Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 3.djvu/203

1806. to the complicity of Government. Doubtless his statements were false, and those of Madison were alone worthy of belief; but the Secretary of State was not the less compromised in the opinion of his enemies.

Miranda quickly returned to New York; and when about a month later the "Leander" was ready to sail, he wrote a letter to Madison announcing his intended departure, and taking a sort of formal and official leave, as though he were a confidential emissary of the President. He had the assurance to add that "the important matters" which he had communicated "will remain, I doubt not, in the deepest secret until the final result of this delicate affair. I have acted here on that supposition, conforming myself in everything to the intentions of the Government, which I hope I have seized and observed with exactitude and discretion."

Ten days afterward the "Leander" sailed with a party of filibusters for the Spanish main, and the Secretary of State awoke to the consciousness that he had been deceived and betrayed. Fortunately for Madison, Miranda had not left behind him a copy of this letter, but had merely told his friends its purport. The letter itself remained unseen; but the original still exists among the Archives of the State Department, bearing an explanatory note in Madison's handwriting, that Miranda's "important" communications related to "what passed with the British