cautioned not to confine its view to this country alone.  England and its alarmists were equally under consideration.  Still less must they consider it as looking personally towards you.  You happen, indeed, to be quoted, because you happened to express more pithily than had been done by themselves, one of the mottos of the party.  This was in your answer to the address of the young men of Philadelphia. [See Selection of Patriotic Addresses, page 198.] One of the questions, you know, on which our parties took different sides, was on the improvability of the human mind, in science, in ethics, in government, &c.  Those who advocated reformation of institutions, pari passu with the progress of science, maintained that no definite limits could be assigned to that progress.  The enemies of reform, on the other hand, denied improvement, and advocated steady adherence to the principles, practices, and institutions of our fathers, which they represented as the consummation of wisdom, and acme of excellence, beyond which the human mind could never advance.  Although in the passage of your answer alluded to, you expressly disclaim the wish to influence the freedom of inquiry, you predict that that will produce nothing more worthy of transmission to posterity than the principles, institutions, and systems of education received from their ancestors.  I do not consider this as your deliberate opinion.  You possess yourself too much science, not to see how much is still ahead of you, unexplained and unexplored.  Your own consciousness must place you as far before our ancestors, as in the rear of our posterity.  I consider it as an expression lent to the prejudices of your friends; and although I happened to cite it from you, the whole letter shows I had them only in view.  In truth, my dear Sir, we were far from considering you as the author of all the measures we blamed.  They were placed under the protection of your name, but we were satisfied they wanted much of your approbation.  We ascribed them to their real authors, the Pickerings, the Wolcotts, the Tracys, the Sedgwicks, et id genus omne, with whom we supposed you in a state of duresse.  I well remember a conversation with you in the morning of the day on which you nominated to the Senate a substitute for Pickering, in which you expressed a just impatience under ‘the legacy of Secretaries which General Washington had left you,’ and whom you seemed, therefore, to consider as under public protection.  Many other incidents showed how differently you would have acted with less impassioned advisers; and subsequent events have proved that your minds were not together.  You would do me great injustice, therefore, by taking to yourself what was intended for men who were then your secret, as they are now your open enemies.  Should you write on the subject, as you propose, I am sure we shall see you place yourself farther from them than from us.