University of Virginia Library

6850. POWERS, Self-constituted.—[continued]

Might we not as well
appoint a committee for each department of
the Government, to counsel and direct its
head separately, as volunteer ourselves to
counsel and direct the whole, in mass? And
might we not do it as well for their foreign,
their fiscal, and their military, as for their
Indian affairs? And how many societies,
auxiliary to the Government, may we expect
to see spring up, in imitation of this, offering
to associate themselves in this and that of
its functions? In a word, why not take the
Government out of its constitutional hands,
associate them indeed with us, to preserve a
semblance that the acts are theirs, but ensuring
them to be our own by allowing them
a minor vote only?—
To Jedediah Morse. Washington ed. vii, 236. Ford ed., x, 206.
(M. 1822)