had nobler views, and you are not designed by heaven as an example—are you now to be derided and insulted? Is the power of thinking, on the only subject important to you, to be taken away? and if per chance you should happen to differ from Cæsar, are you to have Cæsar’s principles crammed down your throats with an army? God forbid! In democratic republics the people collectively are considered as the sovereign—all legislative, judicial, and executive power, is inherent in and derived from them. As a people, your power and authority have sanctioned and established the present government—your executive, legislative, and judicial acknowledge it by their public acts—you are again solicited to sanction and establish the future one—yet this Cæsar mocks your dignity and laughs at the majesty of the people. Cæsar, with his usual dogmatism, enquires, if I had talents to throw light on the subject of legislation, why did I not offer them when the Convention was in session? He is answered in a moment—I thought with him and you, that the wisdom of America, in that Convention, was drawn as it were to a Focus. I placed an unbounded confidence in some of the characters who were members of it, from the services they had rendered their country, without adverting to the ambitious and interested views of others. I was willingly led to expect a model of perfection and security that would have astonished the world. Therefore to have offered observation, on the subject of legislation, under these impressions, would have discovered no less arrogance than Cæsar. The Convention, too, when in session, shut their doors to the observations of the community, and their members were under an obligation of secrecy. Nothing transpired. To have suggested remarks on unknown and anticipated principles would have been like a man groping in the dark, and folly in the extreme. I confess, however, I have been disappointed, and Cæsar is candid enough to make the same declaration, for he thinks it _might_ have been more perfect.