But on the other hand no alternative seems to be presented.
"Without you, the government can have but little chance of success; and the people, of that happiness which its prosperity must yield." {1789} [Sidenote: Letters from Gen.

Washington respecting the chief magistracy of the new government.] In reply to this letter General Washington said, "Your observations on the solemnity of the crisis, and its application to myself, bring before me subjects of the most momentous and interesting nature.

In our endeavours to establish a new general government, the contest, nationally considered, seems not to have been so much for glory, as existence.

It was for a long time doubtful whether we were to survive as an independent republic, or decline from our federal dignity into insignificant and wretched fragments of empire.

The adoption of the constitution so extensively, and with so liberal an acquiescence on the part of the minorities in general, promised the former; but lately, the circular letter of New York has manifested, in my apprehension, an unfavourable, if not an insidious tendency to a contrary policy.