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As for your personal character, I will not, for the honour of human nature, suppose that you can wish to have it remembered. The condition of the present times is desperate indeed: but there is a debt due to those who come after us; and it is the historian's office to punish though he cannot correct. JUNIUS.

LETTER.-N°. 5.

To His Honour LEVI LINCOLN, Lieutenant Governour of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

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`IT was believed by the Federalists and readily admitted by many of the least violent of your party, that the best policy to he pursued in relation to your Honour would be to suffer you to sink quietly from your conspicuous elevation, which is now on, ly distinguished by your vices, into the profound insignificance from which you originally sprung. Your immediate. friends, by whom I mean the heads of democracy and the promoters of crime, are, it seems, of a different opinion. Their purposes require a man who has as little concern for the prohibitions of virtue, as conception of the benefits of wisdom; who is equally des titute of shame for his misconduct, and desire of amendment. If they relinquish your Honour as a candidate at the approaching election, they may seek in vain throughout the prostituted ranks of democracy, for another leader so thoroughly drilled into the discipline, and qualified in all the vices of the service. No, sir, they consider you a statesman, who, not only in your religious and political creed, but in the virulence and incincerity of your practice, is the brightest ornament of your party. I hope, though it is an inferiour, it will not be a useless task, to endeavour to discover, and to portray those eminent peculiarities of character, which have rendered you so sufficiently base as to out-darken all your competitors for the praise of possessing the Vol. 1.

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fittest requisites to lead the democrats of Massachusetts. I would not have you suppose that I consider the investigation of any further importance, than as it is connected with political views; my principal object in considering your merits, will be to form some adequate estimate of the virtue of a party who will readily acknowledge such a man as your Honour to be their most accomplished compeer. I shall hope by such an attempt to rouse mistaken men from the extacies of their political delirium, and cause returning reason again to shed its light upon their minds.

I confess with reluctance that I am in some degree unfit for the task I have undertaken, for while it is evident that you are the most renowned hero of your party, yet I cannot possibly discover in your productions, any strength of mind, which should cause you to be famous, nor in your opinions sufficient plausibility to render you popular. Your vices too, are in no other respect peculiar, than as they are more malignant, than those of your brother democrats; so that I am reduced to this alternative; either you have concealed your abilities from all mankind excepting the chiefs of your party, or the great extent of your reputation rests entirely upon the blackness of your political infamy. You relieve me from the degrading necessity of following your career, through the grovelling baseness of your early life, until you have ascended to the pinnacle of your earthly ambition; your conduct as Lieut. Governour of this Commonwealth, is amply sufficient for my purposes. You now fill a large space in the eye of the publick, you are a conspicuous figure, always open to the adulation of your friends, and exposed to the denunciations of your enemies. Your deeds in this station have been worthless enough to gratify the revenge of the most malignant of your adversaries, and there is no necessity that they should pollute themselves with the scum of your former transactions, to ascertain more clearly the unworthy motives, by which you were at that time inAuenced.

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The first circumstance which has distinguished your adminadministration is an avowal of sentiments notoriously inconsist ent with the principles of the constitution, and evidently intend, ed to be prostituted to the interests of party. Sensible that the term of your duties would soon expire,, and that the virtue of Integrity would not be satisfactory to your friends, you determined to gratify their ambition at the expense of the welfare of

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the country; and render your administration, remarkable in the annals of the state, first by the profligacy of your doctrines, and then by the enormity of your conduct. Without any sense of your own dignity, or that of the commonwealth, you have dare ed secretly to undermine the ramparts of the laws. The President knew you to be ready to promote any scheme, however un« constitutional, by any stretch of power, however oppressive. He knew you to be a creature whose inclinations and professions afforded him a sufficient pledge that his personal revenge should at any rate be executed, in spite of any provisions in the laws or constitution which opposed it. Far from acting with the open, the undisguised patriotism of Governour Trumbull, who dared peremptorily to refuse his compliance with an illegal demand; you secretly and meanly followed the inclinations of your pas trons at Washington, and one of the first of your official transactions was an absolute defiance of the very laws of which you are the ostensible guardian. This odious and contemptible behaviour is only an ebullition of that spirit of malignity, which without ever aspiring to the dignity of generous opposition, has marked the course of your whole life with a series of little, underhanded attempts to subvert the intentions of your political opponents. It remains to be seen how you will overcome the well supported charge for a deed which reduces all your other enormities to insignificance, and places an ulcer upon the forehead of your crimes, which excites all our attention, and engrosses all our abhorrence. Making every allowance for your ignorance, it appears evident from the features of the transaction, that you knew, in calling out any part of the militia of this state, you were acting without justifiable authority. The constitution, which you have always pretended to understand, you must have known, if you knew any thing, expressly dictates under what authority the President may call out the militia. He did not conform to it, he did not dare to conform to it. He dare not proclaim the citizens of this commonwealth in a state of insurrection. How could he order insurgents to disperse, when there was no meeting of insurgents? How could he proclaim his intention of rivetting the chains in which we were manacled, by a military power, when we professed no open intention to burst them asunder? No, sir, he intended, and so did you, to coerce the people into submission to his tyranny, by secretly sapping the

