Give every man his constitutional freedom, and the president full power to send an army to suppress mobs; and the states authority to repeal and impugn that relic of folly, which makes it necessary for the governor of a state to make the demand of the president for troops, in cases of invasion or rebellion The governor himself may be a mobber and, instead of being punished, as he should be for murder and treason, he may destroy the very lives, rights, and property he should protect. Like the good Samaritan, send every lawyer as soon as he repents and obeys the ordinances of heaven, to preach the gospel to the destitute, without purse or scrip, pouring in the oil and the wine: a learned priesthood is certainly more honorable than “an hireling clergy.”

As to the contiguous territories to the , wisdom would direct no tangling alliance: belongs to this government honorably, and when we have the red man’s consent, let the spread from the east to the west sea; and if petitions Congress to be adopted among the sons of liberty, give her the the right hand of fellowship; and refuse not the same friendly grip to and : and when the right arm of freemen is stretched out in the character of a navy, for the protection of rights, commerce and honor, let the iron eyes of power, watch from to , and from to Columbia; thus may union be strengthened, and foreign speculation prevented from opposing broadside to broadside.

Seventy years have done much for this goodly land; they have burst the chains of oppression and monarchy; and multiplied its inhabitants from two to twenty millions; with a proportionate share of knowledge: keen enough to circumnavigate the globe; draw the lightning from the clouds: and cope with all the crowned heads of the world.

Then why? Oh! why! will a once flourishing people not arise, phœnix like, over the cinders of ’s power; and over the sinking fragments and smoking ruins of other catamount politicians; and over the wind-falls of , , , [Silas] Wright, and a caravan of other equally unfortunate law doctors, and cheerfully help to spread a plaster and bind up the burnt, bleeding wounds of a sore but blessed ? The southern people are hospitable and noble: they will help to rid so free a country of every vestige of slavery, when ever they are assured of an equivalent for their property. The will be full of money and confidence, when a national bank of twenty millions, and a state bank in every state, with a million or more, gives a tone to monetary matters, and make a circulating medium as valuable in the purses of a whole community, as in the coffers of a speculating banker or broker.

The people may have faults but they never should be trifled with. I think Mr. [William] Pitt’s quotation in the British Parliament of Mr. [Matthew] Prior’s couplet for the husband and wife, to apply to the course which the king and ministry of should pursue to the then colonies, of the now , might be [p. 10]