the subject. I merely state the fact, neither caring for, nor expecting praise, and equally remote from the deprecations of

censure.

That evening, I wrote twelve or fourteen pages, containing a brief review of our past proceedings-reflections on our actual situation with hints for the proposed new ar

rangements.

Desponding as I was, I felt dissatisfied with what I had committed to paper. I laid it aside; and did not resume it for ten or twelve days. In the interim, the glorious news arrived, of the complete defeat of the enemy at Baltimore; of the immortal M'Donough's victory on lake Champlain; of the discomfiture and flight of Gen. Prevost's Wellingtonians, at, and from Plattsburgh. These wonderful successes made a total change in the face of affairs. By this time my spirits revived. I rejected my embryo work, and flattered myself into the opinion, that a candid appeal to men of integrity of both parties, might produce a beneficial effect; that a few might be excited, and excite others; that at all events, it was worth the trial; that in such a noble undertaking as an attempt to rescue the country, from what I regarded as impending anarchy, even a failure would be honourable; and success would be glorious and éminently beneficial.

I therefore destroyed what I had written, and began the work anew, on its present plan. I had a large stock of public documents; I borrowed some; and with these, and the Weekly Register, amidst all the hurry and bustle of business, in the leisure hours of six week, I patched up the first crude and indigested edition. It was published on the ninth of Noyember.

I ought to have observed, that when it was about two-thirds printed, I was struck with astonishment at my Quixotism and folly, in expecting to make an impression on a community, torn in pieces by faction; a prey to the most violent passions; and labouring under the most awful degree of delusion. Myheart sunk within me at my presumption: and the reader may rest assured, I was on the point of converting the sheets into waste paper. This ague fit went off in a day or two; and I determined to give the work a fair experiment.

The edition was small-only 500 copies. Two motives dictated this limited scale. I knew the work must necessarily be very imperfect, from the disadvantages under which I laboured: and I determined, if it met with success, to have an opportunity to improve and extend it: moreover, from the almost universal failure of political publications, I was far indeed from being sanguine of success.

My expectations of sale lay principally at Washington. I sent one hundred copies there, as a sort of breakfast, calculating upon a speedy sale of them, and an order for more. There were above two hundred legislators there, and twice as many visitors; and I supposed that whatever might be the demertits of the execution of the work, the importance of the topics discussed in it, would insure the sale of a large part of the edition; more particularly, as I had already received highly flattering compliments, from the late vice-president, and other gentlemen, to whom I had sent copies by mail.

The result disappointed those calculations; and, had I been actuated by the vanity of authorship, would have sufficiently mortified it; for when I had, in Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore, disposed of the remaining four hundred, and wrote down to Mr. Weightman, at Washington, to enquire into the success of the work, I learned that four of the hundred had been stolen on the road that fifty-nine remained unsold-and that thirty seven copies had fully satisfied the curiosity of a president, three secretaries, thirty-six senators, one hundred and eighty-two reprsentatives, one or two hundred clerks, the whole of the population of the metropolis of the United States, and all its numerous visitors. It is probable, that in such circumstances, so great a degree of apathy and indifference, on pics, of such magnitude never before existed. I ordered back the remaining fifty-nine.

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A new edition was, however, called for, notwithstanding the discouraging coldness and indifference of the members of the government. I used all possible expedition, and published on the 11th of January, one thousand copies.

The success of this edition exceeded that of the first. In five weeks there were not twenty copies unsold. And a day or two previous to the blessed, thrice blessed news of peace, foreseeing the demand would require another edition, 1 contracted with a printer, to print me a third. When the joyful tidings came, I thought the public would no longer feel any interest in it, and for a time abandoned the idea of republication. But I was mistaken; the demand increased: I printed a new edition, which was published on the 13th of April, and was sold out in about three months, except a few copies in Georgetown, and elsewhere.

As the eastern states were the scene, where such a work was most necessary, I was very desirous of giving it a circulation there. I saw that to afford it a fair chance, it ought to be printed in Boston; for otherwise only a few hundred copies at most, of my editions, would ever reach that quarter, and no person there being interested in the disposal of them, the effects of the book would be greatly circumscribed. I therefore offered the editors of the Chronicle, the Patriot, the Yankee, my friend Mr. Caleb Bingham, and Mr. A. Dunlap, the gratuitous privilege of printing an edition, jointly; merely on condition of presenting ten per cent of the copies to persons unable to purchase. The two first, and Mr. B. declined; they probably doubted the success of the enterprise. The editors of the

Yankee, and Mr. Dunlap, jointly printed an edition, which, although it did not appear till after the peace, has been some time wholly sold off.

An edition, the fifth, consisting of 1920 copies, is publishing at Middlebury, Vermont; and another is about to be put to press at Cincinnati, in the state of Ohio.

