Count the Cost: An Address to the People of Connecticut, On Sundry Political Subjects, and Particularly on the Proposition for a New ConstitutionDaggett, David
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Count the Cost: An Address to the People of Connecticut, On Sundry Political Subjects, and Particularly on the Proposition for a New Constitution
Daggett, David
Connecticut -- Politics and government -- 1775-1865; Constitutional law -- Connecticut
Your judges also to whom is committed the administration of justice, are
marked out as the victims of party spirit. Is not a wise and faithful
execution of the laws the chief object of every good Government? Without
this who is safe for a moment? Without this, liberty can exist only in
name--The name indeed may be blasphemously uttered, but the substance
is gone with the liberty of all who have relied on professions. Let the
people of Connecticut look at their tribunals of justice. Are they not
filled with men of incorruptible integrity? Where has innocence received
a more ample protection? Is not the transgressor punished, and are not
the wrongs of the injured redressed? Are not our mild laws executed in
mercy, and is not justice awarded with impartiality to individuals? Can
you look at the seat of justice and say "iniquity is there?" Dare any
man say that the judges of our high Courts are not upright, intelligent
and learned? Who then can justly complain? Yet the stripling of
yesterday--the bold projector--the unprincipled ad ambitious, with a
host of deceived followers, with matchless effrontery, arraign the
conduct of these magistrates and loudly demand that they be driven from
their offices, and from public confidence.
Another favorite scheme is to elevate to all the offices of importance
men who have never enjoyed the public confidence. The language of these
revolutionists is, respecting the men in power in Connecticut, "We will
not have these men to rule over us"--We will fill their places with men
of our choice--the creatures of our hands, and who will be subservient
to our views. But, my countrymen, before you join in this project, pause
and enquire, who are these men who thus assert their claim to rule over
you? Who are these men who place themselves in the corners of the
streets and cry "Oh, that we were made judges in the land?" It is no
part of the writer's design to hunt vice from its guilty retreat, to
expose before an insulted people, the horrid features which distinguish
certain individuals who challenge popular applause, or to attach private
character, but justice demands that men who boldly claim to be the
rulers of the free and happy state of Connecticut, should be known. The
men who are to stand in the places of our Trumbulls and our Ellsworths
should not shrink from public investigation. To those who respect the
authority of God it is a matter of no small moment that those who rule
over men should be just, ruling in the fear of God nor will men,
accustomed to revere this solemn declaration, lend their aid to elevate
men of vicious and corrupt lives, without some dismay.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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