7 he had been prevented from showing all the civilities he desired to show to gentlemen in Massachusetts while his head-quarters were at Cambridge, adds, as printed by me, “ If this has given rise to the jealousy, I can only say that I am sorry for it.” In Mr. Reed’s text it was printed, “ I can not say that I am sorry for it.” As it was taken for granted by the critics, that Mr. Reed’s text was right, and mine wrong, they urged with no little acrimony, that I had changed the language and perverted the sense, making Washington express a sentiment on a delicate point directly opposite to the one he intended; and it was ominously inferred, that, if I would take such a liberty in one case, I might do the same anywhere and everywhere, from the beginning to the end of the work. It turns out, however, that I had printed the words correctly. These mistakes in Mr. Reed’s text were unquestionably the result of accident, and it would have been kind in him, if, the moment he saw the comments upon them in the public journals, he had communicated through the same channels a few words of explanation, especially as he was the only person who had the means of doing it, and as the misapprehension had arisen from inadvertences of his own. This would have saved Lord Mahon from the error of making, and the awkwardness of retracting, an unfounded charge; it would have saved
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