When this came to be the case, the institution was in danger of doing more harm in its age, than it had accomplished of good in its youth. But it must not thence be inferred that it should never have been adopted, or that it was vicious in itself. In seasons of public danger, extraordinary powers are often intrusted to individuals--powers which nothing but that danger can justify, and which would constitute the dictators intolerable despots, if they were retained after the crises are passed. The Congress of our confederacy, for example, found it necessary, at one period of our Revolutionary struggle, to invest Washington with such authority; had he exercised it beyond the pressure of immediate peril, the same outcry which has been made against others in similar circumstances, would have been justly raised against him. And most men, less soberly constituted than Washington, would have endeavored to retain it; for power is a pleasant thing, which few have the self-denial to resign without a struggle. The wrong consists not in the original delegation of the authority--for that is justified by the highest of all laws, the law of self-preservation--but in its retention and exercise, when the exigency no longer supports it. Having parted with the authority to redress grievances, and provide for protection and defence, the citizen can not at once recover it--it remains for a time in the hands of the representative, and is always difficult to regain. But it does not therefore follow, that he should never intrust it to another, for the inconvenience sometimes resulting from its delegation, is one of the incidents to human life, teaching, not obstinacy or jealousy, but circumspection. The following story, related by one who is well-acquainted with the early history of this country, will illustrate the manner in which the regulator system was sometimes made subservient to men's selfish purposes; and there have, unhappily, been too many instances, in which such criminal schemes were more successful than they were in this. I have entitled it "The Stratagem." THE STRATAGEM.