not see the existing circumstances in the same point of view.  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.  I now deny their power of making paper money or any thing else a legal tender.  I know that to pay all proper expenses within the year, would, in case of war, be hard on us.  But not so hard as ten wars instead of one.  For wars would be reduced in that proportion; besides that the State governments would be free to lend their credit in borrowing quotas.  For the present, I should be for resolving the alien and sedition laws to be against the constitution and merely void, and for addressing the other States to obtain similar declarations; and I would not do any thing at this moment which should commit us further, but reserve ourselves to shape our future measures or no measures, by the events which may happen.  It is a singular phenomenon, that while our State governments are the very best in the world, without exception or comparison, our General Government has, in the rapid course of nine or ten years, become more arbitrary, and has swallowed more of the public liberty, than even that of England.  I enclose you a column, cut out of a London paper, to show you that the English, though charmed with our making their enemies our enemies, yet blush and weep over our sedition-law.  But I enclose you something more important.  It is a petition for a reformation in the manner of appointing our juries, and a remedy against the jury of all nations, which is handing about here for signature, and will be presented to your House.  I know it will require but little ingenuity to make objections to the details