of your lungs and your profound knowledge in the
first principles of government; mixing and illustrating his little remarks
with a profusion of those hems, that never fail to lengthen out and
enliven his oratory. This reply (from your intimate acquaintance), the
match being so equal and the contrast so comic, had the happy effect to
put the house in good humor, and leave you a prey to the most humiliating
reflections. But this did not teach you to bound your future speeches by
the lines of moderation; for the very next day you exhibited without a
blush another specimen of eternal volubility. It was not, however, to the
duration of your speeches you owed the perfection of your reputation. You,
alone, advocated the political heresy, that the people ought not to be
trusted with the election of representatives.(44) You held the jargon,
that notwithstanding each state had an equal number of votes in the
Senate; yet the states were unequally represented in the Senate. You
espoused the tyrannic principle, that where a State refused to comply with
a requisition of Congress for money, that an army should be marched into
its bowels, to fall indiscriminately upon the property of the innocent and
the guilty, instead of having it collected as the Constitution proposed,
by the mild and equal operation of laws. One hour you sported the opinion
that Congress, afraid of the militia resisting their measures, would
neither arm nor organize them, and the next, as if men required no time to
breathe between such contradictions, that they would harass them by long
and unnecessary marches, till they wore down their spirit and rendered
them fit subjects for despotism. You, too, contended that the powers and
authorities of the new Constitution must destroy the liberties of the
people; but that the same powers and authorities might be safely trusted
with the Old Congress. You cannot have forgotten, that by such ignorance
in politics and contradictory opinions, you exhausted the politeness of
the Convention, which at length prepared to slumber when you rose to
speak; nor can you have forgotten, you were only twice appointed a member
of a Committee, or that these appointments were made merely to avoid your
endless garrulity, and if possible, lead you to reason, by the easy road
of familiar conversation. But lest you should say that I am a record only
of the bad, I shall faithfully recognize whatever occurred to your
advantage. You originated that cla