holder, all those
virtues both of a positive and negative kind, which from an excess of
goodness he bestowed upon me, and give him my full permission to dispose
of them hereafter in favour of some other person, who may be more
deserving, and to whom they will be more acceptable: at the same time, I
must frankly acknowledge, however it may operate as a proof of my dullness
and stupidity, that the "ignorance in the science of government" under
which I laboured at first was not removed by more than two months close
application under those august and enlightened masters of the science with
which the Convention abounded, nor was I able to discover during that
time, either by my own researches, or by any light borrowed from those
luminaries, anything in the history of mankind or in the sentiments of
those who have favoured the world with their ideas on government, to
warrant or countenance the motley mixture of a system proposed: a system
which is an innovation in government of the most extraordinary kind; a
system neither wholly federal, nor wholly national--but a strange
hotch-potch of both--just so much federal in appearance as to give its
advocates in some measure, an opportunity of passing it as such upon the
unsuspecting multitude, before they had time and opportunity to examine
it, and yet so predominantly national as to put it in the power of its
movers, whenever the machine shall be set agoing, to strike out every part
that has the appearance of being federal, and to render it wholly and
entirely a national government: And if the framing and approving the
Constitution now offered to our acceptance, is a proof of knowledge in the
science of government, I not only admit, but I glory in my ignorance; and
if my rising to speak had such a somnific influence on the Convention as
the Landholder represents, I have no doubt the time will come, should this
system be adopted, when my countrymen will ardently wish I had never left
the Convention, but remained there to the last, daily administering to my
associates the salutary opiate. Happy, thrice happy, would it have been
for my country, if the whole of that time had been devoted to sleep, or
been a blank in our lives, rather than employed in forging its chains. As
I fully intended to have returned to the Convention before the completion
of its business, my colleagues very probably might, and were certainly
well warranted to, give that information the Landholder mentions; but
wh