hing this project; that meeting Colonel
Syme, the step-brother of Colonel Henry, in the lobby of the
House, he accosted him very fiercely in terms like these: 'I
am told that your brother wishes to be dictator. Tell him
from me, that the day of his appointment shall be the day of
his death;--for he shall feel my dagger in his heart before
the sunset of that day.' And the tradition adds that Colonel
Syme, in great agitation, declared that 'if such a project
existed, his brother had no hand in it; for that nothing
could be more foreign to him, than to countenance any office
which could endanger, in the most distant manner, the
liberties of his country.' The intrepidity and violence of
Colonel Cary's character renders the tradition probable; but
it furnishes no proof of Mr. Henry's implication in the
scheme."[273]

A disinterested study of this subject, in the light of all the
evidence now attainable, will be likely to convince any one that this
enormous scandal must have been very largely a result of the extreme
looseness at that time prevailing in the use of the word "dictator,"
and of its being employed, on the one side, in an innocent sense, and,
on the other side, in a guilty one. In strict propriety, of course,
the word designates a magistrate created in an emergency of public
peril, and clothed for a time with unlimited power. It is an extreme
remedy, and in itself a remedy extremely dangerous, and can never be
innocently resorted to except when the necessity for it is
indubitable; and it may well be questioned whether, among people and
institutions like our own, a necessity can ever arise which would
justify the temporary grant of unlimited power to any man. If this be
true, it follows that no man among us can, without dire political
guilt, ever consent to bestow such power; and that no man can, without
the same guilt, ever consent to receive it.

Yet it is plain that even among us, between the years 1776 and 1783,
emergencies of terrific public peril did arise, sufficient to justify,
nay, even to compel, the bestowment either upon the governor of some
State, or upon the general of the armies, not of unlimited power,
certainly, but of extraordinary power,--such extraordinary power, for
example, as was actually conferred by the Continental Congress, more
than once, on Washington; as was conferred by the legislature of South
Carolina on Governor