As to you, sir, treacherous to private friendship (for so you have been to me, and that in the day of danger) and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an imposter, whether you have abandoned good principles or whether you ever had any.
ATTRIBUTION:
Thomas Paine (1737–1809), Anglo-American political theorist, writer. Letter, July 30, 1796, to George Washington.
Paine believed that Washington had abandoned him to imprisonment in France during the Reign of Terror.
