Note 83 — Chapter XXIX

In “No. 6,” written, it is supposed, some time in August, Fauchet, alluding to the breaking out of the Whiskey Insurrection, said: “Scarce was the commotion known when the secretary of state [Mr. Randolph] came to my house. All his countenance was grief. He requested of me a private conversation. 'It is all over,' he said to me; 'a civil war is about to ravage our unhappy country. Four men, by their talents, their influence, their energy, may save it. But—debtors of English merchants—they will be deprived of their liberty if they take the smallest step. Could you lend them instantaneous funds sufficient to shelter them from English persecution?' This inquiry astonished me. It was impossible for me to make a satisfactory answer. You know my want of power and my defect of pecuniary means. I shall draw myself from the affair by some common-place remarks, and by throwing myself on the pure and disinterested principles of the republic.”