they should know it, for where judgement is to act, or a choice to be made, knowledge is first necessary. The conciliation of parties, if it does not grow out of explanation, partakes of the character of collusion or indifference. There has been guilt somewhere; and it is better to fix it where it belongs, and separate the deceiver from the deceived, than that suspicion, the bane of society, should range at large, and sour the public mind. The military measures that were proposed and carrying on during the former administration could not have for their object the defence of the country against invasion. This is a case that decides itself; for it is self-evident that while the war raged in Europe, neither France nor England could spare a man to send to America. The object therefore must be something at home, and that something was the overthrow of the representative system of government, for it could be nothing else. But the plotters got into confusion and became enemies to each other. Adams hated and was jealous of Hamilton, and Hamilton hated and despised both Adams and Washington. Surly Timothy stood aloof, as he did at the affair of Lexington, and the part that fell to the public was to pay the expence. But ought a people who but a few years ago were fighting the battles of the world, for liberty had no home but here, ought such a people to stand quietly by and see that liberty undermined by apostacy and overthrown by intrigue? Let the tombs of the slain recal their recollection, and the forethought of what their children are to be revive and fix in their hearts the love of liberty. If the former administration can justify its conduct give it the opportunity. The manner in which John Adams disappeared from the government renders an inquiry the more necessary. He gave some account of himself, lame and confused as it was, to certain eastern wise men who came to pay homage to him on his birth-day. But if he thought it necessary to do this ought he not to have rendered an account to the public. They had a right to expect it of him. In that tete a tete account, he says, "Some measures were the effect of imperious necessity, much against my inclination." What measures does Mr. Adams mean, and what is the imperious necessity to which he alludes. "Others (says he) were measures of the legislature, which although approved when passed were never previously proposed or recommended by me." What measures, it may be asked, were those, for the public have a right to know the conduct of their representatives?" Some (says he) left to my discretion were never executed because no necessity for them in my judgement, ever occurred." What does this dark apology mixed with accusation, amount to, but to increase and confirm the suspicion that something was wrong. Administration only was possessed of foreign official information, and it was only upon that information communicated by him publicly or privately, or to Congress, that Congress could act, and it is not in the power of Mr. Adams to shew, from the condition of the belligerent powers, that any imperious necessity called for the warlike. and expensive measures of his administration. What the correspondence between administration and Rufus King in London, or Quincy Adams in Holland, or Berlin, might be, is but little known. The public papers have told us that the former became cup-bearer from the London Underwriters to Captain Truxton, for which as minister from a neutral nation, he ought to have been censured. It is, however, a feature that marks the politics of the minister, and hints at the character of the correspondence. I know it is the opinion of several members of both houses of Congress that an enquiry, with respect to the conduct of the late administration ought to be gone into. The convulsed state into which the country has been thrown will be best settled by a full and fair exposition of the conduct of that administration, and the causes and object of that conduct. To be deceived, or to remain deceived, can be the interest of no man who seeks the public good; and it is the deceiver only, or one interested in the deception, that can wish to preclude enquiry. The suspicion against the late administration, is, that it was plotting to overturn the representative system of Government, and that it spread alarms of invasions that had no foundation, as a pretence for raising and establishing a military force as the means of accomplishing that object. The law, called the sedition law, enacted, that "If any person should write or publish, or cause to be written or published any libel (without defining what a libel is) against the government of the United States, or either houses of Congress, or against the President, he should be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not exceeding two years." But it is a much greater crime for a President to plot against a constitution and the liberties of the people than for an individual to plot against a President: and consequently John Adams is accountable to the public for his conduct, as the individuals under his administration were to the sedition law. The object, however, of an inquiry in this case is not to punish, but to satisfy; and to shew by example to future administrations that by an abuse of power and trust, however disguised by appearances, or rendered plausible by pretence, is one time or other to be accounted for. Bordentown, on the Delaware, THOMAS PAINE. |