3685. HARTFORD CONVENTION, Unpopular.—
I do not mean to say that all
who are acting with these men are under the
same motives. I know some of them personally
to be incapable of it. Nor was that the case
with the disorganizers and assassins of Paris.
Delusions there, and party perversions here,
furnish unconscious assistants to the hired
actors in these atrocious scenes. But I have
never entertained one moment's fear on this
subject. The people of this country enjoy too
much happiness to risk it for nothing; and
I have never doubted that whenever the incendiaries
of Massachusetts should venture
openly to raise the standard of separation, its
citizens would rise in mass and do justice
themselves to their own parricides.—
To Governor Plumer. Washington ed. vi, 415.
(M.
1815)
