By your renown'd Forefathers;
So dearly bought, the price of so much blood!
O let it never perish in your hands!
But piously transmit it to your children."

The object of my last address to you was to engage your dispassionate
consideration of the new Federal government; to caution you against
precipitancy in the adoption of it; to recommend a correction of its
errors, if it contained any; to hint to you the danger of an easy
perversion of some of its powers; to solicit you to separate yourselves
from party, and to be independent of and uninfluenced by any in your
principles of politics; and that address was closed with a promise of
future observations on the same subject, which should be justified by
reason and truth. Here I intended to have rested the introduction; but a
writer under the signature of CAESAR, in Mr. Child's paper of the 1st
instant, who treats you with passion, insult, and threat, has anticipated
those observations which would otherwise have remained in silence until a
future period. It would be criminal in me to hesitate a moment to appear
as your advocate in so interesting a cause, and to resist the influence of
such doctrines as this Caesar holds. I shall take no other cognizance of
his remarks on the _questionable_ shape of my future, or the _equivocal_
appearance of my past reflections, than to declare, that in my past, I did
not mean to be misunderstood (for Caesar himself declares that it is
obviously the language of distrust), and that in my future there will not
be the semblance of doubt. But what is the language of Caesar--he ridicules
your prerogative, power, and majesty--he talks of this _proffered
constitution_ as the tender mercy of a benevolent sovereign to deluded
subjects, or, as his tyrant name-sake, of his proffered grace to the
virtuous Cato:--he shuts the door of free deliberation and discussion, and
declares that you must receive this government in manner and form as it is
_proffered_--that you cannot revise or amend it, and lastly, to close the
scene, he insinuates that it will be more healthy for you that the
American Fabius should be induced to accept of the presidency of this new
government than that, in case you do not acquiesce, he should be solicited
to command an army to impose it on you. Is not your indignation roused at
this absolute, imperious style? For what did you open the veins of your
citizens and expend their treasure? For what did you throw off the