9 ural. It happens, however, that the error on his part is of very little moment in its bearing on the question, since the letter to which Washington was writing an answer contained the phrase, and he - evidently adopted it from that source. This conviction at the time may have induced Mr. Reed to add the quotation marks, or they may have crept in by some accident. But enough has heretofore been said respecting the letters of this class; that is, the letters of which Mr. Reed possesses the originals, and of which Washington retained no copies. My present object is mainly to notice another class of letters ; those to Joseph Reed printed by me from the Letter- Books. Mr. Reed observes, “ I have thought it best to reprint every one of the letters, which have been selected by Mr Sparks, even when he copied, not from the originals, but from the Letter-Books, in order to show, as a mere matter of literary curiosity, how far they differ.” Here Mr. Reed mistakes in saying that he has reprinted “ every one ” of the letters copied by me from the Letter-Books. In reality he has taken but about half of them. The whole number derived from that source is more than twenty. He reprints only ten as having been compared with the copies in the Letter-Books. His method is to divide the page into two par- 2
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