5. DUFIEF,
Nicholas Gouin.
The Logic of Facts; or, the Conduct of Wm. Rawle, Esq. Attorney at Law, towards N. G. Dufief, Arraigned before the Tribunal of Public Opinion: with A Letter to the Subscribers and Purchasers of the first Edition of
Nature Displayed; containing an Improved Method of Using that Work, and Occasional Strictures on the Old School. The Whole
Interspersed with Notes, Moral, Critical, and Philosophical. By the Author of Nature Displayed . . .
Philadelphia: Printed for the Author by
Abel Dickinson, And Sold by
Wm. Duane,
Roches, and by the Author. The usual allowance made to booksellers.
1806.
First Edition. 8vo. 28 leaves including the last blank, the 5 preceding leaves with the Appendix with separate pagination.
On page 7 is quoted an extract from a letter by Jefferson to Dufief dated from Washington, 9th of January, 1800.
Nicholas Gouin Dufief, d. 1834, was born in France and emigrated to the United States at an early age. This pamphlet is in answer to an attack
by William Rawle, professor of French at the University of Pennsylvania, and a member of the American Philosophical Society,
on the originality of Dufief’s method of teaching languages in
Nature Display’d
. For a copy of that work, and the correspondence between Jefferson and Dufief, see in chapter 43.
[3425]
6.
The Quid Mirror. The First Part . . .
New-York: Printed for the Editor,
1806.
First Edition, all published. 8vo. 18 leaves. On the back of the title-leaf is a note dated from New York August 30th, 1806:
The Editor received the Manuscript of the Mirror from Philadelphia . . . and from his abhorrence of Quids resolved, without
hesitation, to give it publicity, and to transmit it to such characters in Philadelphia as were enumerated by his correspondent.
As the author is unknown to the Editor, he will take the liberty to assure him, that a reliance upon his honor for
One Hundred Dollars
had great weight in the trouble and expence of the publication--A hint is enough to the wise.
This edition not in Sabin.
Contains attacks on various members of the Constitutional Republican, or “Quid” party.
Jefferson is mentioned in several of the articles. In the account of James Alexander Dallas (page 10):
The intimacy between him, BURR, and DAYTON, is a fact of public notoriety; and from his defence of BURR, after his attempt
to supplant Mr. JEFFERSON in the Presidency, the inference is unavoidable, that he had an agency in his intrigue. Indeed,
his conduct at Lancaster, and since that period, leaves little room to doubt his preference for BURR . . .
In the account of George Logan (page 18):
This man affected uncommon devotion to the President; and yet he could not omit an opportunity to belittle him. Logan presented
a member of the Senate of this State to Mr. Jefferson, who was very much pleased, and asked Logan, when he had left the house
whether he was not a charming man? No, answered this Hottentot, I dont think he is
,--“the Suwarro boot is too high, and is uneasy; the Jefferson boot is too low, and lets in the dirt.”
Well did Mr. Jefferson merit this speech, when he let in such a dirty
fellow as GEORGE LOGAN . . . LOGAN used the President’s name in his electioneering tour through Bucks county, in favour of
M’KEAN, and against the Democratic candidate. He said, that he had received a letter from Mr. JEFFERSON, advising him to exertion
in favor of M’KEAN. On this, as on other occasions, he asserted an untruth; for no such letter had ever been written to him.
By such base arts as these were the people of Pennsylvania gulled; and by such impostors as LOGAN were they tricked into the
reception of a viper in their bosoms . . .
In this connection there is in the Jefferson correspondence a letter to him from Michael Leib dated from Philadelphia, July
22, 1805, in which he states that Colonel Piper had informed him “that Doctor Logan had been at his house, and had endeavoured to persuade him to support the election of Governor McKean. After
having fruitlessly urged every argument he was possessed of to change the mind of Colonel Piper, he informed him, that “he
had just received a letter from the President of the United States, exhorting him to use all his influence to procure ”
