Washington during the revolutionary war, who has repeatedly been elected your first magistrate, and, against whom, the tongue of slander never moved but in the hard service of a harder master.  There is another, who, for more than twenty years has been employed in the first offices in the gift of his country, and whose probity and talents are second to those of none of his contemporaries.  Among these are many who must enjoy the affection and veneration of their countrymen while superior worth is regarded.  Against these men the cry is raised—­not the cry of the oppressed, for God knows no man in Connecticut is oppressed, but the cry of those who pant for office, and who can rise only on the ruins of others.

Your judges also to whom is committed the administration of justice, are marked out as the victims of party spirit.  Is not a wise and faithful execution of the laws the chief object of every good Government?  Without this who is safe for a moment?  Without this, liberty can exist only in name—­The name indeed may be blasphemously uttered, but the substance is gone with the liberty of all who have relied on professions.  Let the people of Connecticut look at their tribunals of justice.  Are they not filled with men of incorruptible integrity?  Where has innocence received a more ample protection?  Is not the transgressor punished, and are not the wrongs of the injured redressed?  Are not our mild laws executed in mercy, and is not justice awarded with impartiality to individuals?  Can you look at the seat of justice and say “iniquity is there?” Dare any man say that the judges of our high Courts are not upright, intelligent and learned?  Who then can justly complain?  Yet the stripling of yesterday—­the bold projector—­the unprincipled ad ambitious, with a host of deceived followers, with matchless effrontery, arraign the conduct of these magistrates and loudly demand that they be driven from their offices, and from public confidence.

Another favorite scheme is to elevate to all the offices of importance men who have never enjoyed the public confidence.  The language of these revolutionists is, respecting the men in power in Connecticut, “We will not have these men to rule over us”—­We will fill their places with men of our choice—­the creatures of our hands, and who will be subservient to our views.  But, my countrymen, before you join in this project, pause and enquire, who are these men who thus assert their claim to rule over you?  Who are these men who place themselves in the corners of the streets and cry “Oh, that we were made judges in the land?” It is no part of the writer’s design to hunt vice from its guilty retreat, to expose before an insulted people, the horrid features which distinguish certain individuals who challenge popular applause, or to attach private character, but justice demands that men who boldly claim to be the rulers of the free and happy state of Connecticut, should be known.  The men who are to stand in the places of our Trumbulls and our Ellsworths should not shrink from public investigation.  To those who respect the authority of God it is a matter of no small moment that those who rule over men should be just, ruling in the fear of God nor will men, accustomed to revere this solemn declaration, lend their aid to elevate men of vicious and corrupt lives, without some dismay.