human virtue has ever been called. I call upon every gentleman here to declare, whether the king of England had any subjects so attached to his family and government-so loyal as we were But the genius of Virginia called us for liberty; called us from those beloved endearments, which, from long habits, we were taught to love and revere. We entertained from our earliest infancy the most sincere regard and reverence for the mother country. Our partiality extended to a predilection for her customs, habits, manners and laws. Thus inclined, when the deprivation of our liberty was attempted, what did we do? What did the genius of Virginia tell us? "Sell all and purchase liberty." This was a severe conflict. Republican maxims were then esteemed. Those maxims and the genius of Virginia landed you safe on the shore of freedom. On this awful occasion, did you want a federal government? Did federal ideas possess your minds? Did federal ideas lead you to the most splendid victories? I must again repeat the favorite idea, that the genius of Virginia did, and will again lead us to happiness. To obtain the most splendid prize, you did not consolidate. You accomplished the most glorious ends by the assistance of the genius of your country. Men were then taught by that genius that they were fighting for what was most dear to them. View the most affectionate father, the most tender mother, operated on by liberty, nobly stimulating their sons, their dearest sons, sometimes their only son, to advance to the defence of his country. We have seen sons of Cincinnatus without splendid magnificence or parade, going, with the genius of their great progenitor Cincinnatus, to the plough-men who served their country without ruining it; men who had served it to the destruction of their private patrimonies; their country owing them amazing amounts, for the payment of which no adequate provision was then made. We have seen such men throw prostrate their arms at your feet. They did not call for those emoluments which ambition presents to some imaginations. The soldiers who were able to command every thing, instead of trampling on those laws which they were instituted to defend, most strictly obeyed them. The hands of justice have not been laid on a single American soldier. Bring them into contrast with European veterans-you will see an astonishing superiority over the latter. There has been a strict subordination to the laws. The honorable gentleman's office gave him an opportunity of viewing if the laws were administered so as to prevent riots, routs and unlawful assemblies. From his then situation, he could have furnished us with the instances in which licentiousness trampled on the laws. Among all our troubles, we have paid almost to the last shilling, for the sake of justice: we have paid as well as any state; I will not say better. To support the general gov

ernment and our own legislature; to pay the interest of the pub lic debts, and defray contingencies, we have been heavily taxed. To add to these things, the distresses produced by paper money, and by tobacco contracts, were sufficient to render any people discontented. These, sir, were great temptations; but in the most severe conflict of misfortunes, this code of laws-this genius of Virginia, call it what you will, triumphed over every thing.

Why did it please the gentleman, (Mr. Corbin) to bestow such epithets on our country? Have the worms taken possession of the wood, that our strong vessel, our political vessel, has sprung a leak? He may know better than I; but I consider such epithets to be the most illiberal and unwarrantable aspersions on our laws. The system of laws under which we have lived, has been tried and found to suit our genius. I trust we shall not change this happy system. I cannot so easily take leave of an old friend. Till I see him following after and pursuing other objects, which can pervert the great objects of human legislation, pardon me if I withhold my assent.

Some here speak of the difficulty in forming a new code of laws. Young as we were, it was not wonderful if there was a difficulty in forming and assimilating one system of laws. I shall be obliged to the gentleman, if he would point out those glaring, those great faults. The efforts of assimilating our laws to our genius have not been found altogether vain. I shall pass over some other circumstances which I intended to mention, and endeavor to come to the capital objection, which my honorable friend made. My worthy friend said, that a republican form of government would not suit a very extensive country; but that if a government were judiciously or ganized, and limits prescribed to it, an attention to these principles might render it possible for it to exist in an extensive territory. Whoever will be bold to say, that a continent can be governed by that system, contradicts all the experience of the world. It is a work too great for human wisdom. Let me call for an example. Experience has been called the best teacher. I call for an example of a great extent of country, governed by one government, or congress, call it what you will. I tell him that a government may be trimmed up according to gentlemen's fancy, but it never can operate; it will be but very short-lived. However disagreeable it may be to lengthen my objections, I cannot help taking notice of what the honorable gentleman said. To me it appears that there is no check in that government. The president, senators and representatives, all immediately or mediately, are the choice of the people. Tell me not of checks on paper; but tell me of checks founded on self-love. The English government is founded on self-love. This powerful, irresistible stimulus of self-love has saved that government. It has interposed that hereditary nobility between the king and commons. If the house of lords assists or

