He little dreamed, however,
of what had led his two secretaries, one ignorantly and the other
wittingly, to hasten his return. On the very day when he dated his
letter to the selectmen of Boston as from the United States, the
British minister placed in the hands of Mr. Wolcott, the Secretary of
the Treasury, an intercepted letter from Fauchet, the French minister,
to his own government. This dispatch, bearing the number 10, had come
into the possession of Mr. Hammond by a series of accidents; but the
British government and its representatives were quick to perceive that
the chances of the sea had thrown into their hands a prize of much
more value than many French merchantmen. The dispatch thus rescued
from the water, where its bearer had cast it, was filled with a long
and somewhat imaginative dissertation on political parties in the
United States, and with an account of the whiskey rebellion. It also
gave the substance of some conversations held by the writer with the
Secretary of State. This is not the place, nor would space serve, to
examine the details of this famous dispatch, with reference to the
American statesman whom it incriminated. On its face it showed that
Randolph had held conversations with the French minister which no
American Secretary of State ought to have held with any representative
of a foreign government, and it appeared further that the most obvious
interpretation of certain sentences, in view of the readiness of man
to think ill of his neighbor, was that Randolph had suggested corrupt
practices.
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