To the Citizens of the United States II - Thomas Paine
- Mark Shubert
- Mar 7
- 10 min read
TO THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES.
LETTER THE SECOND.
from The National Intelligencer, Washington, DC, November 22, 1802.
As the affairs of the country to which I am returned are of more importance to the world, and to me, than of that I have lately left (for it is through the new world the old must be regenerated, if regenerated at all) I shall not take up the time of the reader with an account of scenes that have passed in France, many of which are painful to remember and horrid to relate, but come at once to the circumstances in which I find America on my arrival.
Fourteen years and something more have produced a change, at least among a part of the people, and I ask myself what it is? I meet or hear of thousands of my former connections who are men of the same principles and friendships as when I left them. But a non-descript race, and of equivocal generation, assuming the name of Federalist, a name that describes no character of principle good or bad, and may equally be applied to either, has since started up with the rapidity of a mushroom, and like a mushroom is withering on its rootless stalk. Are those men federalised to support the liberties of their country or to overturn them? To add to its fair fame or riot on its spoils? The name contains no defined idea. It is like John Adams’s definition of a republic in his letter to Mr. Wythe of Virginia. It is, says he, an empire of laws and not of men. But as laws may be bad as well as good, an empire of laws may be the best of all governments, or the worst of all tyrannies. But John Adams is a man of paradoxical heresies, and consequently of a bewildered mind. He wrote a book entitled, “A defense of the American Constitutions,” and the principles of it are an attack upon them. But the book is descended to the tomb of forgetfulness, and the best fortune that can attend its author, is quietly to follow its fate. John was not born for immortality. But to return to federalism.
In the history of parties and the names they assume, it often happens that they finish by the direct contrary principles with which they profess to begin, and thus it has happened with federalism.
During the time of the old congress, and prior to the establishment of the federal government, the continental belt was too loosely buckled. The several states were united in name, but not in fact, and that nominal union had neither center nor circle. The laws of one state frequently interfered with, and sometimes opposed those of another. Commerce between state and state was without protection, and confidence without a point to rest on. The condition the country was then in, was aptly described by Pelatiah Webster, when he said, “Thirteen staves and ne’er a hoop will not make a barrel.”
If then by federalist is to be understood, one who was for cementing the Union by a general government, operating equally over all the states in all matters that embraced the common interest, and to which the authority of the states severally was not adequate, for no one state can make laws to bind another, if I say by a federalist is meant a person of this description (and this is the origin of the name) I ought to stand first on the list of federalists, for the proposition for establishing a general government over the Union came originally from me in 1783, in a written memorial to Chancellor Livingston then secretary for foreign affairs to Congress, Robert Morris, minister of finance, and his associate, Governeur Morris, all of whom are now living, and we had a dinner and conference at Robert Morris’s on the subject. The occasion was as follows.
Congress had proposed a duty of five per cent on imported articles, the money to be applied as a fund toward paying the interest of loans to be borrowed in Holland. The resolve was sent to the several states to be enacted into a law. Rhode Island absolutely refused. I was at the trouble of a journey to Rhode Island to reason with them on the subject. Some other of the states enacted it with alterations, each one as it pleased. Virginia adopted it, and afterwards repealed it, and the affair came to nothing.
It was then visible, at least to me, that either Congress must frame the laws necessary for the Union, and send them to the several states to be enregistered without any alteration, which would in itself appear like usurpation on one part, and passive obedience on the other, or some method must be devised to accomplish the same end by constitutional principles, and the proposition I made in the memorial, was, to add a continental legislature to Congress to be elected by the several states. The proposition met the full approbation of the gentlemen to whom it was addressed, and the conversation turned on the manner of bringing it forward. G. Morris, in talking with me after dinner, wished me to throw out the idea in the newspaper. I replied that I did not like to be always the proposer of new things, that it would have too assuming an appearance; and besides, that I did not think the country was quite wrong enough to be put right. I remember giving the same reason to Doctor Rush at Philadelphia, and to Gen. Gates, at whose quarters I spent a day on my return from Rhode Island, and I suppose they will remember it, because the observation seemed to strike them.
But the embarrassments encreasing, as they necessarily must from the want of a better cemented Union, the state of Virginia proposed holding a commercial convention, and that convention, which was not sufficiently numerous, proposed that another convention, with more extensive and better defined powers, should be held at Philadelphia, May 10, 1787.
When the plan of the federal government formed by this convention was proposed, and submitted to the consideration of the several states, it was strongly objected to in each of them. But the objections were not on federal grounds, but on constitutional points. Many were shocked at the idea of placing, what is called executive power, in the hands of a single individual. — To them it had too much the form and appearance of a military government, or a despotic one. Others objected that the powers given to a President were too great, and that in the hands of an ambitious and designing man it might grow into tyranny as it did in England under Oliver Cromwell, and as it has since done in France. A republic must not only be so in its principles, but in its forms. The executive part of the federal government was made for a man, and those who consented, against their judgment, to place executive power in the hands of a single individual, reposed more on the supposed moderation of the person they had in view, than on the wisdom of the measure itself.
Two considerations however overcame all objections. The one was the absolute necessity of a federal government. The other the rational reflection, that as government in America is founded on the representative system, any error in the first essay could be reformed by the same quiet and rational process by which the Constitution was formed; and that, either by the generation then living, or by those who were to succeed. If ever America lose sight of this principle, she will be no longer the land of liberty. The father will become the assassin of the rights of the son, and his descendants be a race of slaves.
