ch of them. But the objections were not on
anti-federal grounds, but on constitutional points. Many were shocked
at the idea of placing what is called Executive Power in the hands of a
single individual. To them it had too much the form and appearance of a
military government, or a despotic one. Others objected that the
powers given to a president were too great, and that in the hands of
an ambitious and designing man it might grow into tyranny, as it did
in England under Oliver Cromwell, and as it has since done in France.
A Republic must not only be so in its principles, but in its forms. The
Executive part of the Federal government was made for a man, and those
who consented, against their judgment, to place Executive Power in the
hands of a single individual, reposed more on the supposed moderation of
the person they had in view, than on the wisdom of the measure itself.

Two considerations, however, overcame all objections. The one was, the
absolute necessity of a Federal Government. The other, the rational
reflection, that as government in America is founded on the
representative system any error in the first essay could be reformed
by the same quiet and rational process by which the Constitution was
formed, and that either by the generation then living, or by those who
were to succeed. If ever America lose sight of this principle, she will
no longer be the _land of liberty_. The father will become the assassin
of the rights of the son, and his descendants be a race of slaves.

As many thousands who were minors are grown up to manhood since the name
of _Federalist_ began, it became necessary, for their information, to
go back and show the origin of the name, which is now no longer what it
originally was; but it was the more necessary to do this, in order to
bring forward, in the open face of day, the apostacy of those who first
called themselves Federalists.

To them it served as a cloak for treason, a mask for tyranny. Scarcely
were they placed in the seat of power and office, than Federalism was to
be destroyed, and the representative system of government, the pride
and glory of America, and the palladium of her liberties, was to be
overthrown and abolished. The next generation was not to be free. The
son was to bend his neck beneath the father's foot, and live, deprived
of his rights, under hereditary control. Among the men of this apostate
description, is to be ranked the ex-president _John Adams_. It has bee