ed the different States with all their ill habits
about them. This was one of these habits established long before the
Constitution, and could not now be remedied. He begged Congress to
reflect on the number on the continent who were opposed to this
Constitution, and on the number which yet remained in the Southern
States. The violation of this compact they would seize on with
avidity; they would make a handle of it to cover their designs against
the government, and many good federalists, who would be injured by the
measure, would be induced to join them: his heart was truly federal,
and it always had been so, and he wished those designs frustrated. He
begged Congress to beware before they went too far: he called on them
to attend to the interests of two whole States, as well as to the
memorials of a society of Quakers, who came forward to blow the
trumpet of sedition, and to destroy that Constitution which they had
not in the least contributed by personal service or supply to
establish.

He seconded Mr. TUCKER'S motion.

Mr. SMITH (of S.C.) said, the gentlemen from Massachusetts, (Mr.
GERRY,) had declared that it was the opinion of the select committee,
of which he was a member, that the memorial of the Pennsylvania
society, required Congress to violate the Constitution. It was not
less astonishing to see Dr. FRANKLIN taking the lead in a business
which looks so much like a persecution of the Southern inhabitants,
when he recollected the parable he had written some time ago, with a
view of showing the impropriety of one set of men persecuting others
for a difference of opinion. The parable was to this effect: an old
traveller, hungry and weary, applied to the patriarch Abraham for a
night's lodging. In conversation, Abraham discovered that the stranger
differed with him on religious points, and turned him out of doors. In
the night God appeared unto Abraham, and said, where is the stranger?
Abraham answered, I found that he did not worship the true God, and so
I turned him out of doors. The Almighty thus rebuked the patriarch:
Have I borne with him three-score and ten years, and couldst thou not
bear with him one night? Has the Almighty, said Mr. SMITH, borne with
us for more than three-score years and ten: he has even made our
country opulent, and shed the blessings of affluence and prosperity on
our land, notwithstanding all its slaves, and must we now be ruined on
account of the tender consciences of a few scrupul