The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, vol. 2 - Online Library of ...

Online Library of Liberty: The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, vol. 2
Dallas’s bank-stock. Your enemy will not be deceived by such a paper machinery of
force and finance, but pursue his plans of hostility with a confidence of ultimate
success. An union of the commercial States, to take care of themselves—leaving the
war, its expense, and its debt to those choice spirits so ready to declare and so eager to
carry it on—seems to be now the only rational course.
To the Honorable Timothy Pickering, Morris wrote (November 1st) of the alarming
prospect of increased taxation: “I see now that we are to be taxed beyond our means
and subjected to military conscription. Those measures are devised and pursued by
the gentle spirits who, for more than twenty years, have lavished on Britain the
bitterest vulgarity of Billingsgate because she impressed her seamen for self-defence,
and have shed a torrent of crocodile tears over the poor of that country, crushed, as
they pretend, by oppressive taxes to gratify royal ambition. Nevertheless, this waste of
men and money, neither of which can be squeezed out of our attenuated States, is
proposed for the conquest of Canada. And thus, after swearing and forswearing,
backward and forward, about free trade and sailors’ rights, till their fondest adherents
had grown giddy, and after publishing their willingness to abandon every former
pretext, the administration boldly avow that, although we are so simple as to call this
a war of defence, it is still, on their part, a war of conquest.”
A request from Mr. Pickering for some history of Morris’s personal labors in the
convention which formed the Constitution elicited the following letter, referring his
questioner to “some gentlemen who, I was told, passed their evenings in transcribing
speeches from short-hand minutes of the day; they can speak positively in matters of
which I have little recollection. All which I can now do is to ask myself what I should
do were the question started anew; for, in all probability, what I should now do is
what I then did, my sentiments and opinions having undergone no essential change in
forty years.
“Propositions to countenance the issue of paper money, and the consequent violation
of contracts, must have met with all the opposition I could make. But, my dear sir,
what can a history of the Constitution avail towards interpreting its provisions? This
must be done by comparing the plain import of the words with the general tenor and
object of the instrument. That instrument was written by the fingers which write this
letter. Having rejected redundant and equivocal terms, I believed it to be as clear as
our language would permit; excepting, nevertheless, a part of what relates to the
judiciary. On that subject, conflicting opinions had been maintained with so much
professional astuteness that it became necessary to select phrases which, expressing
my own notions, would not alarm others nor shock their self-love; and, to the best of
my recollection, this was the only part which passed without cavil.
“But, after all, what does it signify that men should have a written constitution
containing unequivocal provisions and limitations? The legislative lion will not be
entangled in the meshes of a logical net. It will always make the power which it
wishes to exercise, unless it be so organized as to contain within itself the sufficient
check. Attempts to restrain it from outrage by other means will only render it more
outrageous. The idea of binding legislators by oaths is puerile. Having sworn to
exercise the powers granted, according to their true intent and meaning, they will,
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