wonderful apathy continued; if we remained sluggishly with our arms folded, while our situation became daily more awfal and alarming; ruin was inevitable. We should have afforded one of the most striking instances in history, of premature decay and decrepitude. The Lord in his mercy has averted such an awful fate! Reliance was placed by those who denied the existence of the danger which I deprecated, upon the sober character of the nation. They regarded that character as a guarantee against civil war. I was well aware of this circumstance. I allowed it a due share of influence and importance. But the strong inference drawn from it, was unwarranted by history." And let it be observed, once for all, that the only unerring guide in government, or politics, is history, to the neglect of whose lessons may be ascribed more than two thirds of our errors and follies. The Athenians were a highly polished, and a refined people. No nation in ancient times, ever excelled them in these respects. Yet they were occasionally seduced into the most frightful cruelties by their Cleons and other enrages. They often massacred their prisoners in cold blood, and long after they were taken. And the proscriptions and butcheries the adverse parties perpetrated on each other, as they gained the ascendency, are frightful subjects of reflection, and to us hold out most invaluable warnings. No nation of modern Europe excelled France, few equal led her in courtesy-in mildness-in urbanity. And yet never did mankind exhibit themselves under a more hideous aspect never did they change nature more completely with wolves, tygers, and hyaenas, than the French under Marat, Danton, Couthon, and Robespierre. These are awful lessons, to which those who were lending their aid to tear down. the pillars of our government, ought to have attended. Man is the same every where, under the same excitements. We have our Cleons, and our Couthons, and our Dantons, and our Robespierres, who only required suitable occasions to have given scope to their energies. Mild and gentle as is the American character generally, the revolution in this country exhibited in various places, where the parties were rancorously embittered against each other, many terrifying scenes: Prisoners were often hung up without trial by the partizans on both sides. Men and women were treacherously shot down in their houses. And not unfrequently private malice, to sate its rage, disguised itself under the cloak of public spirit. Let us ponder well on those circumstances, They are fraught with important admonitions. To apply a remedy to any evil, moral or physical, it is indispensably necessary to explore its nature-to ascertain its causes and to trace its consequences. Any other procedure arises from error and folly, and is pregnant with defeat and disappointment. With this view I respectfully solicited the public attention. I took a rapid retrospective glance at the folly and guilt, which the factious and discordant state of our country had generated. As far as in my power, I divested myself of any party bias, and treated the subject as if it belonged to another age or nation. Whatever errors I fell into, arose not from sinister intention: they were chargeable to inadvertence and human imperfection. On my freedom from partiality, I felt the more reliance, from my unalterable conviction, that both the hostile parties that divide this country, and who regard each other with so much hatred and jealously, had largely contributed towards the misfortunes that had befallen us--the melancholy change that had taken place in our situation-and the dangers that threatened us. It was impossible for a candid mind to review the scenes through which we had passed for some years, without a thorough conviction, that each had been guilty of most egregious errors and follies, and occasionally of something worse than either; and that whenever the interests of the nation and the interests of the party came in collision, the former had been too frequently sacrificed by both federalists and democrats to the latter. No man who has any public spirit, can take a review of our history without feeling the deepest regret at the extent of the mischief this miserable system of conduct has produced. has defeated many of the noblest plans that the wisdom of the country has ever devised. I may he wrong in my calculations; but I believe it has prevailed to at least as great an extent here, as in almost any other country, or at any other period of time. When the present generation sits for its picture to the historian, it will form a strong contrast to that which is past and gone. The errors or follies, however, of either party would have produced but little injury comparatively, had not those of the other conspired to give them malignity and effect. It From this exposition of my views, it was obvious I should steer a course very different from the generality of writers on political topics. With hardly a single exception, their ob *This is one of the most lamentable and humiliating facts in our history> ject is, having espoused a party, to justify and emblazon its supporters, whether right or wrong; and, if needs be, "To make the worse appear the better cause." In pursuit of this object, their own partizans are all angels of light, whose sublime and magnificent plans of policy are calculated to produce a political millenium; and their opponents, demons incarnate, intent on the destruction of the best interests of the country. These portraits are equally unjust and incorrect. One is all beauty, with little resemblance to the pretended original-the other a hideous caricature, equalby foreign from honor, truth, and justice. Among the frightful consequences resulting from this odious practice, a plain and palpable one presents itself. These horrible portraits engendered a satanical spirit of hatred, malice, and abhorrence in the parties towards each other. Citizens of adverse opinions, whose views were perfectly pure and public spirited, were to each other objects of distrust and jealously. We attached all possible guilt and wickedness-political at least-to our opponents-and then detested the hobgoblins