The gentleman, Sir, has spoken at large of former parties, now no longer
in being, by their received appellations, and has undertaken to instruct
us, not only in the knowledge of their principles, but of their
respective pedigrees also. He has ascended to their origin, and run out
their genealogies. With most exemplary modesty, he speaks of the party
to which he professes to have himself belonged, as the true Pure, the
only honest, patriotic party, derived by regular descent, from father to
son, from the time of the virtuous Romans! Spreading before us the
_family tree_ of political parties, he takes especial care to show
himself snugly perched on a popular bough! He is wakeful to the
expediency of adopting such rules of descent as shall bring him in, to
the exclusion of others, as an heir to the inheritance of all public
virtue, and all true political principle. His party and his opinions are
sure to be orthodox; heterodoxy is confined to his opponents. He spoke,
Sir, of the Federalists, and I thought I saw some eyes begin to open and
stare a little, when he ventured on that ground. I expected he would
draw his sketches rather lightly, when he looked on the circle round
him, and especially if he should cast his thoughts to the high places
out of the Senate. Nevertheless, he went back to Rome, _ad annum urbis
conditae_, and found the fathers of the Federalists in the primeval
aristocrats of that renowned city! He traced the flow of Federal blood
down through successive ages and centuries, till he brought it into the
veins of the American Tories, of whom, by the way, there were twenty in
the Carolinas for one in Massachusetts.
Pages:
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751