ayer, and may that glory which encircles his head
ever shine with undiminished rays. To find myself under the necessity of
opposing such illustrious characters, whom I venerated and loved, filled
me with regret; but viewing the system in the light I then did, and yet do
view it, to have hesitated would have been criminal; complaisance would
have been guilt. If it was the idea of my state that whatever a Washington
or Franklin approved, was to be blindly adopted, she ought to have spared
herself the expence of sending any members to the Convention, or to have
instructed them implicitly to follow where they led the way. It was not to
have my "name enrolled with the other labourers," that I wished to return
to Philadelphia--that sacrifice which I must have made of my principles by
putting my name to the Constitution, could not have been effaced by any
derivative lustre it could possibly receive from the bright constellation
with which it would have been surrounded. My object was in truth the very
reverse; as I had uniformly opposed the system in its progress, I wished
to have been present at the conclusion, to have then given it my solemn
negative, which I certainly should have done, even had I stood single and
alone, being perfectly willing to leave it to the cool and impartial
investigation both of the present and of future ages to decide who best
understood the science of government--who best knew the rights of men and
of states, who best consulted the true interest of America, and who most
faithfully discharged the trust reposed in them, those who agreed to or
those who opposed the new Constitution--and so fully have I made up my own
mind on this subject, that as long as the history of mankind shall record
the appointment of the late Convention, and the system which has been
proposed by them, it is my highest ambition that my name may also be
recorded as one who considered the system injurious to my country, and as
such opposed it. Having shown that I did not "alter my opinion after I
left Philadelphia," and that I acted no "contradictory parts on the great
political stage," and therefore that there are none such to reconcile, the
reason assigned by the Landholder for that purpose doth not deserve my
notice, except only to observe that he shrewdly intimates there is already
a Junto established, who are to share in and deal out the offices of this
new government at their will and pleasure, and that they have already
fixed