To the People of the State of New York:
AS CONNECTED with the subject of revenue, we may with propriety consider that of economy. The
money saved from one object may be usefully applied to another, and there will be so much the less to be
drawn from the pockets of the people. If the States are united under one government, there will be but one
national civil list to support; if they are divided into several confederacies, there will be as many different
national civil lists to be provided for -- and each of them, as to the principal departments, coextensive
with that which would be necessary for a government of the whole. The entire separation of the States
into thirteen unconnected sovereignties is a project too extravagant and too replete with danger to have
many advocates. The ideas of men who speculate upon the dismemberment of the empire seem generally
turned toward three confederacies -- one consisting of the four Northern, another of the four Middle, and
a third of the five Southern States ....
To the People of the State of New York:
IN THE course of the preceding papers, I have endeavored, my fellow citizens, to place before you, in a
clear and convincing light, the importance of Union to your political safety and happiness. I have
unfolded to you a complication of dangers to which you would be exposed, should you permit that sacred
knot which binds the people of America together be severed or dissolved by ambition or by avarice, by
jealousy or by misrepresentation. In the sequel of the inquiry through which I propose to accompany you,
the truths intended to be inculcated will receive further confirmation from facts and arguments hitherto
unnoticed. If the road over which you will still have to pass should in some places appear to you tedious
or irksome, you will recollect that you are in quest of information on a subject the most momentous which
can engage the attention of a free people, that the field through which you have to travel is in itself
spacious, and that the difficulties of the journey have been unnecessarily increased by the mazes with
which sophistry has beset the way. It will be my aim to remove the obstacles from your progress in as
compendious a manner as it can be done, without sacrificing utility to despatch....
|
|
To the People of the State of New York:
WE HAVE seen the necessity of the Union, as our bulwark against foreign danger, as the conservator of
peace among ourselves, as the guardian of our commerce and other common interests, as the only
substitute for those military establishments which have subverted the liberties of the Old World, and as
the proper antidote for the diseases of faction, which have proved fatal to other popular governments, and
of which alarming symptoms have been betrayed by our own. All that remains, within this branch of our
inquiries, is to take notice of an objection that may be drawn from the great extent of country which the
Union embraces. A few observations on this subject will be the more proper, as it is perceived that the
adversaries of the new Constitution are availing themselves of the prevailing prejudice with regard to the
practicable sphere of republican administration, in order to supply, by imaginary difficulties, the want of
those solid objections which they endeavor in vain to find....
To the People of the State of New York:
THE tendency of the principle of legislation for States, or communities, in their political capacities, as it
has been exemplified by the experiment we have made of it, is equally attested by the events which have
befallen all other governments of the confederate kind, of which we have any account, in exact proportion
to its prevalence in those systems. The confirmations of this fact will be worthy of a distinct and
particular examination. I shall content myself with barely observing here, that of all the confederacies of
antiquity, which history has handed down to us, the Lycian and Achaean leagues, as far as there remain
vestiges of them, appear to have been most free from the fetters of that mistaken principle, and were
accordingly those which have best deserved, and have most liberally received, the applauding suffrages of
political writers....
 
|
|