Hamilton on the Art of Political Prosecution

Alexander Hamilton, oil portrait by Daniel Huntington (1865)

[N]o character, however upright, is a match for constantly reiterated attacks, however false. It is well understood by its disciples, that every calumny makes some proselites and even retains some; since justification seldom circulates as rapidly and as widely as slander. The number of those who from doubt proceed to suspicion and thence to belief of imputed guilt is continually augmenting; and the public mind fatigued at length with resistance to the calumnies which eternally assail it, is apt in the end to sit down with the opinion that a person so often accused cannot be be entirely innocent.

–Alexander Hamilton, “Observations on Certain Documents continued in No. V and VI of The History of the United States for the Year 1796” (1797) in: The Works of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 7, p. 377 (H.C. Lodge ed. 1904)