dges
the proposed one to have radical objections. A Constitution ought to be
like Caesar's wife, not only good, but unsuspected, since it is the highest
compact which men are capable of forming, and involves the dearest rights
of life, liberty and property. I fear his Excellency has done no service
to his favorite scheme of amendments (and he too seems to be of the same
opinion) by his very candid declaration at the end of his letter. Subtlety
and chicane in politics, are equally odious and dishonorable; but when it
is considered that the present is not the golden age--the epoch of virtue,
candor and integrity--that the views of ambitious and designing men are
continually working to their own aggrandizement and to the overthrow of
liberty, and that the discordant interests of thirteen different
commonwealths are to be reconciled and promoted by one general government;
common reason will teach us that the utmost caution, secrecy, and
political sagacity is requisite to secure to each the important blessings
of a good government.

I shall now take my leave of his Excellency and the above-mentioned
letter, declaring my highest veneration for his character and abilities;
and it can be no impeachment of the talents of any man who has not served
a regular apprenticeship to politics, to say, that his opinions on an
intricate political question are erroneous. For if, as the celebrated Dr.
Blackstone observes, "in every art, occupation, or science, commercial or
mechanical, some method of instruction or apprenticeship is held
necessary, how much more requisite will such apprenticeship be found to
be, in the science of government, the noblest and most difficult of any!"

A PLAIN DEALER.

REMARKS ON THE NEW PLAN OF GOVERNMENT, BY HUGH WILLIAMSON.

Printed In
The State Gazette Of North Carolina.
1788.

Note.

No file of the _State Gazette of North Carolina_ is now known to exist, so
the date of publication of this essay is in doubt. It is printed from a
clipping from that paper, preserved by Williamson himself, which is in the
library of the New York Historical Society. A note states that:

"The following remarks on the new Plan of Government are handed us
as the substance of Dr. Williamson's Address to the freemen of
Edenton and the County of Chowan when assembled to instruct their
representatives."

Remarks.

State Gazette Of North Carolina.

Though I am conscious that a su