_They_
may do what they please with constitutional impunity; but the others
cannot even listen with civility to an invitation from them to an
ill-judged scheme of liberty, without forfeiting forever all hopes of
any of those liberties which we admit to be sober and rational.
It is known, I believe, that the greater as well as the sounder part of
our excluded countrymen have not adopted the wild ideas and wilder
engagements which have been held out to them, but have rather chosen to
hope small and safe concessions from the legal power than boundless
objects from trouble and confusion. This mode of action seems to me to
mark men of sobriety, and to distinguish them from those who are
intemperate, from circumstance or from nature. But why do they not
instantly disclaim and disavow those who make such advances to them? In
this, too, in my opinion, they show themselves no less sober and
circumspect. In the present moment nothing short of insanity could
induce them to take such a step. Pray consider the circumstances.
Disclaim, says somebody, all union with the Dissenters;--right.
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