ic that it loses the debasing idea of
obeying an individual.--_Author_.

1 See vol. i. of this work, pp. 97, 98, 109, no.--_Editor._.

Having thus cleared away a little of the rubbish that might otherwise
have lain in my way, I return to the point of time at which the present
Federal Constitution and your administration began. It was very well
said by an anonymous writer in Philadelphia, about a year before that
period, that "_thirteen staves and ne'er a hoop will not make a barrel_"
and as any kind of hooping the barrel, however defectively executed,
would be better than none, it was scarcely possible but that
considerable advantages must arise from the federal hooping of the
States. It was with pleasure that every sincere friend of America
beheld, as the natural effect of union, her rising prosperity; and it
was with grief they saw that prosperity mixed, even in the blossom,
with the germ of corruption. Monopolies of every kind marked your
administration almost in the moment of its commencement. The lands
obtained by the revolution were lavished upon partisans; the interest
of the disbanded soldier was sold to the speculator; injustice was acted
under the pretence of faith; and the chief of the army became the patron
of the fraud.(2) From such a beginning what else could be expected, than
what has happened? A mean and servile submission to the insults of one
nation; treachery and ingratitude to another.

2 The history of the Scioto Company, by which so many
Frenchmen as well as Americans were ruined, warranted an
even stronger statement. Though Washington did not know what
was going on, he cannot be acquitted of a lack of due
precaution in patronizing leading agents of these
speculations, and introducing them in France.--_Editor._

Some vices make their approach with such a splendid appearance, that we
scarcely know to what class of moral distinctions they belong. They
are rather virtues corrupted than vices, originally. But meanness and
ingratitude have nothing equivocal in their character. There is not a
trait in them that renders them doubtful. They are so originally vice,
that they are generated in the dung of other vices, and crawl into
existence with the filth upon their back. The fugitives have found
protection in you, and the levee-room is their place of rendezvous.

As the Federal Constitution is a copy, though not quite so base as the
original, of the form of th