which we had ourselves created. It is not thus society is constituted. The mass of mankind perhaps of all parties, and in all ages, have meant well, except in very corrupt states of society. And little more is necessary to produce harmony between them, than to understand each other correctly. But hostility is excited and perpetuated by the intrigues and management of demagogues, whose influence and consequence depend on fomenting dis cord, and who would sink into insignificance in times of tranquility. Mankind, as I have hinted, hate each other, not for real existing differences, but for phantoms, the production of heated imaginations. Experience has frequently evinced that the very plans of policy which parties out of power have reprobated and denounced as pernicious, they have pursued themselves as soon as they had vanquished their opponents, and seized on their places. And I believe every man of reflection will acknowledge, that if the federalists had retained the administration in their hands, they would have advocated the rights of their country as firmly as their successors have done; and would probably have adopted measures to resist the arrogant and destructive claims of England, similar to those, for which they have so strenuously, though not very honourably or consistently, opposed the present administration. It is historical fact. It This is not mere supposition. will be seen in the sequel of this work, that the federalists took as high ground on the subject of impressment, and as firmly and patriotically resisted the unjust, the daring, the degrading pretensions of England, as Mr. Jefferson or Mr. Madison have done. Yet the resistance of the two latter presidents has been among the strongest accusations alledged against them by their political adversaries. It is impossible to reflect on these topics without sighing over human weakness and folly. Federalism has in these transactions suffered a stain never to be effaced. CHAPTER II. Errors of the Democratic Party. Federal Constitution. Opposition to a Navy. Allien and Sedition Law. Jay's Treaty. In pursuance of my plan, I proceed to a review of those errors of the democratic party, which contributed to produce the change in the prospects of this country, and to darken the political horizon; and I trust it will appear that I have not done them injustice in charging a large portion of the folly and guilt to their account. Federal Constitution. In the convention that formed the federal constitution, the democratic party sowed the seeds of a premature dissolution of that instrument, and of the American confederacy. Regarding society more as it ought to be, than as it has ever been, or is ever likely to be-led away by theories more plausible than solid-applying to a free elective government, deriving all its powers and authorities from the voice of the people, maxims, and apprehensions, and precautions, calculated for the meridian of monarchy, they directed all their efforts, and all their views, towards guarding against oppression from the federal government. Whatever of authority or power, they divested it of, to bestow on the state governments, or reserve to the people, was regarded as an important advantage. Against the federal government their fears and terrors were wholly directed. This was the horrible monster, which they laboured to cripple and chain down, to prevent its ravages. The state governments they regarded with the utmost complacence, as the public protectors against this dreadful enemy of liberty. Had they succeeded in all 6 their views, they would have deprived the general govern t ment of nearly all its efficiency. Alas! little did they sup pose that our greatest dangers would arise from the usurpations of the state governments, some of which have since most awfully and treasonably jeopardised the union. Unfortunately this party was too successful in the convention. Its endeavors produced a constitution, which, however admirably calculated for a period of peace, has been found incompetent in war to call forth, at once and decisively, the energies of the nation, and the administration of which has been repeatedly bearded, baffled, and thwarted by the state governments. Had the real federalists in the convention succeeded, and made the general government somewhat more energetic-endowed it with a small degree more of powerit might endure for centuries. What fate at present awaits it, is not in human wisdom to foresee. I fervently pray, with the celebrated father Paul, esto perpetua. This error of the democratic party arose from a want of due regard to the history of republics, and from a profound study of those political writers who had written under monarchical governments, and whose views were wholly directed to guard against the danger of tyranny flowing from the overweening regal power, especially when possessed by men of powerful talents, and great ambition. The theories whence they derived their views of government were splendid and sublime-the productions of men of great public spirit, and regard for the general welfare and happiness-and, had they been duly attempered by maxims drawn from experience, would have been of inestimable value. Establishment of a small Navy. THE steady and factious opposition made by the democratic party, to the establishment of a small navy, adequate at least to the protection of our own coasts, has been proved by the event to have been most wretched and miserable policy. It arose, as well from a spirit of hostility towards the party in power, as from a sordid and contemptible spirit of economy, which has in many instances disgraced and dishonoured this party, who have frequently proved themselves, to use a very trite but very expressive proverb, "penny wise-pound foolish." When we analyse the boasted spirit of economy, to which the opposition to a navy may be in part ascribed, we shall find it arises from two sources; the one, from men of narrow minds carrying into public, the huckstering habits of private life. The other, a base spirit of courting popularity by husbanding the public treasure, even on occasions when liberality is true economy, which as frequently occur in pub |