ll know;
or what is more probable, that feigned ones, if any, will be given. But
from the conduct of the party since that time we may conclude, that no
taxes would have been taken off, that the clamour for war would have
been kept up, new expences incurred, and taxes and offices increased
in consequence; and, among the articles of a private nature, that
the leaders in this seditious traffic were to stipulate with the mock
President for lucrative appointments for themselves.

But if these plotters against the Constitution understood their
business, and they had been plotting long enough to be masters of it, a
single article would have comprehended every thing, which is, _That the
President (thus made) should be governed in all cases whatsoever by a
private junto appointed by themselves_. They could then, through the
medium of a mock President, have negatived all bills which their
party in Congress could not have opposed with success, and reduced
representation to a nullity.

The country has been imposed upon, and the real culprits are but few;
and as it is necessary for the peace, harmony, and honour of the Union,
to separate the deceiver from the deceived, the betrayer from the
betrayed, that men who once were friends, and that in the worst of
times, should be friends again, it is necessary, as a beginning, that
this dark business be brought to full investigation. Ogden's letter
is direct evidence of the fact of tampering to obtain a conditional
President. He knows the two or three members of Congress that
commissioned him, and they know who commissioned them.

Thomas Paine.

Federal City, Lovett's Hotel, Jan. 29th, 1803.

LETTER VI.(1)

1 The Aurora (Philadelphia).--_Editor._.

Religion and War is the cry of the Federalists; Morality and Peace the
voice of Republicans. The union of Morality and Peace is congenial;
but that of Religion and War is a paradox, and the solution of it is
hypocrisy.

The leaders of the Federalists have no judgment; their plans no
consistency of parts; and want of consistency is the natural consequence
of want of principle.

They exhibit to the world the curious spectacle of an _Opposition_
without a _cause_, and conduct without system. Were they, as doctors,
to prescribe medicine as they practise politics, they would poison their
patients with destructive compounds.

There are not two things more opposed to each other than War and
Religion; and yet, in the double game t