rtain it is, that
both your management and his for a short time before and after the rising
of the federal convention impress us with a favorable opinion, that you
are great novices in the arts of dissimulation. A small degree of
forethought would have taught you both a much more successful method of
directing the rage of resentment which you caught at the close of the
business at Philadelphia, than the one you took. You ought to have
considered that you reside in regions very distant from each other, where
different parts were to be acted, and then made your cast accordingly.

Mr. Mason was certainly wrong in telling the world that he acted a double
part--he ought not to have published two setts of reasons for his dissent
to the constitution. His New England reasons would have come better from
you. He ought to have contented himself with haranguing in the southern
states, that it was too popular, and was calculated too much for the
advantage of the eastern states. At the same time you might have come on,
and in the Coffee-House at New York you might have found an excellent sett
of objections ready made to your hand, a sett that with very little
alteration would have exactly suited the latitude of New England, the
whole of which district ought most clearly to have been submitted to your
protection and patronage. A Lamb, a Willet, a Smith, a Clinton, a
Yates,(38) or any other gentleman whose salary is paid by the state
impost, as they had six months the start of you in considering the
subject, would have furnished you with a good discourse upon the "liberty
of the press," the "bill of rights," the "blending of the executive and
legislative," "internal taxation," or any other topic which you did not
happen to think of while in convention.

It is evident that this mode of proceeding would have been well calculated
for the security of Mr. Mason; he there might have vented his antient
enmity against the independence of America, and his sore mortification for
the loss of his favorite motion respecting the navigation act, and all
under the mask of sentiments, which with a proper caution in expressing
them, might have gained many adherents in his own state. But, although Mr.
Mason's conduct might have been easily guarded in this particular, your
character would not have been entirely safe even with the precaution above
mentioned. Your policy, Sir, ought to have led you one step farther back.
You have been so precipitate and unw