* The clergy of the United States may probably be estimated at eight thousand.  The residue of this society at four hundred; but if the former number be halved, the reasoning will be the same.

It will be said, that in this association will be all the confidential officers of the government; the choice of the people themselves.  No man on earth has more implicit confidence than myself in the integrity and discretion of this chosen band of servants.  But is confidence or discretion, or is strict limit, the principle of our constitution?  It will comprehend, indeed, all the functionaries of the government:  but seceded from their consitutional stations as guardians of the nation, and acting not by the laws of their station, but by those of a voluntary society, having no limit to their purposes but the same will which constitutes their existence.  It will be the authorities of the people, and all influential characters from among them, arrayed on one side, and on the other, the people themselves deserted by their leaders.  It is a fearful array.  It will be said, that these are imaginary fears.  I know they are so at present.  I know it is as impossible for these agents of our choice and unbounded confidence, to harbor machinations against the adored principles of our constitution, as for gravity to change its direction, and gravid bodies to mount upwards.  The fears are indeed imaginary:  but the example is real.  Under its authority, as a precedent, future associations will arise with objects at which we should shudder at this time.  The society of Jacobins, in another country, was instituted on principles and views as virtuous as ever kindled the hearts of patriots.  It was the pure patriotism of their purposes which extended their association to the limits of the nation, and rendered their power within it boundless; and it was this power which degenerated their principles and practices to such enormities, as never before could have been imagined.  Yet these were men; and we and our descendants will be no more.  The present is a case where, if ever, we are to guard against ourselves; not against ourselves as we are, but as we may be; for who can now imagine what we may become under circumstances not now imaginable?  The object, too, of this institution, seems to require so hazardous an example as little as any which could be proposed.  The government is, at this time, going on with the process of civilizing the Indians, on a plan probably as promising as any one of us is able to devise, and with resources more competent than we could expect to command by voluntary taxation.  Is it that the new characters called into association with those of the government, are wiser than these?  Is it that a plan originated by a meeting of private individuals, is better than that prepared by the concentrated wisdom of the nation, of men not self-chosen, but clothed with the full confidence of the people?  Is it that there is no danger that a new authority,