There are many considerations
_dehors_ of the State, which will occur to you without enumeration. I
should not apprehend them, if all was sound within. But there is a most
respectable part of our State who have been enveloped in the X. Y. Z.
delusion, and who destroy our unanimity for the present moment. This
disease of the imagination will pass over, because the patients are
essentially republicans. Indeed, the Doctor is now on his way to cure
it, in the guise of a tax-gatherer. But give time for the medicine
to work, and for the repetition of stronger doses, which must be
administered. The principle of the present majority is excessive
expense, money enough to fill all their maws, or it will not be worth
the risk of their supporting. They cannot borrow a dollar in Europe, or
above two or three millions in America. This is not the fourth of the
expenses of this year, unprovided for. Paper money would be perilous
even to the paper men. Nothing then but excessive taxation can get us
along: and this will carry reason and reflection to every man's door,
and particularly in the hour of election.
I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our
constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the
reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine
principles of its constitution; I mean an additional article, taking
from the federal government the power of borrowing.
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