Gazette Of The United States

THE APOLOGIZER.
No. III.

HAIL! All hail the auspicious era of humanity!
Avaunt! Ye black descriptions of human
nature, and of crimes against common sense,
good government and good order. Rejoice ye
anti-feds! Your apologizer triumphs! He is read
with applause! What a glory his labors spread
over you! Your opinions and practices, which
heretofore have been supposed criminal, are proved
to be the perfection of nature working by cross
purposes! Your honesty is demonstrated, by a
more self evident truth, the circumscription of
your understandings! How pleasing to the writer
is the applause of his own conscience, for rescuing
from the bar of public censure those unpitied ones,
who, bating the energy of his own quill, never
could have had a defender! Black shade of Catiline!
Hear me, and be thou the patron-demon of
my undertaking; and may Arnold, thy antitype
in the present age, be a ministering genius between
me and thee, for my assistance while I emblazon
the integrity of our common friends. Reader, be
not impatient, the mysteries of my factious devotion
are now ended, and I will again converse with
thy earthly understanding. A principle of self
preservation is a part of living nature, of which
no creature is destitute; a man and his mule equally
feel its influence. Even a fabulous existence
is dear to the possessor—witness the self preserving
exertions of Griffins, Unicorns and other
imaginary beings of antiquity; when science began
to enlighten the mass of mankind, and they
felt a faintness spread over their fabled being how
they struggled to survive. If such be thy efforts,
self-preserving nature, where thou art but imagined
to be, what must be the labor of thy creatures
to continue, when they actually exist. No matter
how small the quantity of being, if it be something—a
little something is as real as a great something, and,
for aught we can know to the contrary,
feels as strongly the principle of self preservation,
and the evil of extinction.

Self preservation how sacred! Is it not a justifying
plea for whatever man can do? Do not our
Laws and reverend judges allow it to be a defence
against the highest charges? And would you not
sneer in the face of an anti-fed, for so far forgetting
his own safety, as voluntarily to subscribe a
constitution, which requires capacities in government
above his own? Doth any man love to go
into company in which he cannot shine? I tell
thee friend, that these questions carry death to a
great number, whom the Apologizer wishes to preserve,
and it may be thine own portion, while
thou art gazing.

Though regard to public good be a laudable principle
of action, it is, by no means so sacred or binding
on any one as nature's own instinct of self
preservation.

Reader, if thou art a great man in thine own
State, I am certain these arguments will go to thy
heart, and bring to remembrance the time when
thou hast felt them. These feelings I shall never
forget, for though I am now one of the literati, I have
been quite another creature, a great man in my
own State. It was a vision. When I was meditating
this apology, on motives of pure benevolence;
those invisible powers came upon me, to
whom great authors are indebted for the inspiration
of the quill. In imagination, I was transformed
from a humble citizen full of love to my
whole country, into the chief man of a great State
in the western territory. My title was the sweetest
music, I had ever heard. Though I found my mind
prodigiously lessened by the operation, several of
its passions were increased, especially a jealousy for
my own honor. The proclamation for a general
thanksgiving, coming out in any other name beside
my own, was a cutting circumstance, but determining
not to be insulted without revenge, I joined
my own name to the supreme signature. Ah!
there is much in signing a name, sometimes it
gives peace, and is half a man's dignity among the
people. In the first days of vision, I thought myself
alone in these feelings, but gradually found
that several counsellors and judges who surrounded
me, felt the gnawing of the same worm.
They dreaded the approach of federal officers of
a similar department, and the mischief of the
whole was, we could not convince the people of
what we felt so strongly: that our own exclusive
dignity was of more consequence than the public
good. It soon became a common cause, and I
shall not fail in due time, to inform the world of
those pangs in vision which we all suffered.
Nature thou art powerful! Yes! It was thy
self preserving power, acting in them and in me,
and we should have been suicides to resist. But
greater things, than these, were before me, and
I am chilled by the remembrance. This fatal
tour thought I within myself! What evil destiny
has led the hero here? Whether to be first or second,
in the house of my own kingdom, was now
the question. While in tormenting suspense, Podagra,
my guarding angel, who had saved me out
of many political scrapes, and made my folly pass
for shrewdness, descended! He seized me body,
soul and joints, and hid me from the scheme!!!

(AMERICAN MERCURY.)