oment. When I find a great cry amongst the people who speculate
little, I think myself called seriously to examine into it, and to
separate the real cause from the ill effects of the passion it may
excite, and the bad use which artful men may make of an irritation of
the popular mind. Here we must be aided by persons of a contrary
character; we must not listen to the desperate or the furious: but it is
therefore necessary for us to distinguish who are the _really_ indigent
and the _really_ intemperate. As to the persons who desire this part in
the Constitution, I have no reason to imagine that they are men who have
nothing to lose and much to look for in public confusion. The popular
meeting from which apprehensions have been entertained has assembled. I
have accidentally had conversation with two friends of mine who know
something of the gentleman who was put into the chair upon that
occasion: one of them has had money transactions with him; the other,
from curiosity, has been to see his concerns: they both tell me he is a
man of some property: but you must be the best judge of this, who by
your office are likely to know his transactions. Many of the others are
certainly persons of fortune; and all, or most, fathers of families,
men in respectable ways of life, and some of them far from contemptible,
either for their information, or for the abilities which they have shown
in the discussion of their interests. What such men think it for their
advantage to acquire ought not, _prima facie_, to be considered as rash
or heady or incompatible with the public safety or welfare.

I admit, that men of the best fortunes and reputations, and of the best
talents and education too, may by accident show themselves furious and
intemperate in their desires. This is a great misfortune, when it
happens; for the first presumptions are undoubtedly in their favor. We
have two standards of judging, in this case, of the sanity and sobriety
of any proceedings,--of unequal certainty, indeed, but neither of them
to be neglected: the first is by the value of the object sought; the
next is by the means through which it is pursued.

The object pursued by the Catholics is, I understand, and have all along
reasoned as if it were so, in some degree or measure to be again
admitted to the franchises of the Constitution. Men are considered as
under some derangement of their intellects, when they see good and evil
in a different light from other men,--wh