The Rhode Island American, And General Advertiser

BALTIMORE, August 9.

Burr's conspiracy it seems is hatching over again in Europe, and is in rehearsal under the patronage of Bonaparte, who long was a democratick idol, and is not yet fallen altogether into dispute with them. Among the persons accused of a participation in the original plot, there was not more than one conspicuous federalist, but many democrats. There were Wilkinson, Adair, Swartwout, Smith of Ohio, Bollman, &c. all democrats. We do not mean to imply that any one of these but Wilkinson was actually guilty; for the government in all its eagerness convicted nobody of any offence, but the accusation of its prosecutors found none except the one federalist above alluded to, to light upon, with however many of their own kidney. It may therefore with justice be considered to have been a democratick plot. Since the federal constitution was established, every scheme and conspiracy to overturn the law or sever the union that has existed, was of democratick parentage. The grand Spanish plot, for which Sebastian was discarded from the bench of Kentucky, was pushed with the knowledge, if not the agency of Nicholas and Innis; the latter of whom, though a judge of the United States, and notwithstanding the example set by the state authority, was suffered to keep his seat without impeachment, even after he confessed his crime. Mr. Gallatin and Co. were the authors of the first insurrection in Pennsylvania; and the obscure persons concerned in the second, were all hardened democrats, who had been instigated by the traitorous machinations and inflammatory misrepresentations of more knowing ones.

The Legislature of Virginia openly propagated the principles of rebellion and disunion, about the period of the latter insurrection, in the form of resolutions, which were elaborately vindicated by the present President of the United States, in a voluminous report. The sum of their doctrine, though elaborated into every shape ad infinitum, as the learned hero of Mudfort would say, was no more nor less than, that if the general government assumed powers not given to them by the constitution, "the state governments were bound by duty to prevent the operation of them within their limits, and that the alien and sedition laws were usurpations of precisely this description; consequently that those two laws, though admitted to be constitutional by the judges, ought to have been resisted by the several states, by force of arms."

So much is disorganization a part of the means of democracy to reach and to retain power, that, as we are credibly informed, at a caucus of Members of Congress, held in the year 1801, to consult respecting the means of securing Mr. Jefferson's elevation to the Presidency, the question was put, among others, whether the constitution should be prostrated, if necessary, to prevent the election of another; and it was carried in the affirmative. Nor would it be any very improbable anticipation, that if the ruling party were to lose their influence in the general government, they would not desist from the struggle, till they had shook the union to its centre, or levelled it in the dust.

But let us not forget the late resistance of the state of Pennsylvania, to the authority of the United States, called Snyder's rebellion, in which he arrayed his militia, against the Marshal's posse. Neither ought it to be forgotten, that the insurgents, after being duly convicted, were promptly pardoned by the executive of the United States.