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fortifications which neither you nor he had the courage to scale. But thanks to the vigilance of our centinels, the attempt was discovered; and we are yet to learn whether the traitors will escape the punishment they deserve.

...The consequences of this treachery, however, I presume you foresaw, would attach you more closely to your party. They have seen with delight your zeal in their cause, and they deter, mine to support yon at every hazard. But I trust in God, there is yet a spirit of determined integrity in the majority of the people of this state, which will resist the encroachment of such infamous principles and I have too good an opinion of the militia officers to suppose they ever could have united with you in subverting the laws of the country. But I believe I understand you; you are willing to favour the summary method of a milita ry execution. If such are your wishes, I have only to add, that with a trifling change of person in the criminal, who is to suffer, I should not repine if they were gratified tomorrow.

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MARCUS BRUTUS.

Mr. JEFFERSON's Answer to the Citizens of Wilmington, and its

vicinity.

THE composition of this 'greatest man in America,' has always been the theme of my panegyrick; I have ever considered him to be the first statesman and purest writer, that this country ever produced. I have lately discovered another gem for the cabinet of his literary reputation. The following METAPHOR, taken from the answer of that illustrious man to the citizens of Wilmington, will afford us ample illustration of the clearness of that head, which has discovered an inexhaustible source of wealth in the salt mountains of Louisiana, and a powerful coercion on foreign nations in the ever memorable embargo laws... CIBBER

The storm, which, with little intermission, has been raging for so many years, which has immolated the ancient dynasties and institutions of Europe, and prostrated the principles of publick law heretofore respected, has hitherto been felt but in a secondary degree by us.

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Here Mr. Jefferson gives us a storm, which acts in a double capacity. First merely as a storm, as all storms should acts and

second, as a priest at a sacrifice, who has immolated the ancient dynasties, &c. I was at a loss at first to account for this change of character in the storm, which by doubling the metaphor, is contrary to the grovelling rules of fine writing; but the presi dent has very wisely anticipated the objection, and introduces an expression which reconciles the whole: with little intermis sion.' Now it is evident that during the period of this little intermission,' the storm must have changed to the priest; though it must be confessed he had hardly sufficient time in that capacity, to immolate all the ancient dynasties and institutions of Europe : however, our illustrious author, sensible of this, soon metamorphoses him back again into a mere storm, to 'prostrate the principles of publick law heretofore respected. Besides this, we have hitherto felt the storm as such only in a secondary degree." ARBUTH.

This commentator has omitted to mention whether the great ❝rage of the storm' storm continued under the character of the priest storm. This is a necessary point to be understood, since to be in a rage for many years' is inconsistent with the dignity of priesthood. M. SCRIBLERUS.

"But threatening at length to involve us in its vortex, it is time for all good citizens to rally round the constituted authorities, by a publick expression of their determination to support the laws and government of their choice and to frown into silence all disorganizing movements.'

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The first idea which this quotation affords, is the propriety of applying to a storm what common readers would refer to à whirlpool; now it is evident that though whirlpools or vortexes exist without storms, yet they may easily exist with them. Therefore it is peculiarly elegant to say the vortex of a storm.” But the main singularity of the expression is the easy departure of the President from the metaphorical to the literal, and his return to the metaphorical again; but without the same metaphor. Thus, for example. But threatening at length to involve us in its vortex, it is time for (what, the storm? oh no,) all good citizens to rally round the constituted authorities. Well; having left the storm, for all good citizens, how do they contrive to rally? why, 'by a publick expression,', yes, rally by an expression of their determination to support the laws and government of their

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