Gazette Of The United States

M'K. ENNO,

We is commended to the public spirited citizens to establish a Robin Hood debating Society—Important points of legislation could be settled cheaply at a tavern= Doubts could be unravelled, and the threads of mystery unknotted. Generous wine would produce generous toasts, and banish the sordid spirit of calumny and detraction. The orators, after having ventilated their lungs by discharging the inflammable air in speeches against the abuses of our vile government, the gambling moneychymes, the bank speculations, courtly corruption, and pandemoniac abominations of the crew in office, could sit down to rest their weary and disgusted virtue with a rubber at whist. This debating society would thus promote the cause of republican purity and simplicity of manners, and bind the true brotherhood more closely together. It would aid true eloquence and make it dreadful to ministers, by drilling it frequently for the combat—The symphonies of Bedlam, the ferocious screams, the ear-piercing yells could be nicely practiced over beforehand, like the rehearsal of a tragedy—But in these exhibitions a man really half crack-brained would out do any mimic. By introducing whist after the debates of the Society, a favorite amusement would be blended with severe duty, that the declaimers against gambling and peculation might thus, if the cards were favorable, pick their wages out of their work. It is no small advantage for any scheme to pay its way, and execute itself as this does. There is no need of fines to compel attendance. The reformers would throng to the debates. These are the chief recommendations of meetings, especially towards the close of the debate. In time there may be still greater advantages derived from it. Congress has been a diligent law-making body in times past, where all was brotherly love and harmony. No time was lost in attempts to embarrass necessary measures—Ignorance never prated there, and malice never boiled over—But if it should happen hereafter that a knot of ten or a dozen factious ambitious men, not caring a straw for the interest, two or three public officers—should embarrass honor, or peace of the nation, but raging against everything but doing nothing themselves—should stir enquiries to make the people suspicious and angry without any grounds, and then take special care to prevent their coming to any decision—should bawl for information which they have already got, and stop all the common business of the treasury to send them volumes of copies of documents, to prove what every one well knew before—so that a whole session of Congress should be wasted, and the great business of enacting a plan to sink the public debt should be postponed.—Surely if this should ever be the misfortune of this country, it would be wise by way of prevention, now to establish a separate society, where all this mock business could be transacted—Sham motions could there be made more cheaply for the public, and with less risk of the general peace and harmony than in the House of Representatives—For this juice would let off the meanest and most malignant passions of the human heart, and the faction having thus discharged their gall, could appear decent in a public assembly. It would be a kind of waste-gate to carry the frothy torrent harmlessly away, without endangering the mill-dam.
Philadelphians, good men and true, you are so happy as to read and hear the oracles of wisdom delivered by the haters of the constitution, the minister and funding system—the word-merchants who shuffle and cut in your city, the hucksters and hawkers of cant phrases about aristocracy and corruption in the administration, and who keep a shop to distribute grievances to the people, show that your city is worthy of its rank as the metropolis, and do some good to your country by setting up and supporting such a society, which hereafter in degenerate times may save our money and our union. For if it should happen that our pure virtue should run low in spite of all that our gamblers and the ambitious bawlers, who cry, DO SOMETHING FOR THE PEOPLE, (meaning themselves) can do to keep the stock good—The Congress house would certainly rank below the dignity of a bear garden. Half a dozen men who would stick at nothing after the death of virtue, would keep the country in a flame—They would circulate any story no matter how false—declare that the administration is corrupt, and such as would "disgrace pandemonium"—and yet sit down satisfied with big words, without proving who is corrupt, the act of corruption, and the circumstances which would turn the officer out and bring him to punishment—Since eloquence disdains facts, like her sister poetry, she would be tame if she was accurate and like her sister, she is the most sublime when she is the maddest. To proceed with the terrible change that Congress may undergo. It may happen hereafter, that enquiries will be begun and kept up as long as jealousy and resentment can be kept alive by means of them, Papers may be called for to make the people believe there is a great mystery in these affairs, and a cheat of five millions found out. This half dozen party leaders would pretend that they have a great deal of merit because they do all in their power to blacken the fame of the just and able servants of the people, and when the calumny should be refuted, and their base arts and ignorance confounded by a complete account of all the transactions of the administration, they will not be ashamed to say, all we had in view was truth and the good of the people, who ought to be made acquainted with the true state of their concerns.
Human affairs are liable to many changes—it is the part of prudence to guard against such events before they happen. Otherwise the most profligate unprincipled faction may tear the peace and quiet of this country to rags. Nothing is so promising a preservative as a debating society. Those who make speeches, not laws, who do all they can to prevent their being made, and who speak not to the House but to the galleries, could not object to performing all this in the club or society. It is no objection that the club would have no legislative authority to finish business—or that would exactly suit those whose labor it is to hinder its being done. They would enjoy every other advantage. The debates of the society could be published, "and the work of defaming the officers of government, and of kindling jealousies, suspicions and deadly feuds in the community, need not stand still a minute. Besides, the men who watch for the proper recovery of the millions which they intimate have been filched out of the wrong box, would naturally approve a scheme which leaves to the mischief-makers the full use of their advantages, and saves to the public the six dollars a day.—In addition to all this mass of benefits to be derived from the plan, we have a striking example to our hands of the advantages arising to the people from clubs to govern the governors of a country.