12 calculated to give pain to living persons. The request was assented to, but explicit direction given to mark the fact that a passage was. omitted.” Whatever direction he may have given to the printer, as to this particular passage, it would be difficult to find a mark indicating the omission ; and still more difficult to prove, that, in practice, he adopted any such rule as the one here mentioned. All the evidence would tend to establish the contrary. In his work are many selections from Washington’s letters, some of them of considerable length, and in the midst of them are frequent omissions of paragraphs and sentences. In no instance, it is believed, can any mark or other indication be discovered, which intimates an omission. I shall produce a few examples illustrative of this fact; and also a few others, showing the kind of editorial revision which Judge Marshall bestowed upon the manuscript selections in preparing them for the press. In the first place, I shall present the parallel passages in which discrepances occur between Mr. Reed’s originals and the same letters as recorded in the Letter-Books. It is here to be observed, that all the passages from the Letter-Books accord with the text printed by me in “ Washington’s Writings,” except the variations mentioned in the notes.
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