If this be their purpose, their
anti-republican spirit, it ought to be met at once. But a government
like ours should be slow in believing this, should put forth its whole
might when necessary to suppress it, and promptly return to the paths of
reconciliation. The extent of our country secures it, I hope, from the
vindictive passions of the petty incorporations of Greece. I rather
suspect that the principal office of the other seventeen States will be
to moderate and restrain the local excitement of our friends with you,
when they (with the aid of their brethren of the other States, if they
need it) shall have brought the rebellious to their feet. They count on
British aid. But what can that avail them by land? They would separate
from their friends, who alone furnish employment for their navigation,
to unite with their only rival for that employment. When interdicted
the harbors of their quondam brethren, they will go, I suppose, to ask
a share in the carrying-trade of their rivals, and a dispensation with
their navigation act. They think they will be happier in an association
under the rulers of Ireland, the East and West Indies, than in an
independent government, where they are obliged to put up with their
proportional share only in the direction of its affairs. But I trust
that such perverseness will not be that of the honest and well meaning
mass of the federalists of Massachusetts; and that when the questions
of separation and rebellion shall be nakedly proposed to them, the Gores
and the Pickerings will find their levees crowded with silk-stocking
gentry, but no yeomanry; an army of officers without soldiers.
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