permits the king to overturn the liberties of the people, the same tyranny will destroy them; they will therefore keep the balance in the democratic branch. Suppose they see the commons encroach upon the king: self-love, that great, energetic check, will call upon them to interpose; for, if the king be destroyed, their destruction must speedily follow. Here is a consideration which prevails in my mind, to pronounce the British government superior, in this respect, to any government that ever was in any country. Compare this with your congressional checks. I beseech gentlemen to consider whether they can say, when trusting power, that a mere patriotic profession will be equally operative and efficacious, as the check of self-love. In considering the experience of ages, is it not seen that fair, disinterested patriotism and professions of attachment to rectitude, have never been solely trusted to by an enlightened, free people? If you depend on your president's and senators' patriotism, you are gone. Have you a resting-place like the British government? Where is the rock of your salvation? The real rock of political salvation is self-love, perpetuated from age to age in every human breast, and manifested in every action. If they can stand the temptations of human nature, you are safe. If you have a good president, senators, and representatives, there is no danger. But can this be expected from human nature? Without real checks it will not suffice that some of them are good. A good president, or senator, or representative, will have a natural weakness. Virtue will slumber: the wicked will be continually watching: consequently you will be undone. Where are your checks? You have no hereditary nobility-an order of men, to whom human eyes can be cast up for relief; for, says the constitution, there is no title of nobility to be granted; which, by the by, would not have been so dangerous as the perilous cession of powers contained in that paper; because, as Montesquieu says, when you give titles of nobility, you know what you give; but when you give power, you know not what you give. If you say that, out of this depraved mass, you can collect luminous characters, it will not avail, unless this luminous breed will be propagated from generation to generation; and even then, if the number of vicious characters will preponderate, you are undone. And that this will certainly be the case, is, to my mind, perfectly clear. In the British government, there are real balances and checks in this system, there are only ideal balances. Till I am convinced that there are actual, efficient checks, I will not give my assent to its establishment. The president and senators have nothing to lose. They have not that interest in the preservation of the government, that the king and lords have in England. They will therefore be regardless of the interests of the people. The constitution will

be as safe with one body as with two. It will answer every purpose of human legislation. How was the constitution of England when only the commons had the power? I need only remark. that it was the most unfortunate era when the country returned to king, lords and commons, without sufficient responsibility in the king. When the commons of England, in the manly language which became freemen, said to their king, "You are our servant," then the temple of liberty was complete. From that noble source have we derived our liberty that spirit of patriotic attachment to one's country, that zeal for liberty, and that enmity to tyranny. which signalized the then champions of liberty, we inherit from our British ancestors. And I am free to own, that if you cannot love a republican government, you may love the British monarchy for, although the king is not sufficiently responsible, the responsibility of his agents, and the efficient checks interposed by the British constitution, render it less dangerous than other monarchies, or oppressive tyrannical aristocracies. What are their checks of exposing accounts? Their checks upon paper are inefficient and nugatory. Can you search your president's closet? Is this a real check? We ought to be exceedingly cautious in giving up this life, this soul-our money-this power of taxation, to congress. What powerful check is there here to prevent the most extravagant and profligate squandering of the public money? What security have we in money matters? Inquiry is precluded by this constitution. I never wish to see congress supplicate the states. But it is more abhorrent to my mind to give them an unlimited and unbounded command over our souls, our lives, our purses, without any check or restraint. How are you to keep inquiry alive? how discover their conduct? We are told by that paper, that a regular statement and account of the receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time. Here is a beautiful check! What time? Here is the utmost latitude left. If those who are in congress please to put that construction upon it, the words of the constitution will be satisfied by publishing those accounts once in one hundred years. They may publish or not, as they please. Is this like the present despised system, whereby the accounts are to be published monthly?

I come now to speak something of requisitions, which the honorable gentleman thought so truly contemptible and disgraceful. That honorable gentleman, being a child of the revolution. must recollect with gratitude the glorious effects of requisitions. It is an idea that must be grateful to every American. An English army was sent to compel us to pay money contrary to our consent; to force us by arbitrary and tyrannical coercion to satisfy their unbounded demands. We wished to pay with our own con

sent. Rather than pay against our consent, we engaged in that bloody contest, which terminated so gloriously. By requisitions we pay with our own consent; by their means we have triumphed in the most arduous struggle that ever tried the virtue of man. We fought then for what we are contending now-to prevent an arbitrary deprivation of our property, contrary to our consent and inclination. I shall be told, in this place, that those who are to tax us are our representatives. To this I answer, that there is no real check to prevent their ruining us. There is no actual responsibility. The only semblance of a check is the negative power of not reelecting them. This, sir, is but a feeble barrier, when their personal interest, their ambition and avarice come to be put in contrast with the happiness of the people. All checks founded on any thing but self-love, will not avail. This constitution reflects, in the most degrading and mortifying manner, on the virtue, integrity and wisdom of the state legislatures: it presupposes that the chosen few who go to congress, will have more upright hearts, and more enlightened minds, than those who are members of the individual legislatures. To suppose that ten gentlemen shall have more real substantial merit than one hundred and seventy, is humiliating to the last degree. If, sir, the diminution of numbers be an augmentation of merit, perfection must centre in one. If you have the faculty of discerning spirits, it is better to point out at once the man who has the most illumined qualities. If ten men be better than one hundred and seventy, it follows of necessity that one is better than ten the choice is more refined.

Such is the danger of the abuse of implied power, that it would be safer at once to have seven representatives, the number to which we are now entitled, than depend on the uncertain and ambiguous language of that paper. The number may be lessened instead of being increased; and yet by argumentative, constructive, implied power, the proportion of taxes may continue the same or be increased. Nothing is more perilous than constructive power, which gentlemen are so willing to trust their happiness to.

If sheriffs prove now an overmatch for our legislature; if their ingenuity has eluded the vigilance of our laws, how will the matter be ainended when they come clothed with federal authority? A strenuous argument offered by gentlemen is, that the same sheriffs may collect for the continental and state treasuries. I have before shown, that this must have an inevitable tendency to give a decided preference to the federal treasury in the actual collections, and to throw all deficiencies on the state. This imaginary remedy for the evil of congressional taxation, will have another oppressive operation. The sheriff comes to-day as a state collect