. Our country is too large to have
all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such
a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the
circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the
details necessary for the good government of the citizens, and the same
circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents,
will invite the public agents to corruption, plunder, and waste. And I
do verily believe, that if the principle were to prevail, of a common
law being in force in the United States, (which principle possesses the
General Government at once of all the powers of the State governments,
and reduces us to a single consolidated government) it would become the
most corrupt government on the earth. You have seen the practices by
which the public servants have been able to cover their conduct, or,
where that could not be done, delusions by which they have varnished it
for the eye of their constituents. What an augmentation of the field for
jobbing, speculating, plundering, office-building, and office-hunting
Would be produced by an assumption of all the State powers into the
hands of the General Government. The true theory of our constitution is
surely the wisest and best, that the States are independent as to every
thing within themselves, and united as to every thing respecting foreign
nations. Let the General Government be reduced to foreign concerns only,
and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations,
except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better,
the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our General
Government may be reduced to a very simple organization, and a very
unexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants.
But I repeat, that this simple and economical mode of government can
never be secured, if the New England States continue to support the
contrary system. I rejoice, therefore, in every appearance of their
returning to those principles which I had always imagined to be almost
innate in them. In this State, a few persons were deluded by the X.
Y. Z. duperies. You saw the effect of it in our last Congressional
representatives, chosen under their influence. This experiment on their
credulity is now seen into, and our next representation will be as
republican as it has heretofore been. On the whole, we hope, that by a
part of the Union having held on to t