The adversaries of this gentleman said, that he had been originally hostile to the constitution of the United States, and adverse to its adoption; and "that his avowed opinions tended to national disunion, national insignificance, public disorder, and discredit." Under the garb of democratic simplicity, and modest retiring philosophy, he covered an inordinate ambition which grasped unceasingly at power, and sought to gratify itself, by professions of excessive attachment to liberty, and by traducing and lessening in the public esteem, every man in whom he could discern a rival. To this aspiring temper they ascribed, not only "those pestilent whispers which, clandestinely circulating through the country, had, as far as was practicable, contaminated some of its fairest and worthiest characters," but also certain publications affecting the reputation of prominent individuals whom he might consider as competitors with himself for the highest office in the state. A letter written by Mr. Jefferson to a printer, transmitting for publication the first part of "the rights of man," which letter was prefixed to the American edition of that pamphlet, contained allusions to certain "political heresies" of the day, which were understood to imply a serious censure on the opinions of the vice president: and the great object of the national gazette, a paper known to be edited by a clerk in the department of state, was "to calumniate and blacken public characters, and, particularly, to destroy the public confidence in the secretary of the treasury, who was to be hunted down for the unpardonable sin of having been the steady and invariable friend of broad principles of national government." It was also said that his connexions with this paper, and the patronage he afforded it, authorized the opinion that it might fairly be considered "the mirror of his views," and thence was adduced an accusation not less serious in its nature than that which has been already stated.