cal wisdom than they were by the victory of your arms.

A LANDHOLDER.

The Landholder, X.

The Maryland Journal, (Number 1016)

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 1788.

For the Maryland Journal, etc.

TO THE HONOURABLE LUTHER MARTIN, ESQ.(42)

_Sir_,

I have just met with your performance in favour of the Honourable Mr.
Gerry, published in the Maryland Journal of the 18th January, 1788. As the
Public may be ignorant of the Sacrifice you have made of your resentments
on this occasion, you will excuse me for communicating what your extreme
modesty must have induced you to conceal. You, no doubt, remember that you
and Mr. Gerry never voted alike in Convention, except in the instances I
shall hereafter enumerate. He uniformly opposed your principles, and so
far did you carry your abhorrence of his politics, as to inform certain
members to be on their guard against his wiles, so that, he and Mr. Mason
held private meetings, where plans were concerted "to aggrandise, at the
expence of the small States, Old Massachusetts and the Ancient Dominion."
After having thus opposed him and accused him, to appear his Champion and
intimate acquaintance, has placed you beyond the reach of ordinary
panegyric. Having done this justice to your magnanimity, I cannot resist
drawing the veil of the Convention a little farther aside; not, I assure
you, with any intention to give pain to your Constituents, but merely to
induce them to pity you for the many piercing mortifications you met with
in the discharge of your duty. The day you took your seat(43) must be long
remembered by those who were present; nor will it be possible for you to
forget the astonishment your behaviour almost instantaneously produced.
You had scarcely time to read the propositions which had been agreed to
after the fullest investigation, when, without requesting information, or
to be let into the reasons of the adoption of what you might not approve,
you opened against them in a speech which held during two days, and which
might have continued two months, but for those marks of fatigue and
disgust you saw strongly expressed on whichever side of the house you
turned your mortified eyes. There needed no other display to fix your
character and the rank of your abilities, which the Convention would have
confirmed by the most distinguished silence, had not a certain similarity
in genius provoked a sarcastic reply from the pleasant Mr. Gerry; in which
he admired the strength