRETARY OF STATE. - George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, vol. XIII (1794-1798) [1892]

Edition used:

The Writings of George Washington, collected and edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1890). Vol. XIII (1794-1798).

Part of: The Writings of George Washington, 14 vols.

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TO TIMOTHY PICKERING, SECRETARY OF STATE.

Mount Vernon, 6 February, 1798.

Dear Sir,

Your letters of the 20th and 27th ult. have been duly received and the Pamphlets with Colo. Monroe’s view came safe. * * *

I have not had leisure yet to look into Monroe’s views, nor to read more than the first numbers of Scipio, although I have them to the 15th Inclusive.—Postponing the latter until I had obtained the former.

Notwithstanding there existed no doubt in my mind that the charge exhibited against you in the Aurora was a malignant falsehood—yet satisfied as I am of the motive and the end intended to be answered by the publication I have read with much gratification your explicit disavowal of its application.1 But the more the views of those who are opposed to the measures of our Government are developed, the less surprised I am at the attempt, and the means, cowardly illiberal and assasin like, which are used to subvert it:—and to destroy all confidence in those who are intrusted with the administration thereof. Among these to be classed an assertion in the Pamphlet written by Mr. Fauchet in these words, “It is the general opinion that Mr. Talon came to Philadelphia on a confidential mission from the Pretender to Genl. Washington. He was admitted to a very particular audience with the President before the arrival of Mr. Genet at Philada.”—What the General opinion of the French party might have been is not for me to say, but I pronounce the latter part of the quotation to be an impudent, a wicked and groundless assertion—and accordingly authorise any and every person, who chooses to be at the trouble of doing it to contradict it in the most unqualified terms.—With Mr. Talon I had no acquaintance,—if he ever was in my company it must have been in the drawing room (or at what was called the levies) on company days. Whether I ever exchanged a word with him during the time of his stay in this country, is more than my memory at this time is able to decide.—If his arrival in it was posterior to the proscription or cloud which hovered, of such characters, the probability is, that he never did;—be this however as it may—I will pledge myself that I never directly or indirectly ever exchanged a word with him out of the public Rooms—on public days.—and on common place subjects.—And if it could be adjudged expedient by you and those with whom I usually conversed on subjects of this sort, I wou’d announce as much in the Gazettes, when it might not be amiss perhaps to let my whole letter to Gouverneur Morris, and his to me, to which it was an answer, appear also in order to do away the effect of another charge which extracts drawn from the former, was intended to impress on the public mind—namely, a dereliction to France and the contrary to Great Britain.—To produce a justification of one’s conduct in matters of this sort wou’d be unpleasant, pleasant, if it was unconnected with public concerns, I shou’d treat the assaults with the contempt they deserve.

[1 ]Upham: Life of Timothy Pickering, iii., 309.