...tions of the Whig journals of Boston, had spread a general impression of his unfitness for public life, which it was very desirable to remove or modify. To use his own words, he had, as he wrote to Dr. Howe , been held up as a man incapable of public business, of one idea, and a fanatic, though of acknowledged powers in a certain direction; and the correction of that erroneous impression he considered th...