They admired his uncommon shape--it was such as they had never
before seen--his deformities were, in their eyes, the greatest of beauties,
and they were heard like Aristides to declare that, were they on the verge
of eternity, they would not wish a single alteration in his form. His
monstrous beak, his long neck, and his enormous poke, even these, the
future means of their destruction, were subjects of their warm
approbation. He took possession of his new dominions, and instantly began
to swallow down his subjects, and it is said that those who had been the
warmest zealots for crane administration, fared no better than the rest.
The poor wretches were now much more dissatisfied than before, and with
all possible humility applied to Jupiter again for his aid, but in vain--he
dismissed them with this reproof, "that the evil of which they complained
they had foolishly brought upon themselves, and that they had no other
remedy now, but to submit with patience." Thus forsaken by the god, and
left to the mercy of the crane, they sought to escape his cruelty by
flight; but pursuing them to every place of retreat, and thrusting his
long neck through the water to the bottom, he drew them out with his beak
from their most secret hiding-places, and served them up as a regale for
his ravenous appetite. The present federal government is, my fellow
citizens, the log of the fable--the crane is the system now offered to your
acceptance--I wish you not to remain under the government of the one, nor
to become subjected to the tyranny of the other. If either of these events
take place, it must arise from your being greatly deficient to
yourselves--from your being, like the nation of Frogs, "a discontented,
variable race, weary of liberty and fond of change." At the same time I
have no hesitation in declaring, that if the one or the other must be our
fate, I think the harmless, inoffensive, though contemptible Log,
infinitely to be preferred to the powerful, the efficient, but
all-devouring Crane.

LUTHER MARTIN.

_Baltimore, March 29, 1788._

LETTER OF A PLAIN DEALER, ACCREDITED TO SPENCER ROANE.

Printed In
The Virginia Independent Chronicle,
February, 1788.

Note.

In October, 1787, Governor Edmund Randolph, delegate to the Federal
Convention from Virginia, addressed to the Speaker of the House of
Delegates a letter on the Federal Constitution. This was published in
December, 1787, in both _The Virginia Gazette