Gazette Of The United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser

EXTRACTS

From a Charge delivered to the Grand Jury for the district of Maryland, in the circuit court of the United States, held at Annapolis, on the 8th of May, 1797, by the honorable James Iredell, one of the associate judges of the supreme court of the United States.

"If after all, any individual disapprove of the voice of his country, what does duty and common modesty require of him? To be perfectly confident he is right in his opinion, and those entrusted to decide are wrong!—Who is the man entitled to so arrogant an estimation of his own abilities? Is he rashly to determine that the measure has been adopted from some dishonest motive? What right has one man to charge another with dishonesty without proof? Let him prove and punish if he can. If he can do neither, but will throw out calumny at random, he must stand in the view of his fellow citizens as a slanderer, and incur the suspicion that his readiness to suspect others of dishonorable intentions, has probably arisen from something in the texture of his own mind which led him to ascribe worthless motives as the most natural inducement of action. The part surely for every man who loves his country, but who disapproves of any public authoritative decision, is to submit to it with diffidence and respect, considering the many chances there are that his own opinion may be really wrong, though he cannot perceive it to be so; that whether it may or not he does not live in a despotic government where any one man's opinion, not even his own, is to decide for all others; and that the very basis of all republican governments in particular, is the submission of a minority to the majority, where a majority are constitutionally authorized to decide. For a man to call himself a republican without entertaining this sentiment, is folly. To be one, without acting upon it, is impossible."

"To you, gentlemen, are committed prosecutions for offences against the United States. The object is the preservation of a union, without which undoubtedly we should not now be enjoying the rights of an independent people, and without the support of which it is vain to think we can continue to enjoy them. This country has great energies for defence, and by supporting each other might defy the world. But if we disunite, if we suffer differences of opinion to corrode into enmity, jealousy to rankle into distrust, weak men to delude by their folly, abandoned men to disturb the order of society by their crimes, we must expect nothing but a fate as ruinous as it would be disgraceful, that of inviting some foreign nation to foment and take advantage of our internal discords, first making us the dupe and the prey of an ambition we excited by our divisions, and to which those divisions, if continued, must inevitably give success. So critical and peculiar is our situation, that nothing can save us from this as well as every other external danger, but constant vigilance to guard against even the most distant approaches of it, and being at all times ready to provide adequate means of defence.—Our government is so formed, that that vigilance can always be exerted, and those means when necessary be drawn forth. To rely upon these is not only our indispensable duty, but the only chance of securing that union of spirit and exertion without which in a moment of danger no efforts can be of any avail. For 21 years that union has preserved us through multiplied dangers, and more than once rescued us from impending ruin. I trust it will yet display itself with its wonted efficacy, and that no threats, no artifices, no devotion to names without meaning, or professions without sincerity, will be capable of weakening, by any impression on a sensible people, a cement essential to their existence."

"I have troubled you with this address, gentlemen, on account of the extreme importance of the matter of it at the present moment. The sentiments have flowed warmly from my breast, and I flatter myself are not uncongenial to your own. The present situation of our country is such as to require the exertion of all good men to support and save it. I enter into no particulars, as the legislature of the United States are on the point of meeting, and for whose decision every worthy citizen must wait with solicitude and respect. In the mean time it is of the utmost consequence that every man should sacredly obey the laws of the country actually in being. They cannot be altered, nor the observance of them in any instance dispensed with, without the authority of the Congress of the United States, in any exigence, however great, in any situation, however alarming. There is no occasion to doubt, but that the whole proceedings of that most respectable body, will be conducted with a degree of temper and firmness suited to the important and trying situation which called them together, and that the great object of all their deliberations will be, if possible, to preserve the peace, at the same time that they maintain inviolably, the honor, the interest, and the independence of their country."