Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/285

.] abroad, we shall have liberty and happiness at home. Let us secure that liberty, that happiness, first, and we shall then be respectable.

I have some acquaintance with a great many characters who favor this government, their connections, their conduct, their political principles, and a number of other circumstances. There are a great many wise and good men among them. But when I look round the number of my acquaintance in Virginia, the country wherein I was born, and have lived so many years, and observe who are the warmest and the most zealous friends to this new government, it makes me think of the story of the cat transformed into a fine lady: forgetting her transformation, and happening to see a rat, she could not restrain herself, but sprang upon it out of the chair.

He (Governor Randolph) dwelt largely on the necessity of the union. A great many others have enlarged on this subject. Foreigners would suppose, from the declamation about union, that there was a great dislike in America to any general American government. I have never, in my whole life, heard one single man deny the necessity and propriety of the union. This necessity is deeply impressed on every American mind. There can be no danger of any object being lost when the mind of every man in the country is strongly attached to it. But I hope that it is not to the name, but to the blessings of union, that we are attached. Those gentlemen who are loudest in their praises of the name, are not more attached to the reality than I am. The security of our liberty and happiness is the object we ought to have in view in wishing to establish the union. If, instead of securing these, we endanger them, the name of union will be but a trivial consolation. If the objections be removed, if those parts which are clearly subversive of our rights be altered, no man will go farther than I will to advance the union. We are told, in strong language, of dangers to which we will be exposed unless we adopt this Constitution. Among the rest, domestic safety is said to be in danger. This government does not intend our domestic safety. It authorizes the importation of slaves for twenty-odd years, and thus continues upon us that nefarious trade. Instead of securing and protecting us, the continuation of this detestable trade adds daily to our weakness. Though this evil is