As many thousands who were minors are grown up to manhood since the name of federalist began, it became necessary, for their information, to go back and shew the origin of the name, which is now no longer what it originally was; but it was the more necessary to do this, in order to bring forward, in the open face of day, the apostasy of those who first called themselves federalists.
To them it served as a cloak for treason, a mask for tyranny. Scarcely were they placed in the seat of power and office, than federalism was to be destroyed, and the representative system of government, the pride and glory of America, and the palladium of her liberties, was to be over- thrown and abolished. The next generation was not to be free. The son was to bend his neck beneath the father’s foot, and live deprived of his rights, under hereditary controul. Among the men of this apostate description is to be ranked the ex-President, John Adams. It has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and finish in contempt. May such be the fate of all such characters.
I have had doubts of John Adams ever since the year 1776. In a conversation with me, at that time, concerning the pamphlet Common Sense, he censured it because it attacked the English form of government. John was for independence, because he expected to be made great by it; but it was not difficult to perceive, for the surliness of his temper makes him an awkward hypocrite, that his head was as full of kings, queens and knaves, as a pack of cards. But John has lost deal.
When a man has a concealed project in his brain that he wants to bring forward, and fears will not succeed, he begins with it as physicians do by suspected poison, try it first on an animal; if it agree with the stomach of the animal he makes further experiments, and this was the way John took. His brain was teeming with projects to overturn the liberties of America, and the representative system of government, and he began by hinting it in little companies. The secretary of John Jay, an excellent painter and a poor politician, told me, in presence of another American, Daniel Parker, that in a company where himself was present, John Adams talked of making the government hereditary, and that as Mr. Washington had no children, it should be made hereditary in the family of Lund Washington. John had not impudence enough to propose himself in the first instance, as the old French Normandy Baron did, who offered to come over to be king of America, and if Congress did not accept his offer, that they would give him thirty thousand pounds for the generosity of it; but John, like a mole, was grubbing his way to it under ground. He knew that Lund Washington was unknown, for nobody had heard of him, and that as the President had no children to succeed him, the vice-president had, and if the treason had succeeded, and the hint with it, the goldsmith might be sent for to take measure of the head of John or of his son for a golden wig. In this case, the good people of Boston might have for a king the man they have rejected as a delegate. The representative system is fatal to ambition.
Knowing, as I do, the consummate vanity of John Adams, and the shallowness of his judgment, I can easily picture to myself that when he arrived at the Federal City, he was strutting in the pomp of his imagination before the presidential house, or in the audience hall, and exulting in the language of Nebuchadnezzar, “Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the honor of my Majesty!” But in that unfortunate hour, or soon after, John, like Nebuchadnezzar, was driven from among men and fled with the speed of a post horse.
Some of John Adams’s loyal subjects, I see, have been to present him with an address on his birth day; but the language they use is too tame for the occasion. Birth day addresses, like birth-day odes, should not creep along like mildrops down a cabbage leaf, but roll in a torrent of poetical metaphor. I will give them a specimen for the next year. Here it is.
When an ant, in traveling over the Globe, lifts up its foot and puts it again on the ground, it shakes the earth to its center: But when YOU the mighty Ant of the East, was born, &c., &c., &c., the center jumped upon the surface.
This, gentlemen, is the proper style of addresses from well bred ants to the monarch of the ant-hill, and as I never take pay for preaching, praying, politics or poetry, I make you a present of it. Some people talk of impeaching John Adams, but I am for softer measures. I would keep him to make fun of. He will then answer one of the ends for which he was born, and he ought to be thankful that I am arrived to take his part. I voted in earnest to save the life of one unfortunate king, and I now vote in jest to save another. It is my fate to be always playinh with fools. But to return to federalism and apostasy.
The plan of the leaders of the faction was to overthrow the liberties of the new world, and place government on the corrupt system of the old. They wanted to hold their power by a more lasting tenure than the choice of their constituents. It is impossible to account for their conduct and the measures they adopted on any other grounds. But to accomplish that object a standing army and a prodigal revenue must be raised; and to obtain these pretences must be invented to deceive. Alarms of dangers that did not exist even in imagination, but in the direct spirit of lying, were spread abroad. Apostasy stalked through the land in the garb of patriotism, and the torch of treason blinded for a while the flame of liberty.
For what purpose could an army of twenty-five thousand men be wanted? A single reflection might have taught the most credulous that while the war raged between France and England neither could spare a man to invade America. For what purpose, then, could it be wanted? The case carries its own explanation, it was wanted for the purpose of destroying the representative system, for it could be employed for no other. Are these men federalists? If they are, they are federalized to deceive and to destroy.
The rage against Dr. Logan’s patriotic and voluntary mission to France (see Foner’s footnote at bottom of this letter) was excited by the shame they felt at the detection of the false alarms they had circulated.
As to the opposition given by the remnant of the faction to the repeal of the taxes laid on during the former administration, it is easily accounted for. The repeal of those taxes was a sentence of condemnation on those who laid them on, and in the opposition they gave to that repeal, they are to be considered in the light of criminals standing on their defence, and the country has passed judgment upon them.
THOMAS PAINE.
City of Washington, Lovett’s Hotel, Nov. 19, 1802.
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