24 I am willing to be responsible, because they were made under a full conviction of their propriety ; but they rarely extend beyond a single word or phrase, and are for the most part grammatical corrections ; such as altering the singular number to the plural, or the contrary, when the construction required it, the insertion of a particle or a relative pronoun, the change of one preposition for another, or of an adjective to an adverb, and the like. Special care was also taken to print all the proper names correctly, however they may have been written ; and this was not so easy a task as might at first be imagined. Nor should it be overlooked, that the variations, whatever may have been their origin, are in the words, and not in the substance. The sense of the writer, as to any point he is aiming to present, is clearly the same in the different texts. As Chief Justice Marshall’s testimony has been appealed to, with reference to this subject, it may not be out of place here to add a few examples illustrative of the method followed by him in editing the selections, which he made from Washington’s letters. Mr. Reed thinks he adopted a rule by which he indicated to the reader the omission of a passage, whenever it happened, by some mark. I have not been able to discover any indications
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