VI. DEBATE OVER CONSTITUTION

Some of your politicians have undertaken to say, there is particular
danger to liberty in the circumstance of our having chosen the greatest
and most virtuous of our citizens to fill the principal stations in the
government; because, say they, it will render the people less sensible of
the faults of the constitution. In answer to this it may be justly observed,
that any errors and improprieties, which may have crept into it, are
placed before the known friends of the people, long approved for their
wisdom and virtue; so that whatever is really wrong, will be discovered
by their abilities, and will be amended by their integrity. It is much
more just and reasonable that we should assert, that there really cannot
be this supposed danger to the liberty and happiness of our country,
from a constitution which a long list of our worthiest and most enlight-
ened patriots, with our political father at their head,5 continue after mature
reflection and experience, deliberately and decidedly to approve. Superla-
tively base and infamous would be the return for the series of essential
services performed by our most excellent chief magistrate, were we to
admit a bare possibility, that he could calmly view the destruction of
that liberty and public happiness, which he so long laboured to pro-
cure, and is now toiling to perpetuate. How much do your wretched
politicians wantonly hazard, when, in torturing every thought and cir-
cumstance into forms of deception and alarm, they will venture to sug-
gest, that he who has almost grown old in the practice of every public
and private virtue, can endure torpidly to witness through the remain-
der of his days the ruin of his country.
The declared and manifest design of the new federal constitution, is
the obtaining and securing the most desirable and estimable objects of
civil society. It has been always conceded, even by its opponents, that
the people of America cannot secure these blessings without an Union
among at least four or five contiguous states. How preposterous, how
wild then would an attempt to maintain the separate independency of
your state appear. You know already the difference of our population
and yours; our territory is six hundred and thirty-eight millions of acres,
yours is not two millions; our wealth is greater than yours by more than
the proportion of population, for you are not as rich according to
numbers as the other states are at a medium. You cannot increase in
people for want of room, and from other causes already laid before
you; we must increase from the abundance of vacant territory and other
advantages which we possess. What must be the consequence of your
declaring for a separation, or your continuing to maintain it, which
you must suppose we consider as the same thing. You cannot any
longer shelter yourselves under forms or ingenious pretences. Affairs

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