Excerpt from Statement in Answer to an Assertion Made by Sir William Hamilton, Bart;, Professor of Logic in the University of Edinburgh

If I had felt any anger at the hasty and utterly groundless imputation which has given me the trouble of making this statement, I think the preceding letter would have removed it. There is something racy about the idea of private declaration and answer before going into court, circumstanced as we were. In cases of amicable literary controversy it would be an excellent plan, and would save a good deal of printing. But the notion of the prosecutor and the accused thief quietly interchanging their notes of evidence, and settling its balance before trial, would, if carried into effect, have vastly tickled the public, never indisposed to find jokes in controversies of this sert. I replied, March 30, by totally declining the arrangement, and calling upon Sir William, as he valued his own honour, either f01thwith to retract, or pub licly to attempt the proof of his accusation. I begged him to understand distinctly, that when I proposed to him to retract, it was because such a mark of consideration was usual and proper but that as far as I was concerned, I had much rather that he should attempt publicly to maintain his words. I added, that I should give no explanations except in print that had they been asked for in the first instance I would have given them; but certainly not to a person who had preferred to make facts of his surmises, and inferences of his suspicions. I now certainly thought I should draw him out.

From that time to the limit fixed, the 10th of April, I heard no more di rectly from Sir William Hamilton. But, in a circuitous way, I was offered a sort of retractation on terms. Sir William, I am certain, did not believe me when I said that I would rather he' should attempt to maintain than retract. A friend of mine, to whom I had mentioned the whole matter, numbers among his friends one of Sir William Hamilton's, a gentleman of high consideration at Edinburgh. To this gentleman my friend wrote, ex pressing his regret at the quarrel that was taking place. Some correspondence ensued, to which, as I was no party to it (though I heard extracts read), I should not have alluded, had it not been that Sir William Hamilton became a party to it. And in the course of it he suggested (with a full knowledge, I believe, that it would be conveyed to me), that if I could manage to remember that the papers I had described in one of my letters of Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 were not written till after I had seen his letter, &e. Of November 2, he, on his part, could say that - I forget the words, but the substance was that - I was probably acting only under intellectual confusion, and not under intention to appropriate his ideas. This I simply refused, for two reasons I forget whether I gave them or not, but here they are. In the first place, I could not remem ber what did not happen: though, as I will show presently, it has nothing to do with the matter, yet those papers were written before the letter of No vember arrived. And in the second place, nothing should ever induce me to buy the withdrawal of such a charge by'any concession whatever. I could only meet it by every possible defiance, expressed in the most peremptory terms which would consist with the respect I wished (and wish) to preserve towards great learning, high character, and ill health.

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