Gazette Of The United States And Daily Evening Advertiser

From the American Daily Advertiser.

GERMANICUS,
LETTER VIII:

What would be the consequence, if, as a further objection imports, "no operation towards the improvement of our affairs, which depends upon the general movement of the people, can be promoted, unless it be commenced in smaller circles?" It would not follow, that those smaller circles are to be found in the societies, "where the happy varieties of sentiment, which so eminently contribute to intellectual acuteness, are lost; where activity of thought is shackled by the fear, that our associates should disclaim us; where a fallacious uniformity of opinion is produced, which carries all men along with a resistless tide; where men meet together to enforce, not to enquire." An acquiescence in the objection would amount only to this: that man flourishes, and is perfected by a communion with his fellows: that accuracy and expansion of mind are the effect of collision: that few individuals can boldly undertake for the success of a new and weighty measure, without the concert and aid of others. But let me ask those, who would aggrandize their country by some important invention, to the consummation of which he is of himself unequal, or would advance its political welfare by means, in which the majority must concur whether they stand in need of any other opportunities for obtaining social assistance, than to speak, what they please, to publish, what they please, and to assemble with whom they please?

Do they want "the apparatus of articles of confederacy and committees of correspondence?"

There is one movement indeed the most delicate and critical of all, to which the societies are powerfully competent; that is, resistance to a change of the government. When a radical discontent has seized the minds of the people, and the majority of them adopt the societies, as instruments of a revolution;

they cease to be the artificers at least of a little knot of individuals against the body of the people. If the societies fear, that without their interposition a people, who understand liberty, and whose command can hurl the government to the dust, may slumber under oppression, let them be comforted by the following passage of that friend of mankind, Mr. Locke. "When the people are made miserable, and find themselves exposed to the ill usage of arbitrary power, cry up their governors as much as you will, for sons of Jupiter; let them be sacred and divine, descended or authorized from Heaven; give them out for whom, or what you please; the same opposition will happen. The people, generally ill treated and contrary to right, will be ready upon any occasion to ease themselves of a burden, that sits heavy upon them. They will wish and seek for the opportunity, which in the change, weakness, and accidents of human affairs, seldom delays long to offer itself." He must have lived but a little while in the world, who has not seen examples of this in his time; and he must have read very little, who cannot produce examples of it, in all sorts of governments in the world.

GERMANICUS.