This idea will add the inducements of philanthropy to those of
patriotism, to heighten the solicitude which all considerate and good
men must feel for the event. Happy will it be if our choice should be
directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and
unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good. But this
is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected. The
plan offered to our deliberations affects too many particular interests,
innovates upon too many local institutions, not to involve in its
discussion a variety of objects foreign to its merits, and of views,
passions and prejudices little favorable to the discovery of truth.
Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution
will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest
of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may
hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the
offices they hold under the State establishments; and the perverted
ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize
themselves by the confusions of their country, or will flatter
themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of
the empire into several partial confederacies than from its union under
one government.
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