on. It gives me pain to hear
gentlemen continually distorting the natural construction of language.
Assuredly, it is sufficient if any human production can stand a fair
discussion. Before I proceed to make some additions to the reasons which
have been adduced by my honorable friend over the way, I must take the
liberty to make some observations on what was said by another gentleman
(Mr. Henry). He told us that this constitution ought to be rejected,
because, in his opinion, it endangered the public liberty in many
instances. Give me leave to make one answer to that observation--let the
dangers with which this system is supposed to be replete, be clearly
pointed out. If any dangerous and unnecessary powers be given to the
general legislature, let them be plainly demonstrated, and let us not
rest satisfied with general assertions of dangers, without proof,
without examination. If powers be necessary, apparent danger is not a
sufficient reason against conceding them. He has suggested, that
licentiousness has seldom produced the loss of liberty; but that the
tyranny of rulers has almost always effected it. Since the general
civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the
abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent
encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations;
but on a candid examination of history, we shall find that turbulence,
violence, and abuse of power, by the majority trampling on the rights of
the minority, have produced factions and commotions which, in republics,
have, more frequently than any other cause, produced despotism. If we go
over the whole history of ancient and modern republics, we shall find
their destruction to have generally resulted from those causes. If we
consider the peculiar situation of the United States, and go to the
sources of that diversity of sentiment which pervades its inhabitants,
we shall find great danger to fear that the same causes may terminate
here in the same fatal effects which they produced in those republics.
This danger ought to be wisely guarded against. In the progress of this
discussion, it will perhaps appear, that the only possible remedy for
those evils, and the only certain means of preserving and protecting the
principles of republicanism, will be found in that very system which is
now exclaimed against as the parent of oppression. I must confess that I
have not been able to find his usual consistency in the