Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/209

.] idea of commercial hostility as extravagant. History might inform him of its reality. Experience might give him some instruction on the subject.

Go to the Potomac, and mark what you see. I had the mortification to see vessels within a very little distance from the Virginian shore, belonging to Maryland, driven from our ports by the badness of our regulations. I take the liberty of a freeman in exposing what appears to me to deserve censure. I shall take that liberty in reprehending the wicked act which attainted Josiah Phillips. Because he was not a Socrates, is he to be attainted at pleasure? Is he to be attainted because he is not among the high of reputation? After the use the gentleman made of a word innocently used to express a crowd, I thought he would be careful himself. We are all equal in this country. I hope that, with respect to birth, there is no superiority. It gives me pleasure to reflect that, though a man cannot trace up his lineage, yet he is not to be despised. I shall always possess these sentiments and feelings. I shall never aspire at high offices. If my country should ever think my services worth any thing, it shall be in the humble capacity of a representative: higher than this I will not aspire.

He has expatiated on the turpitude of the character of Josiah Phillips. Has this any thing to do with the principle on which he was attainted? We all agree that he was an abandoned man. But if you can prepare a bill to attaint a man, and pass it through both houses in an instant, I ask you, who is safe? There is no man on whom a cloud may not hang some time or other, if a demagogue should think proper to take advantage of it to his destruction. Phillips had a commission in his pocket at that time. He was, therefore, only a prisoner of war. This precedent may destroy the best man in the community, when he was arbitrarily attainted merely because he was not a Socrates.

He has perverted my meaning with respect to our government. I spoke of the Confederation. He took no notice of this. He reasoned of the Constitution of Virginia. I had said nothing of it on that occasion. Requisitions, however, he said, were safe and advisable, because they give time for deliberation. Will not taxation do this? Will not Congress, when laying a tax, bestow a thought upon it? But he means to say, that the state itself ought to say 2517