advisable.
These and similar considerations then induced the people to rely
greatly on the judgment and integrity of the Congress; and they
took their advice, notwithstanding the various arts and endeavors
used to deter them from it. But if the people at large had reason
to confide in the men of that Congress, few of whom had been fully
tried or generally known, still greater reason have they now to
respect the judgment and advice of the convention, for it is well
known that some of the most distinguished members of that Congress,
who have been since tried and justly approved for patriotism and
abilities, and who have grown old in acquiring political
information, were also members of this convention, and carried into
it their accumulated knowledge and experience.
It is worthy of remark that not only the first, but every
succeeding Congress, as well as the late convention, have invariably
joined with the people in thinking that the prosperity of America
depended on its Union. To preserve and perpetuate it was the great
object of the people in forming that convention, and it is also the
great object of the plan which the convention has advised them to
adopt. With what propriety, therefore, or for what good purposes,
are attempts at this particular period made by some men to
depreciate the importance of the Union? Or why is it suggested that
three or four confederacies would be better than one? I am
persuaded in my own mind that the people have always thought right
on this subject, and that their universal and uniform attachment to
the cause of the Union rests on great and weighty reasons, which I
shall endeavor to develop and explain in some ensuing papers. They
who promote the idea of substituting a number of distinct
confederacies in the room of the plan of the convention, seem
clearly to foresee that the rejection of it would put the