“ and continued without any change. when we removed to Philadelphia, m( ^~r ) Pintard the translating clerk, did not chuse to remove with us. his office then became vacant. I was again applied to there for Freneau, & had no hesitation to promise the clerkship for him. I cannot recollect whether it was at the same time, or afterwards, that I was told he had a thought of setting up a newspaper there. but whether then, or afterwards, I considered it as a circumstance of some value, as it might enable me to do, what I had long wished to have done, that is, to have the material parts of the Leyden gazette brought under your eye & that of the public, in order to possess yourself & them of a juster view of the affairs of Europe than could be obtained from any other public source. this I had ineffectually attempted through the press of m ( ^~r ) Fenno while in New York, selecting & translating passages myself at first, then having it done by m( ^~r ) Pintard the translating clerk. but they found their way too slowly into m( ^~r ) Fenno’s papers. m( ^~r ) Bache essayed it for me in Philadelphia, but his being a dayly paper, did not circulate sufficiently in the other states. he even tried, at my request, the plan of a weekly paper of recapitulation from his daily paper, in hopes that that might go into the other states, but in this too we failed. Freneau, as translating clerk, & the printer of a periodical paper likely to circulate thro’ the states (uniting in one person the parts of Pintard & Fenno) revived my hopes that the thing 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 would always translate & publish the material intelligence they contained; & have continued to furnish them from time to time, as regularly as I recieved them. but as to any other direction or indication of my wish how his press should be conducted, what sort of intelligence he should give, what essays encourage, I can protest in the presence of heaven, that I never did by myself, or any other, directly or indirectly, say a syllable, nor attempt any kind of influence. I can further protest, in the same awful presence, that I never did by myself or any other, directly or indirectly, write, dictate or procure 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 Algerine captives, which I put once into Fenno’s paper.--Freneau’s proposition to publish a paper, having been about the time that the writings of Publicola, & the discourses on Davila had a good deal excited the public attention, I took for granted from Freneau’s character, which had been marked as that of a good whig, that he would give free place to pieces written against the aristocratical & 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; tho’ I do not recollect that I did. to Freneau I think I could not, because I had still seen him but once, & that was at a public table, at breakfast, at m ( ^~r ) s Elsworth’s, as I passed thro’ New York the last year. and I can safely declare that my expectations looked only to the chastisement of the aristocratical & monarchical writers, & not to any criticism on the proceedings of the government . . . ”

Jefferson’s private notes on a conversation he had had with Washington on May 23, 1793, contain the following passage: . . . he [the President] said . . . that there was more danger of anarchy being introduced. he adverted to a peice in Freneau’s paper of yesterday, he said he despised all their attacks on him personally, but that there never had been an act of the government, not meaning in the Executive line only, but in any line which that paper had not abused . . . he was evidently sore & warm, and I took his intention to be that I should interpose in some way with Freneau, perhaps withdraw his appointment of translating clerk to my office, but I will not do it. his paper has saved our constitution which was galloping fast into monarchy, & has been checked by no one means so powerfully as by that paper. it is well & universally known that it has been that paper which has checked the career of the Monocrats, & the President, not sensible of the designs of the party, has not with his usual good sense, and sang froid, looked on the efforts and effects of this free press, & seen that tho’ some bad