themselves wrong enough to be put right_, (which
did not appear to be the case at that time) I did not see the propriety
of urging it precipitately, and declined being the publisher of it
myself. After this account of a fact, the leaders of your party will
scarcely have the hardiness to apply to me the term of Antifederalist.
But I can go to a date and to a fact beyond this; for the proposition
for electing a continental convention to form the Continental Government
is one of the subjects treated of in the pamphlet _Common Sense_.(1)

* I have always been opposed to the mode of refining
Government up to an individual, or what is called a single
Executive. Such a man will always be the chief of a party. A
plurality is far better: It combines the mass of a nation
better together: And besides this, it is necessary to the
manly mind of a republic that it loses the debasing idea of
obeying an individual.--_Author_.

1 See vol. i. of this work, pp. 97, 98, 109, no.--_Editor._.

Having thus cleared away a little of the rubbish that might otherwise
have lain in my way, I return to the point of time at which the present
Federal Constitution and your administration began. It was very well
said by an anonymous writer in Philadelphia, about a year before that
period, that "_thirteen staves and ne'er a hoop will not make a barrel_"
and as any kind of hooping the barrel, however defectively executed,
would be better than none, it was scarcely possible but that
considerable advantages must arise from the federal hooping of the
States. It was with pleasure that every sincere friend of America
beheld, as the natural effect of union, her rising prosperity; and it
was with grief they saw that prosperity mixed, even in the blossom,
with the germ of corruption. Monopolies of every kind marked your
administration almost in the moment of its commencement. The lands
obtained by the revolution were lavished upon partisans; the interest
of the disbanded soldier was sold to the speculator; injustice was acted
under the pretence of faith; and the chief of the army became the patron
of the fraud.(2) From such a beginning what else could be expected, than
what has happened? A mean and servile submission to the insults of one
nation; treachery and ingratitude to another.

2 The history of the Scioto Company, by which so many
Frenchmen as well as Americans were ruined, warranted an
even stro