e a tool of the western people was so badly concealed as to
extinguish all credit with them.

But hypocrisy is a vice of sanguine constitution. It flatters and
promises itself every thing; and it has yet to learn, with respect to
moral and political reputation, it is less dangerous to offend than to
deceive.

To the measures of administration, supported by the firmness and
integrity of the majority in Congress, the United States owe, as far as
human means are concerned, the preservation of peace, and of national
honour. The confidence which the western people reposed in the
government and their representatives is rewarded with success. They are
reinstated in their rights with the least possible loss of time; and
their harmony with the people of New Orleans, so necessary to the
prosperity of the United States, which would have been broken, and the
seeds of discord sown in its place, had hostilities been preferred to
accommodation, remains unimpaired. Have the Federal ministers of the
church meditated on these matters? and laying aside, as they ought to
do, their electioneering and vindictive prayers and sermons, returned
thanks that peace is preserved, and commerce, without the stain of
blood?

In the pleasing contemplation of this state of things the mind, by
comparison, carries itself back to those days of uproar and extravagance
that marked the career of the former administration, and decides, by
the unstudied impulse of its own feelings, that something must then have
been wrong. Why was it, that America, formed for happiness, and remote
by situation and circumstances from the troubles and tumults of the
European world, became plunged into its vortex and contaminated with its
crimes? The answer is easy. Those who were then at the head of affairs
were apostates from the principles of the revolution. Raised to an
elevation they had not a right to expect, nor judgment to conduct,
they became like feathers in the air, and blown about by every puff of
passion or conceit.

Candour would find some apology for their conduct if want of judgment
was their only defect. But error and crime, though often alike in their
features, are distant in their characters and in their origin. The one
has its source in the weakness of the head, the other in the hardness
of the heart, and the coalition of the two, describes the former
Administration.(1)

1 That of John Adams.--_Editor._

Had no injurious consequences arisen from th