under the burden of domestic maladministration, than by severing the federal Union into a multitude of petty principalities, to entail upon all the extent of the northern continent of America the prevalence of foreign factions, French, Russian, and British, perpetually interfering with, and confounding all their home movements and measures; and, above all, to ensure a perpetuity of feudal anarchy and brigandage; of castellated feuds; of partisan warfare; of hereditary hostility; of arbitrary incarceration; of inquisitorial torment; of military execution; of private assassination; of public pillage; of universal oppression, and all the calamities incident to afflicted humanity, when force and fraud are the arbiters of right and wrong.

It is a fact which should never be forgotten, that the United States, during the period of eight years, under the guidance of Washington's administration, were raised from the lowest point of national depression, penury, and disgrace, to an exalted eminence of national elevation, riches, and honour. The public credit, which had been annihilated, was revived; private confidence, which had been extinguished, was renewed; commerce, which had long languished in indolence and despair, spread its active enterprise over the whole globe; the national debt, which had been considered as for ever sponged, and the public creditors, in consequence, defrauded, was funded, and in the full course of liquidation; a well-adjusted and a growing internal revenue was collected, without pressing upon, and impeding the progress of productive labour; industry, sobriety, good order, moral decency, and wealth, were substituted in the room of idleness, intemperance, tumult, profligacy, and poverty; peace was established and maintained effectually and sincerely, with all the world; native talents and virtue were sought for, brought forward, and raised into high official authority and trust; the national honour and influence were sustained at home, by a strict administration of justice, dealt out impartially to every vidual in the community, and the national dignity was

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upheld abroad, by the capacity, wisdom, and courage of its diplomatic representatives in foreign courts.

America presented to the eyes of all other nations a spectacle unparalleled in the history of the human species; an infant republic, the growth of yesterday, outstripping countries white with the hoar of unnumbered ages, in population, wealth, and power; in arts and arms; in reputation, authority, and influence; and the elder sovereigns of Europe, the great, rival, primary, contending powers, vied with each other in professions of esteem, in proffers of friendship, in the wooings of alliance to the new born dynasty of this western world.

All these wonderful achievements of national good, were the results of only eight years of a wise and practical administration of the federal government.

Ge

It is the more necessary to lay the foundations of government broad and deep, since every new government is of necessity weak, precisely, because it is new. neral Hamilton was so well aware of this important truth, that he laid before the general convention, as stated in the preceding pages, in the year 1787, a much stranger scheme of government than the federal constitution, which was ultimately adopted. But Washington's prudence or timidity prevailed over the intrepid sagacity of Hamilton; and the present federal constitution was established. The rejection of Hamilton's plan, and the adoption of a feebler frame of national government, is the more to be regretted, because, every new government founded on principles of personal and social liberty, must be feeble; and stand in need of a very firm and vigorous administration; until time has rendered its authority venerable, and fortified its power by giving it an opportunity of growing up, and mingling with the feelings and habits of the people.

This simple but momentous truth may be illustrated by reference to the history of Britain, and of the United States. For a long period after the revolution of 1688, which placed William of Orange on the British throne, so slender was the confidence of the people of Englar d in the stability and credit of their government, that the

Chancellor of the Exchequer of that day, Montagu, the father of public credit in England, could not raise a very small sum, by way of loan, without taking the Lord Mayor of London by his side, as the guarantee for government; and going, cap in hand, from house to house, and from shop to shop, requesting to borrow a hundred pounds, or even a less sum. And for the money thus laboriously raised in small parcels, their best public securities bore an interest of twelve per cent.; and the paper of the Bank of England was at a discount of twenty per cent. Whereas, for a period of twenty-five years, at the close of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, the British government was enabled to raise loans amounting in the aggregate to three thousand millions of dollars, at an average of less than five per cent. interest; and during almost all those years, she maintained a state of unexampled warfare with nearly the whole of continental Europe, arrayed under the banners of revolutionary France.

The American government, about forty years after the establishment of the federal constitution, during the war with England, commenced in 1812, and closed in 1815, could not raise so insignificant a sum as sixty millions of dollars, by way of loan, although they gave in bonus and interest above twenty per cent. for what they borrowed. The paper of the southern banks was depreciated at least twenty-five per cent.; and the banks generally throughout the Union, excepting those at Boston, stopped paying specie for their own notes. Before two years of the war were expired, the administration of the United States were literally bankrupted, both in men and money: no one in the whole community would lend them a single dollar; nor would a single individual voluntarily enrol himself in their armies, so that they had actually prepared statutes for Congress to pass, enabling them to raise money by requisitions and forced loans, and to levy men by the French system of conscription, when the return of peace arrested these deathblows to all the popular institutions and republican liberties of the United States of America. A me

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morable practical comment this upon the inherent imbecility of the federal constitution; and affording a national tribute of honour to the prophetic sagacity of Hamilton.

The power of a government must always depend upon the quantity of men and money which it has at its own disposal and command; the mass or surplus capital floating in the community, and the confidence of the people in the wisdom, and their ready obedience to the directions, of their rulers; and not on the extent of territory, or the huge size of an immense population. The empire of China is spread over a vast surface, and supposed to contain two hundred millions of people; and yet so little disposable force, in men and money, has the Chinese government at command, that it exercises little or no influence over foreign nations; less, indeed, than is exercised by Holland, or Sweden, or Portugal, or any other of the smaller third and fourth-rate sovereignties of Europe. Now, influence over other potentates is the guage of a nation's respectability and power; in like manner as the influence of an individual over the interests, passions, and prejudices of his fellow-citizens, is the measure of that individual's power.

The general government of the United States has too little disposable force at command; it has neither an army nor a navy sufficiently numerous and extensive; its public revenue is too scanty, and too precarious; and it never can depend upon the long-continued support of the popular favour for enabling it to prosecute any permanent measures of enlarged and liberal policy. Being altogether a representative republic, it is obliged to exist too much by exciting and following the passions and prejudices of the multitude; to control and regulate, which is the bounden duty of every wise and upright government, since the ignorance and violence of the multitude have an invariable tendency to defeat the execution of every intelligent and long-sighted national scheme. If the American government oppose the hasty clamours of a misguided populace, the officers of that government will soon be converted, by dint of universal

suffrage, into private citizens; and the Union is of course condemned to a perpetual oscillation of political

movements.

It is not in the ordinary course of human affairs for such a state of things to be permanent; and it is to be apprehended, that the present general government of the United States will either assume a new form, or (what is much more desirable) will retain its name, but gradually become more stable and efficient, by fixing its rule upon the broad and firm foundations of property and talent; and, by progressively augmenting the power of the executive, enable it to mould the feelings, habits, and manners of the people to its own growth in strength and influence; and thus render the national government secure at home and respectable abroad. Indeed, in all popular and free governments, it is safer and better silently and gradually to devolve upon the executive those powers which experience proves it expedient to lodge there, than to confer upon it large and extensive authorities by written law; because that government is always best fitted to promote the prosperity and happiness of a nation, which has gradually grown up with and fashioned itself according to the feelings and interests of the people.

The experience of the past, in the history of nations, is the only safe guide to our reasonings upon future events; and that experience seems to teach us, that in process of time, the United States will run the same career as other sovereignties have run; that in the course of necessity and experiment they will gradually discover and adopt that system of government (in practice as well as in theory) which is best suited to the genius of their people, and best calculated to wield to advantage their great and growing resources. Their constitution may, eventually, be shaped in accordance with the developement of all those great and shining qualities and faculties which go to the formation of daring and elevated characters; and which call into existence the exertions of legislative wisdom, and the achievements of heroic valour;-all emanating from a system