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COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION
7. That the trial by jury, whether in civil or criminal cases, ought to
be entirely abolished, and that the judges only of the new federal court,
appointed by the well born in the ten-mile-square, should determine
all matters of controversy between individuals.
8. That the trial by jury ought likewise to be abolished in the case
of libels, and every one accused of writing or even publishing a libel,
ought to be tried by informations, attachments, interrogatories, and the
other arbitrary methods practised in the court of star-chamber.
9. That a libel is whatever may happen to give offence to any great
man, or old woman; and the more true the charge, the more virulent
the libel.
10. That an unrestrained liberty of the press should be granted to
those who write and publish against the liberties of the people, but
be absolutely denied to such as write against unconstitutional measures,
and the abominable strides of arbitrary power, which have recently
been attempted by any of the rump conclaves or conventions.
11. That the people indeed have no rights and privileges but what
they enjoy at the mercy of the rich lordlings, who may, of right, deprive
them of any or of all their liberties whenever they think proper.
12. That the freemen of America have no right to think for them-
selves, nor to chuse their own officers of government, who ought to
be named and appointed by the king elect, the half king and the senate;
these being evidently much better judges of what is for the good of
the people than the people themselves.
13. That a bill of rights and other explicit declarations in favor of
the people, are old musty things, and ought to be destroyed; and that
for any set of men to declare themselves in favor of a bill of rights,
is a most daring insult offered to General Washington and Doctor Frank-
lin, who, it must be allowed by the whole world, are absolutely infallible.
14. That those men are best qualified to conduct the affairs of a
free people, who breathe nothing but a spirit of tyranny, and who, by
their violent, illegal, and unconstitutional (consolidating, energetic, as
they are pleased to stile it) procedures, have well nigh reduced the
good people of this great continent to the very eve of a civil war: And
that as soon as nine states should accede to the new system of slavery,
every one who would presume to lisp a syllable against it, ought to be
taken up, imprisoned, and punished at the discretion of the judges of
the supreme federal court.
Such are a few of the many articles of the political creed of the federal
hacks, and how firmly they believe and diligently act up to them, is a
matter of equal notoriety and grief to every real patriot in America.
1. Reprinted: New York Journal, 24 May.
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