Thus the people of the United States, “in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestick tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,” have appointed a federal convention to “ordain and establish,” with the concurrence of the people, a constitution for the United States of America. That federal convention have assembled together, and after a full investigation of the different concerns of the Union, have proposed a form of government, calculated to support, and transmit, inviolate, to the latest posterity, all the blessings of civil and religious liberty. Citizens of Massachusetts! consider, O consider well, these important matters, and weigh them deliberately in the scale of reason! Consider at what a vast expense of toil, difficulty, treasure and blood, you have emancipated yourselves from the yoke of bondage, and established yourselves an independent people! Consider that those immortal characters, who first planned the event of the revolution, and with arms in their hands stepped forth in the glorious cause of human nature, have now devised a plan for supporting your freedom, and increasing your strength, your power and happiness. Will you then, O my countrymen! listen to the mad dictates of men, who are aiming, by every artifice and falsehood, which the emissaries of hell can invent, to effect your total destruction and overthrow? who wish to ascend the chariot of anarchy, and ride triumphant over your smoking ruins, which they hope to effect, by their more than hellish arts: in your misery they hope to glory, and establish their own greatness “on their country’s ruin.” If they can effect this, they will laugh at your calamity, and mock your misfortunes—the language of each brother in iniquity, when they meet, will be, “hail damn’d associates,” see our high success! Think, O my countrymen! think, before it is too late!—The important moment approaches, when these states must, by the most wise of all conduct, forever establish their glory and happiness, on the firmest basis, by adopting the constitution, or by the most foolish and inconsistent of all conduct, in rejecting it, entail on themselves and on their posterity, endless infamy. “There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallowness.”——