Paris, July 30, 1796.
As censure is but awkwardly softened by apology. I shall offer you
no apology for this letter. The eventful crisis to which your double
politics have conducted the affairs of your country, requires an
investigation uncramped by ceremony.
There was a time when the fame of America, moral and political, stood
fair and high in the world. The lustre of her revolution extended itself
to every individual; and to be a citizen of America gave a title to
respect in Europe. Neither meanness nor ingratitude had been mingled
in the composition of her character. Her resistance to the attempted
tyranny of England left her unsuspected of the one, and her open
acknowledgment of the aid she received from France precluded all
suspicion of the other. The Washington of politics had not then
appeared.
At the time I left America (April 1787) the Continental Convention, that
formed the federal Constitution was on the point of meeting. Since that
time new schemes of politics, and new distinctions of parties, have
arisen. The term _Antifederalist_ has been applied to all those who
combated the defects of that constitution, or opposed the measures
of your administration. It was only to the absolute necessity of
establishing some federal authority, extending equally over all the
States, that an instrument so inconsistent as the present federal
Constitution is, obtained a suffrage. I would have voted for it myself,
had I been in America, or even for a worse, rather than have had none,
provided it contained the means of remedying its defects by the same
appeal to the people by which it was to be established. It is always
better policy to leave removeable errors to expose themselves, than
to hazard too much in contending against them theoretically. I have
introduced these observations, not only to mark the general difference
between Antifederalist and Anti-constitutionalist, but to preclude
the effect, and even the application, of the former of these terms to
myself. I declare myself opposed to several matters in the Constitution,
particularly to the manner in which what is called the Executive is
formed, and to the long duration of the Senate; and if I live to return
to America, I will use all my endeavours to have them altered.(*) I also
declare myself opposed to almost the whole of your administration; for
I know it to have been deceitful, if not perfidious, as I shall shew
in the course of this letter. But as to the point of consolidating the
States into a Federal Government, it so happens, that the proposition
for that purpose came originally from myself. I proposed it in a letter
to Chancellor Livingston in the spring of 1782, while that gentleman
was Minister for Foreign Affairs. The five per cent, duty recommended
by Congress had then fallen through, having been adopted by some of the
States, altered by others, rejected by Rhode Island, and repealed by
Virginia after it had been consented to. The proposal in the letter I
allude to, was to get over the whole difficulty at once, by annexing a
continental legislative body to Congress; for in order to have any law
of the Union uniform, the case could only be, that either Congress, as
it then stood, must frame the law, and the States severally adopt it
without alteration, or the States must erect a Continental Legislature
for the purpose. Chancellor Livingston, Robert Morris, Gouverneur
Morris, and myself, had a meeting at the house of Robert Morris on
the subject of that letter. There was no diversity of opinion on the
proposition for a Continental Legislature: the only difficulty was on
the manner of bringing the proposition forward. For my own part, as I
considered it as a remedy in reserve, that could be applied at any time
_when the States saw themselves wrong enough to be put right_, (which
did not appear to be the case at that time) I did not see the propriety
of urging it precipitately, and declined being the publisher of it
myself. After this account of a fact, the leaders of your party will
scarcely have the hardiness to apply to me the term of Antifederalist.
But I can go to a date and to a fact beyond this; for the proposition
for electing a continental convention to form the Continental Government
is one of the subjects treated of in the pamphlet _Common Sense_.(1)
* I have always been opposed to the mode of refining
Government up to an individual, or what is called a single
Executive. Such a man will always be the chief of a party. A
plurality is far better: It combines the mass of a nation
better together: And besides this, it is necessary to the
manly mind of a republic that it loses the debasing idea of
obeying an individual.--_Author_.