, but with them also met the Delegates from New
Jersey and Connecticut, a part of the Delegation from Delaware, an
honorable member from South Carolina, one other from Georgia, and myself.
These were the only "private meetings" that ever I knew or heard to be
held by Mr. Gerry and Mr. Mason, meetings at which I myself attended until
I left the Convention, and of which the sole object was not to aggrandize
the great at the expense of the small, but to protect and preserve, if
possible, the existence and essential rights of all the states, and the
liberty and freedom of their citizens. Thus, my fellow citizens, I am
obliged, unless I could accept the compliment at an expence of truth equal
to the Landholder's, to give up all claim to being "placed beyond the
reach of ordinary panegyrick," and to that "magnanimity" which he was so
solicitous to bestow upon me, that he has wandered [into] the regions of
falsehood to seek the occasion. When we find such disregard of truth, even
in the introduction, while only on the threshold, we may form judgment
what respect is to be paid to the information he shall give us of what
passed in the Convention when he "draws aside the veil," a veil which was
interposed between our proceedings and the Public, in my opinion, for the
most dangerous of purposes, and which was never designed by the advocates
of the system to be drawn aside, or if it was, not till it should be too
late for any beneficial purpose, which as far as it is done, or pretended
to be done, on the present occasion, is only for the purpose of deception
and misrepresentation. It was on Saturday that I first took my seat. I
obtained that day a copy of the propositions that had been laid before the
Convention, and which were then the subject of discussion in a committee
of the whole. The Secretary was so polite as, at my request, to wait upon
me at the State House the next day (being Sunday), and there gave me an
opportunity of examining the journals and making myself acquainted with
the little that had been done before my arrival. I was not a little
surprised at the system brought forward, and was solicitous to learn the
reasons which had been assigned in its support; for this purpose the
journals could be of no service; I therefore conversed on the subject with
different members of the Convention, and was favoured with minutes of the
debates which had taken place before my arrival. I applied to history for
what lights it could af