Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/156



by Mr. Pintard, the translating clerk, but they found their way too slowly into Fenno's paper. Mr. Bache essayed it for me in Philadelphia, but his being a daily paper did not circulate sufficiently in other states. He even tried, at my request, the plan of a weekly paper of recapitu- lation from his daily paper, on hopes it might go into the other states, but in this, too, we failed. Freneau, as translating clerk and the printer of a periodical paper likely to circulate through the states (uniting in one person the parts of Pintard and Fenno) revived my hopes that they could at length be effected. On the establishment of his paper, therefore, I furnished him with The Leyden Gazettes with an expression of my wish that he could always translate and publish the material in- telligence they contained, and have continued to furnish them from time to time as regularly as I have received them. But as to any other direction or any indication of my wish how his press should be con- ducted, what sort of intelligence he should give, what essays encour- age, I can protest in the presence of Heaven that I never did by myself or any other, or indirectly say a syllable nor attempt any kind of in- fluence. I can further protest in the same awful presence, that I never did by myself or any other, directly or indirectly write, dictate, or pro- cure any one sentence or sentiment to be inserted in his or any other gazette, to which my name was not affixed or that of my office. I surely need not except here a thing so foreign to the present subject as a little paragraph about our Algerian captives, which I once put into Fre- neau's paper.

Freneau's proposition to publish a paper having been about the time that the writings of Publicola and the discourses of Davilla had a good deal excited the public attention, I took for granted from Fre- neau's character, which had been marked as that of a good Whig, that he would give free place to pieces written against the aristocratical and monarchical principles these papers had inculcated. This having been in my mind, it is likely enough I may have expressed it in conversation with others, though I do not recollect that I did. To Freneau I think I could not, because I still had seen him but once and that was at a pub- lic table, at breakfast at Mrs. Elsworth's, as I passed through New York the last year. And I can safely declare that my expectations looked only to the chastisement of the aristocratical and monarchical writings, and not to any criticism on the proceedings of government. Colonel Hamilton can see no motive for any appointment but that of making a convenient partizan. But you, sir, who have received from me recommendations of a Rittenhouse, Barlow, Paine, will believe that talents and science are sufficient motives with me in appointments to which they are fitted, and that Freneau as a man of genius, might find a preference in my eye to be a translating clerk and make a good title to the little aids I could give him as the editor of a Gazette by procuring subscriptions to his paper as I did some before it appeared, and as I have done with pleasure for other men of genius. Col. Hamilton, alias