er to give a large price for the friendship of a delegate in
Congress. If we adopt the new system, every member will depend upon thirty
thousand people, mostly scattered over a large extent of country, for his
election. Their distance from the seat of government will make it
extremely difficult for the electors to get information of his conduct. If
he is faithful to his constituents, his conduct will be misrepresented, in
order to defeat his influence at home. Of this we have a recent instance,
in the treatment of the dissenting members of the late federal
convention.(26) Their fidelity to their constituents was their whole
fault. We may reasonably expect similar conduct to be adopted, when we
shall have rendered the friendship of the members valuable to foreign
powers, by giving them a secure seat in Congress. We shall too have all
the intrigues, cabals and bribery practiced, which are usual at elections
in Great Britain. We shall see and lament the want of publick virtue; and
we shall see ourselves bought at a publick market, in order to be sold
again to the highest bidder. We must be involved in all the quarrels of
European powers, and oppressed with expense, merely for the sake of being
like the nations round about us. Let us then, with the spirit of freemen,
reject the offered system, and treat as it deserves the proposition of men
who have departed from their commission; and let us deliver to the rising
generation the liberty purchased with our blood.

AGRIPPA.

Agrippa, XV.

The Massachusetts Gazette, (Number 402)

TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 1788.

TO THE MASSACHUSETTS CONVENTION.

_Gentlemen_,

Truly deplorable, in point of argument, must be that cause, in whose
defence persons of acknowledged learning and ability can say nothing
pertinent. When they undertake to prove that the person elected is the
safest person in the world to control the exercise of the elective powers
of his constituents, we know what dependence is to be had upon their
reasonings. Yet we have seen attempts to shew, that the fourth section of
the proposed constitution is an additional security to our rights. It may
be such in the view of a Rhode Island family (I think that state is
quoted) who have been of some time in the minority: but it is
extraordinary that an enlightened character(27) in the Massachusetts
[convention] should undertake to prove, that, from a single instance of
abuse in one state, another state ought to resign it