III. DEBATE OVER CONSTITUTION

Enclosed is Greenleafs4 which details prety fairly, To which refering
you I am With regard & esteem Your Hum[bl]e S[ervan]t
1. Printed: William F. Goodwin, ed., "The Thatcher Papers," The Historical Magazine,
2nd ser., VI (1869), 349. Goodwin printed no more than the excerpt printed here. Otis
was a Massachusetts delegate to Congress.
2. See "Confederation Congress Makes Provision to Put the New Government Under
the Constitution into Operation," 2 July-13 September (above).
3. Otis refers to the federal procession that would take place in New York City on 23
July (Appendix I). On 17 July, Paine Wingate, a New Hampshire delegate to Congress,
also commented upon the upcoming procession, declaring that it would take place "with
extraordinary pomp" (to John Pickering, VI, below). Four days later, Wingate referred
to the upcoming procession as "pompous" and he hoped that "it will be the last I shall
see or hear of this year" (to Hannah Wingate, 21 July, Smith, Letters, XXV, 242).
4. The reference is to Thomas Greenleaf's New York Journal.
New York Journal, 17 July 17881
Knowing that all classes of people, whether federal or antifederal,
are anxious to hear the progress as well as the result of the debates in
Convention, the Editor has endeavoured, from week to week, to give
as exact a statement as could possibly be ascertained, and as divested
of party spirit as the materials would admit. Sensible of the serious
importance of the present deliberation, which keeps the state in sus-
pence, while their freedom and independence, which cost so much
blood and treasure, is suspended, as it were, upon a thread, he is not
devoid of those keen sensations which he humbly conceives ought to
be fathered by every patriotic breast so long as the state of public affairs
are tremulously critical.-Having acted a part, in his profession, which
he is sure will be justified by every free and impartial inhabitant of the
United States, viz. that of preserving his press free, accessible by all
parties, he presumes to justify his conduct in the face of those who
have falsly avowed, that he had rejected communications other than those
which were unfit for the public scrutiny, of which, as many have been
thrown by, unnoticed, on one side as on the other. Prizing the peace,
happiness and glory of his country, equally with the most zealous de-
claimer, he is willing to be tried at the bar of the great body of citizens,
and by their decisions to stand or fall-for, before that august body
one general question would suffice to condemn or acquit him, which
will doubtless be-Has every man a right to speak and publish his sentiments
freely? If it be given in the affirmative, the genius of freedom still reigns
triumphant, and the editor will be acquitted; if, in the negative-blow,
ye western zephers, and waft him quick from thrauldom. Politics and
government are sciences he pretends not to be the master of-and all
he wishes is, impartially to represent.

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