an act, the constitutionality of that act is stamped with the seal of infallibility, and is no longer a subject for the deliberation or remonstrance of the citizen, to what monstrous lengths might not an arbitrary and tyrannical administration carry its power. It has only to pass through rapid readings and mid-night sessions, without allowing time for reflection and debate to the final enacting of a bill and before the people are even informed of the intentions of their rulers, their claims are riveted, and the right of complaint denied them. Were such doctrine sound, what species of oppression might not be inflicted on the prostrate liberties of our country. If such a doctrine were true, our constitution would be nothing but a name—nay worse, a fatal instrument to sanctify oppression, and legalize the tyranny which inflicts it.
Nothing but madness or imbecility could put at hazard the existence of a "balanced government, capable of operating and providing for the public good," unless the administration of that Government, by its arbitrary impositions had endangered or destroyed the very objects for the protection of whch it had been instituted.
Should such a case ever occur, on the administration who should usurp powers and violate such sacred obligations, must rest the odium of having hazarded a government "so safe, so reasonable and so beyond everything else essential to the liberty and happiness of our fellow ctizens."
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It cannot be denied, that jealousy and distrust have arisen among the people of Massachusetts, and much it is to be regretted, that they have been so well founded. A system of policy ruinous to their interests, and uncongenial to their enterprising spirit—a system for which the adminstration has yet, in our opinion, assigned no adequate reason, has borne most heavily and unequally on the northern and commercial States. For relief from this oppression the people fondly looked to the meeting of Congress—but alas! how fatally have their hopes been blasted: Their humble prayers have been answered by an act so arbitrary and oppressive, that it violates the first principles of civil liberty, and the fundamental provisions of the Constitution. At such a
