The Enquirer

In order to form a correct opinion upon this subject, let the mind of the reader reflect, if a scheme of subversion could not be effected, in a shorter space of time than during life.

Mr. J. will have been in office eight years at the next election: his administration has been such as to excite the warmest admiration, and the deepest attachment, insomuch, that he finds the people of his country, anxious to suppress the vital principle of their republic, in order to re-elect him at its head. When the public mind is thus weaned and corrupted from its inflexible love to first principles; and credulity is substituted in lieu of vigilance, the moment is inviting and auspicious to the work of ambition. In answer to this, it may be said that Mr. J. is too pure and immaculate to be influenced by a passion of this kind, notwithstanding all men, and he amongst them confess, that it is the inborn and distinguishing trait of human nature.

A political writer of considerable merit and sagacity has affirmed "that all the free states of antiquity, in their free times, made a point of giving no longer than annual authority to their magistrates." And it is the opinion of Aristotle "that the chief cause of the subversion of free states was their deviation from the principles on which they were originally constructed. He tells us "that the Thuriians had a salutary law, by which the same person could not be twice a Praetor, without an intermission of five years. They suffered this law to be evaded and forgotten. Their state from that fatal time declined to its ruin."

This is the warning voice of a preceptor, that has studied nature through all her generations from the earliest to the latest hour. Ought we not therefore to adhere to reason and experience, and to adopt the same principle in regard to our president, as every intelligent statesman should do in the formation of government; that they who conduct them, are viewed in the eye of liberty as knaves. It is surely better to do this, than rely upon the political virtue of man, which we know at best to be precarious. Let us not forget then one of the most important laws of our political table, that the officers of a republican government should,

"like bubbles, on a sea of matter borne
"rise, break, and to that sea return."

It is unnecessary for me to engage in the boundless variety of probability, as to this or that mode, by which ambition could fasten its hold.

There are few men so lost in infatuation as to deny the impossibility of unlinking the federal chain that binds the union; and there are fewer men I trust, of such political indifference as to be fearless of the consequences. I do not specify this however, as the most easy and effectual way, but merely as one among many others; for no human ingenuity can devise a scheme of polity exempt from the evil, as it is incorporated in the life of every government.

If then there is an avenue through which our prosperity is assailable, it surely behoves us to act with becoming vigilance and suspicion; and rather than expose ourselves to an evil, to elect some more judicious mode of shewing our gratitude.

The absence of suspicion may be a virtue, an elixir, in the moral world, but it is a curse, and a bane, in the political, to which there is no antidote. Those who are bigotted in their confidence and faith may contend, that they cannot be hoodwinked out of their liberties, for that the least encroachment would be repelled with indignation and effect. But I wish that the credulous believers of that faith may not find it "a Milesian fable and a fairy tale." Mr. J. is one of the last men from whom I should apprehend a danger of this kind, but I shall be one of the last to abandon my political principia in order to indulge a particular predilection. When an individual has been removed eight years from the people, it is time that he should return amongst them, to be sensible of their sensations and to feel their feelings.

It is the republican Agnus Castus under the shade of which, the luxuries of power, and the fever of ambition is chastened and refreshed, and purity restored to its native state. It is the great object of official rotation and should never be abandoned. For when power remains too long in the same hands, it becomes inveterate, and Livy justly remarks "the greater it is, the greater reluctance there is to surrender it." It is upon no other principle that frequency of elections is deemed so vitally important to a republican state. It is upon this principle that the patriots of England have boldly and eloquently contended for annual parliaments, and to the want of which, they ascribe the corruption of their court and ministry.

It is a source of happy reflection that a similar temper of injudicious credulity, did not exist at the close of the preceding administration, else perhaps practice might have explained the dire consequence of official continuance or perpetuity. But in answer to every thing that can be urged upon this subject, we are arbitrarily told, that the critical state of home and foreign affairs is such, as to require the re-election of Mr. Jefferson. This is a cabalistical argument that cannot be explained, for the political state of our country is not more perilous now than at any preceding date, since the birth of our constitution. The agitation of partizism that lowered over the public mind, has subsided into calmness, confidence, and approbation, and the Federalists hang their heads in confused folly and remorse at their hostile violence of rancour.

There are many of them who confess with frankness, that the President, against whom they have exhausted their quiver of wit and malevolence, is no more to be compared to the one, for whom they sung paeans of applause, than an oriental diamond to a petrified pebble. Whence then arises this peculiar and hazardous juncture of affairs? For surely there is required as much political skill to assuage the turbid wave of faction at home; to harmonize the inveteracy of conflicting parties; as to watch our existing relations abroad, and to expel from the cabinet a miscreant minister: a De Yrujo. I know there are men who mistake the least variance of opinion, for a real difference of principle, and thus frighten their minds to anticipate, the dread consequences of a schism.

The eccentricities of one republican are considered as the awful apertures of a dividing party. But the mind ere it yields to this belief, must have been sickened with false, deceitful hopes, and is therefore inclined to speak of fearless dangers in hyperbole. But as to our foreign relations, there is no person I presume, so apprehensive of the gigantic power of Bonaparte, as to suppose that Mr. J. alone, can avert its direction. And I fondly trust that the United States are not so barren, as to be unable to afford a man capable of performing the presidential functions with patriotism, dignity and firmness. And I also trust that the people, will never depart from a first principle, so evidently important, as exclusion by rotation; for until we do that, we need not apprehend the iliad of disastrous consequences that await perpetuity in government.

Burgh. Polit. V. 8.

"The author does not mean to confine the sense of this passage, according to its literal meaning; but to embrace every mode of subversion, &c."