for a few more, be a safe depositary for a limited and well-guarded power of legislating for the United States? I must own that I could not give a negative answer to this question, without first obliterating every impression which I have received, with regard to the present genius of the People of America, the spirit which actuates the State Legislatures, and the principles which are incorporated with the political character of every class of citizens. I am unable to conceive, that the People of America, in their present temper, or under any circumstances which can speedily happen, will choose, and every second year repeat the choice, of sixty-five or an hundred men, who would be disposed to form and pursue a scheme of tyranny or treachery. I am unable to conceive that the State Legislatures, which must feel so many motives to watch, and which possess so many means of counteracting the Fœderal Legislature, would fail either to detect or to defeat a conspiracy of the latter against the liberties of their common constituents. I am equally unable to conceive, that there are at this time, or can be in any short time, in the United States, any sixty-five or an hundred men capable of recommending themselves to the choice of the People at large, who would either desire or dare, within the short space of two years, to betray the solemn trust committed to them. What change of circumstances, time, and a fuller population of our country may produce, requires a prophetic spirit to declare, which makes no part of my pretensions. But judging from the circumstances now before us, and from the probable state of them within a moderate period of time, I must pronounce, that the liberties of America cannot be unsafe in the number of hands proposed by the Fœderal Constitution.
From what quarter can the danger proceed? Are we afraid of foreign gold? If foreign gold could so easily corrupt our Fœderal rulers, and enable them to ensnare
