haps, to get on his four years political journey in this seemingly equivocal manner as a president,

Placed on the isthmus of a middle state,

A being darkly wise and rudely great.

BUT if this would do for him, it would not answer for his party: they will expect much and attempt every thing.

FALKLAND No. IV.

TO NEW-ENGLAND MEN.

TO abolish the funding system is neither necessary nor decorous. But there are as many ways to slay this enemy, as to destroy human life; by violence, by poison, by neglect. By violence the interest may be reduced; by taxing the holders of publick debt as much may be drawn back in taxes, as is paid in name of interest: this is poison. Or the laws for enforcing the revenue and carrying into effect the engagements of the government may be delayed, and finally not passed. The Gallatin doctrine in regard to treaty appropriations furnishes theory enough for all the paper money iniquity, that ever was practised or imagined. The children of the publick faith may come to a democratick government, and say, in the name of justice and plighted honour, give us bread; and such a government may say, as the state government of Rhode-Island have heretofore said of their war debts, take your bread, offering a

stone.

THE new president will have a part of no common difficulty to act. He will desire to conciliate the federalists, and without respecting their systems, might be willing to let them alone. The democrats really wish to see an impossible experiment fairly tried, and to govern without government. It is to be expected, that they will applaud their chief, who is believed to be their true disciple, if he should take a fancy to try it.

THEY consider government as a strange sort of self-moving mill, or a ship, that, while it is acted upon by one element, goes the better for the resistance of another. It is an even chance, therefore, that they may deem the opposition of the federalists as harmless and even as salutary as their own. In pursuance of their plan, they will let the government alone to go by its own inscrutable momentum. They will, as heretofore, deem it proper to be lookers on, not co-operators, unless when it shall want either force or treasure, or even countenance and approbation; and then they will summon each other to their old post of opposition. Treasure corrupts, and force oppresses, and, therefore, government shall have neither. The immediate evil to be apprehended to our government, is the denial of its daily bread; that sort of consumption which preys on the balsamick parts of the blood, and leaves a residuum of vitriol. The body politick, though bloated with a shew of health while it perishes, and alive with double-concocted poisons, will shed a corroding and mortal venom on all it touches. The laws will be jacobin; for as soon as the democrats have wasted their first energies, and their system falls into decrepitude, (and a year of democratick government is old age) they will crowd themselves into power. They are a race distinct from the democrats, and as much worse in their designs, as the independents, in Oliver Cromwell's time, than the presbyterians.

THEN expect amendments, that will make the constitution a confederation. Then expect commercial regulations, which will profess to cramp British commerce, and will cramp our own. First revenue, wealth, and credit will take flight; then

peace.

THE danger, therefore, to all the interests and institutions of New-England, is not so much to be ascribed to the character or designs of the new president, whoever he may be, or to be feared in the first year of the new administration, as from the progress of time, and the natural developments of faction. There is universally a presumption in democracy that promises

every thing; and at the same time an imbecility that can accomplish nothing, nor even preserve itself.

THERE is in jacobinism all the vigour, audacity, and intelligence requisite to take advantage of this state of things. The democrats will be their journeymen to do the work, while they claim the wages; the pioneers, who will clear the way for the procession of the jacobin triumph. The jacobins and democrats are, in fact, less agreed in their objects and principles, though these latter do not know it, than the federalists and the democrats.

It would be improper as well as tedious to pursue, in a newspaper essay, all the illustrations and details, that these observations may seem to require. They are not, however, so much addressed to men who are no federalists, but who might be convinced to become such, nor to men who already wish well to the good old cause of order, law, and liberty, yet who are weak enough to think it will be safe in jacobin hands, as to the old federalists, the true and intelligent, who rightly conclude, that, if our excellent government, in this the day of its humiliation and imminent peril, is to be saved, it must be by the correctness of the publick opinion and the energy of the publick spirit that is to impress it.

THIS is no day for despondency, or servility, or trimming. It is as little to the purpose, to trust implicitly to the moderation of a jacobin administration, or to those smooth professions, with which it will attempt in the beginning to make the federalists supine or treacherous in the cause, to make them cold in its defence, or go over to the enemy.

THAT cause, though endangered, is not desperate. The jacobins have pretended, that the people approve their designs; but their partial success has been owing to the concealment of those designs. They have played the part of hypocrisy with an audacity of impudence that is unparalleled: they have affected to be federalists, republicans, friends, admirers, and champions of the constitution: they have recommended jacobin members of congress, as better watchmen for it than its known friends: they have assured us, that Mr. Jefferson will

not subvert or neglect to preserve those institutions and interests, which he is known, and, it is believed, well-known to condemn and abhor as much as his adherents. These protestations have had effect, and jacobins have been preferred, not because they were such, but because it was believed, that they were what they pretended to be. The wolves in sheep's clothing have not yet been stripped: they are in the sheepfold.

LET them not, however, imagine, that the people, especially of the Eastern states, are ready to co-operate in the work of jacobinism. If, after having with some success deceived the people, they should become such dupes as to act on the credit of their own tales, let them beware. They will find it is easier to deceive a high-spirited people, than to enslave them, and safer to insult them by the imputation of political principles that they abhor, than to plunder and beggar them by carrying. such principles into effect.

20

THE OBSERVER.

First published in the Palladium, February, 1801.

THE French revolution is a sort of experimental political

philosophy, in which many foolish opinions are tried and found wanting. The jacobins are, however, like quacks, who recommend their patent medicines. Experience has no effect on them to cure their delusion. They say, their elixir of immortality has not yet been fairly tried, and that some aristocratick patients stopped breathing only to effect the disgrace of their nostrums. They would give a whole nation a quietus at once, if they could only persuade them to swallow some liquor of long life, some restorative pill, or some powder, that is to sweeten the blood. Accordingly, the jacobin papers even yet manifest, how little they learn from the direful experience of France; for even yet they dare to call the success of French arms, the cause of liberty and republicanism. Whether we have any fools left, who still flounder in this confusion of mind, is more than I know; but many jacobins, it is certain, still claim credit for their sincerity to that amazing extent of infatuation.

FRANCE is the only state in Europe completely military: they are now what the Turks lately were, all soldiers, or all liable to be made soldiers. Their spirits have been wrought up by eight years of war, by revolution, and by the excesses of what our mobocrats call liberty, into a ferment, equal to that of the ancient crusaders. No state could be safe, while France had the power to disturb them; and every state that thought itself safe in inaction has fallen: the only powers that yet stand, are those that resisted with courage. France has not changed; the danger to other nations is not less, and the only path to safety is thorny and perilous: it is to be trodden in arms. Mithridates, Antiochus, Perseus, the Etolian and Achæan leagues were successively lost, either by seeking an alliance with ancient Rome, or by neglecting the