cers of the government; the choice of the people themselves. No man
on earth has more implicit confidence than myself in the integrity
and discretion of this chosen band of servants. But is confidence or
discretion, or is strict limit, the principle of our constitution? It
will comprehend, indeed, all the functionaries of the government: but
seceded from their consitutional stations as guardians of the nation,
and acting not by the laws of their station, but by those of a voluntary
society, having no limit to their purposes but the same will which
constitutes their existence. It will be the authorities of the people,
and all influential characters from among them, arrayed on one side, and
on the other, the people themselves deserted by their leaders. It is a
fearful array. It will be said, that these are imaginary fears. I know
they are so at present. I know it is as impossible for these agents of
our choice and unbounded confidence, to harbor machinations against
the adored principles of our constitution, as for gravity to change
its direction, and gravid bodies to mount upwards. The fears are indeed
imaginary: but the example is real. Under its authority, as a precedent,
future associations will arise with objects at which we should
shudder at this time. The society of Jacobins, in another country,
was instituted on principles and views as virtuous as ever kindled the
hearts of patriots. It was the pure patriotism of their purposes which
extended their association to the limits of the nation, and rendered
their power within it boundless; and it was this power which degenerated
their principles and practices to such enormities, as never before could
have been imagined. Yet these were men; and we and our descendants
will be no more. The present is a case where, if ever, we are to guard
against ourselves; not against ourselves as we are, but as we may be;
for who can now imagine what we may become under circumstances not now
imaginable? The object, too, of this institution, seems to require
so hazardous an example as little as any which could be proposed. The
government is, at this time, going on with the process of civilizing
the Indians, on a plan probably as promising as any one of us is able
to devise, and with resources more competent than we could expect to
command by voluntary taxation. Is it that the new characters called into
association with those of the government, are wiser than these? Is it
that a plan origina