Jefferson.
Mr. Smith, of Maryland, rose and said "that he had read the paragraph
before he came here to-day, and was, therefore, aware of its import.
He had not the most distant recollection that Mr. Bayard had ever made
such a proposition to him. Mr. Bayard, said he, and myself, though
politically opposed, were intimate personal friends, and he was an
honourable man. Of all men, Mr. Bayard would have been the last to
make such a proposition to any man; and I am confident that he had too
much respect for me to have made it under any circumstances. I never
received from any man any such proposition."
Mr. Livingston, of Louisiana, said, "that as to the precise question
which had been put to him by the senator from Delaware, he must say,
that having taxed his recollection as far as it could go on so remote
a transaction, he had no remembrance of it."
The sons of the late Mr. Bayard, not yet being satisfied as to the
other paragraph, resolved on an investigation of the subject, and with
this view one of them wrote the following letter. [2]
FROM RICHARD H. BAYARD.
Wilmington, March 8, 1830.
SIR,
In the fourth volume of Mr. Jefferson's Writings, lately published by
his grandson, page 521, under the head of a note made April 15, 1806,
occurs the following paragraph, after the detail of a conversation
held with you about a month previously:--
"I did not commit these things to writing at the time, but I do now,
because, in a suit between him and Cheetham, he has had a deposition
of Mr.
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