Gazette Of The United States

FOR THE GAZETTE OF THE UNITED STATES.

No. II.

REPRESENTATIVES IN CONGRESS.

IN my last, the general principle of honesty, as an essential requisite for a representative was glanced at—the idea was suggested that private and public honesty are to be associated in scanning the characters which ought to arrest the attention of electors—and in fact there is not a more obvious and unerring criterion, to guide us in our enquiries. It ought to be established as a maxim in the mind of every elector, that he, who discovers no regard for those obligations of moral, social, and political duty, which constitute the beauty, peace and security of every well regulated community or government, is not to be depended on in any public trust whatever.

It may not be improper to sketch a few outlines of the other requisites necessary to form the character of a competent representative.

In this improved state of our country, when, through the favorable operation of those wise, literary institutions which our ancestors established, and the present age has augmented and improved, there is so great a proportion of men of superior attainments—at a time when we see and realize the immense disproportion between persons of education, and literary improvements, and those who do not possess those advantages; when we see the influence this weight of abilities, must necessarily possess in opposition to ordinary or medium acquirements; when we consider the important rank which Pennsylvania holds in the scale of the Union—the idea comes with irresistible force, that it is our indispensable duty to support that rank by electing persons of the most distinguished abilities, natural and acquired, as representatives in Congress to maintain the honor, and advance the interest of the commonwealth, in connection with that of the union. It is of more importance than is generally imagined, that the public attention should be roused to a consideration of this point. Men of conscious honor, integrity and great abilities, are among the last in a free community, who are solicitous for public appointments—they never will be found either making direct applications to the people or using indirect methods through the agency of others, to procure their suffrages—such are the persons from whom alone we are to expect disinterested and independent conduct in public life—such characters must be sought after—and tempted from their retirements by the most honorable of all inducements, the free unsolicited suffrages of a free community. Men of this description, when placed on the theatre of public life, will be superior to party, prejudice and passion; superior to the little considerations that warp the needy and selfish from the line of rectitude; and superior to the glare of sophistry and unprincipled professions, which overpower and bewilder the faculties of uninformed minds. On this important point a few additional observations shall be offered in a future paper—it may suffice for the present just to remark, that integrity and real ability are more frequently united than it is for the interest of some persons to allow—hence a suspicion of men of talents is industriously circulated among the people, by those who hope to find their account in depreciating the utility of learning; a more fatal error cannot be adopted by freemen than this, that learning, virtue and abilities, are prejudicial to the cause of Liberty and the Rights of Men.

C.