No political work, to my knowledge, has ever had an equal degree of success in America, except " Common Sense." Four editions were sold in eight month; two more are at this moment in the press; and a seventh, as I said, is about to be printed. Nevertheless, it is not quite twelve months since the work was begun, and not ten since the first edition was published. It may, however, be fairly asserted, that there never was a greater, dispropotion between praise and patronage, than this work has experienced. I have received quires of encomi ums on it; many of them most enthusiastic and high wrought; and yet I do not believe that ten men, perhaps I might say six, have made any exertions to promote its success.*

The variety of assurances, I have received from a great variety of respectable quarters, of its beneficial tendency, preclude all doubt in my mind on the subject. Among others, a judge of the Supreme court of Pennsylvania, a decided federalist, (whose name I have no hesitation in stating to any enquirer) emphatically declared, in a circle of gentlemen of the bar, that it was the honestest and fairest book on politics he had ever read.

Under this impression of its usefulness, I am very desirous of extending its circulation: not from motives of interest, as the reader will readily admit, when he is informed that besides the Boston, Middlebury, and Cincinnati editions, for which I have not, and will not receive a dollar; I have offered the gratuitous privilege of printing the work, in Raleigh, Richmond and Hartford; and perhaps I may say, without impropriety, that if it deserve one-fourth of the praise which has been lavished on it, some decided exertions ought to have been made to give it a general circulation. Enough of this. Let me turn another leaf.

Mr. Coleman, the editor of the New-York Evening Post, has lately asserted in the most dogmatical manner, as if of his own knowledge, that I am not the author of this work; and that it was written by some " confirmed New-York misanthropist."

• There are persons worth 30, 40, and 50,000 dollars, who have expressed the most extravagant approbation of the work, and yet never distributed a copy, nor ever owned one. Borrowed copies have fully gratified their curiosity. Let me bestow a tribute of gratitude to a different order of beings. Their scarcity enhances their merits. A gentleman in NewYork purchased one hundred copies of the second edition for distribution. Mr. Wilson, of Trenton, engaged one hundred and fifty, and another Book seller purchased fifty dollars worth. I know of no other persons that made effort whatever

any

to extend its circulation.

I sent him a calm and candid reply, for which I claimed and expected a place in his paper: but he had neither the generosity nor the common justice to publish this reply to a wanton and unprovoked attack, in which by fair implication, I am charged with falsehood and dishonesty, in prefixing my name to a work as author, which he asserts I did not write. I leave Mr. Coleman, to justify this odious mode of managing a press, to his own conscience, and to the public.

I have more than once conducted a newspaper. I have studied the duties of an editor with attention; and am firmly persuaded that this conduct on the part of Mr. Coleman, is a gross and flagrant violation of one of his fundamental duties. Mr. Coleman has no right to make such a daring attack on me or any other citizen, without affording a full and fair opportunity of vindication.

On this subject of authorship, I shall merely state, that the allegation is utterly destitute of truth that there is not a single line in the work, except the documents and extracts, written by any person but myself; and that the confirmed misanthropist, whoever he be, is as innocent of it as Mr. Coleman, or Major Russel.

The very simple mode of refuting a book, by ascribing it to some other person than the real author, is rather stale. It had lost all the merit of novelty many centuries since; and however it may have answered the purpose, on its "first appearance," it is now wholly unavailing. Mr. Coleman may rest assured, that when the Olive Branch charges him with "preferring war and all its horrors to the exclusion of his friends from power;" there is not a man in the country, who will conceive that the charge is refuted by his peremptorily asserting, that it was not Mr. Carey, but "a confirmed misanthropist," that has made the accusation. This dogmatical and utterly-groundless assertion will not refute a single line of the work. The reader will require arguments of a very different kind indeed, to be convinced that I am in error.

Were the spirit of persecution in possession of as sovereign authority over the axe, or the gibbet, as formerly; I should most indubitably be destroyed, for the very strong and unpalatable truths in this book, if I had " as many lives as a cat," or, "as one Plutarch is said to have had." But thank heaven those days are past; the spirit, however, remains; but it can only state its malice, by slander and abuse of a man's character; and by attempts to destroy his business, or his prospects in life. But to a man who has passed fifty-five, with a constitution never very good, and now considerable impaired, it is not verv important what befals him, in the short remainder of life. When tender women, some of them pregnant, have freely gone to the stake, or to the gibbet, for dogmas, which they could not understand: it does not require a very extraordinary

PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION.

33

degree of heroism, for a man of fifty-five, to run any risque, of person or character, that may attend a bold appeal to the good sense of the nation, with a view to acquire the Benediction, pronounced in the declaration, "Blessed are the peace makers."

M. CAREY.

** It would be ungenerous not to acknowledge the obligations I am under to sundry gentlemen, for documents of various kinds. Richard Rush, Cæsar A. Rodney, Joseph Nourse, and Adam Seybert, Esq'rs have been uncommonly kind and attentive. Whatever they have had in their power, they have furnished. To Mr. Duponceau's pamphlets I have had free access. From Mr. Binns I have had various newspapers highly serviceable. And Mr. Andrew Dunlap, late of Boston, now of Cincinnati, furnished me with the chief part of the extracts from the Boston papers. These gentle men, and others whose names I need not mention, will, I hope, accept this public testimony of my gratitude.

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