nished by ten thousand resolutions. Is not
that the guide and rule of this legislature. A multiplicity of laws is
reprobated in any society, and tend but to confound and perplex. How
strange would a law appear which was to confirm a law; and how much
more strange must it appear for this body to pass resolutions to
confirm the constitution under which they sit! This is the case with
others of the resolutions.

A gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Stone) very properly observed, that the
Union had received the different States with all their ill habits
about them. This was one of these habits established long before the
constitution, and could not now be remedied. He begged congress to
reflect on the number on the continent who were opposed to this
constitution, and on the number which yet remained in the Southern
States. The violation of this compact they would seize on with
avidity; they would make a handle of it to cover their designs against
the government, and many good federalists, who would be injured by the
measure, would be induced to join them: his heart was truly federal,
and it had always been so, and he wished those designs frustrated. He
begged congress to beware before they went too far: he called on them
to attend to the interest of two whole States, as well as to the
memorials of a society of quakers, who came forward to blow the
trumpet of sedition, and to destroy that constitution which they had
not in the least contributed by personal service or supply to
establish.

He seconded Mr. Tucker's motion.

Mr. Smith (of S.C.) said, the gentleman from Massachusetts, (Mr.
Gerry,) had declared that it was the opinion of the select committee,
of which he was a member, that the memorial of the Pennsylvania
society, required congress to violate the constitution. It was not
less astonishing to see Dr. Franklin taking the lead in a business
which looks so much like a persecution of the Southern inhabitants,
when he recollected the parable he had written some time ago, with a
view of showing the immorality of one set of men persecuting others
for a difference of opinion. The parable was to this effect: an old
traveller, hungry and weary, applied to the patriarch Abraham for a
night's lodging. In conversation, Abraham discovered that the stranger
differed with him on religious points, and turned him out of doors. In
the night God appeared unto Abraham, and said, where is the stranger?
Abraham answered, I found that he di