vanished before them. Since that time we have been continually coalescing.
The people have applied with diligence to their several occupations, and
the whole country wears one face of improvement. Agriculture has been
improved, manufactures multiplied, and trade prodigiously enlarged. These
are the advantages of freedom in a growing country. While our resources
have been thus rapidly increasing, the courts have set in every part of
the commonwealth, without any guard to defend them; have tried causes of
every kind, whether civil or criminal, and the sheriffs, have in no case
been interrupted in the execution of their office. In those cases indeed,
where the government was more particularly interested, mercy has been
extended; but in civil causes, and in the case of moral offences, the law
has been punctually executed. Damage done to individuals, during the
tumults, has been repaired, by judgment of the courts of law, and the
award has been carried into effect. This is the present state of affairs,
when we are asked to relinquish that freedom which produces such happy
effects.
The attempt has been made to deprive us of such a beneficial system, and
to substitute a rigid one in its stead, by criminally alarming our fears,
exalting certain characters on one side, and vilifying them on the other.
I wish to say nothing of the merits or demerits of individuals; such
arguments always do hurt. But assuredly my countrymen cannot fail to
consider and determine who are the most worthy of confidence in a business
of this magnitude.
Whether they will trust persons, who have from their cradles been
incapable of comprehending any other principles of government, than those
of absolute power, and who have, in this very affair, tried to deprive
them of their constitutional liberty, by a pitiful trick. They cannot
avoid prefering those who have uniformly exerted themselves to establish a
limited government, and to secure to individuals all the liberty that is
consistent with justice, between man and man, and whose efforts, by the
smiles of Providence, have hitherto been crowned with the most splendid
success. After the treatment we have received, we have a right to be
jealous, and to guard our present constitution with the strictest care. It
is the right of the people to judge, and they will do wisely to give an
explicit instruction to their delegates in the proposed convention, not to
agree to any proposition that will in any degree m
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