affairs. By this great mass of ingenuous young men it must be desirable to be furnished with the materials contained in and referred to by these Letters; and it is due to that interesting portion of the community to let them see that their Governor has no better right in reason than he has by the Constitution, to call upon them to blush for their country.

With respect to Mr. Otis himself-he has refrained from every thing like a personal vindication, and given his reasons for that forbearance. We shall not therefore connect with this pamphlet any such vindication, as it might be presumed to receive his assent, and have an air of evasion. It cannot be amiss however to say, that knowing perfectly well the part he acted during the war, and his affinity to the oldest whig and republican families in the country, it would be incomparably more easy for us to shew the injustice done him by imputing to him a disposition to violent or high-handed or disorganizing measures at any period, than to account for the peculiar and virulent persecution by which it has been attempted to father upon him, whatever measures by misrepresentation and the course of events are most liable to be regarded as at variance with the republican and federal principles of our Union.

OTIS LETTERS.

LETTER I.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CENTINEL.

Aliud est maledicere-aliud accusare-accusatio crimen desiderat reum ut definiat, hominem ut notet-argumento probet, teste confirmet. Maledictio antem nihil habet propositi præter contumeliam. Cic: pro M Calio.

SIR,

SEVERAL months have elapsed since the speech of His Excellency the Governor was made to the Legislature upon his accession to the chair. In that speech, His Excellency appears in the novel character of public accuser of the State and people over which he is called to preside, and requites them for the honor of their suffrages by bearing record to the past infamy of their political character and conduct. He imputes to them perseverance in a course of odious and criminal violation of their federal obligations, and desertion of the common cause in a time of urgent peril, and charges them with advancing to the very brink of treason. This "unhallowed" series of enormities, he says, was consummated by an "authorized combination," (that is, as he intends, an illegal confederacy, authorized by law,) the mischievous consequences of which he describes in the language of one flushed, if not intoxicated with a new authority. This combination (whose alias dictus is the Hartford Convention) consisted of persons deputed by the Legislatures of several States, as Committees to meet together and consult upon a pressing emergency and to report their proceedings. Of this number, twelve only were appointed by Massachusetts; so that (their names being matter of public record) they may consider themselves denounced as individuals

before both branches of the Legislature, not less than if they had been described with the technicality of an indictment. In that assembly no voice was raised in their defence by their friends, who were the minority, and who thought, perhaps wisely, that silence was the most expressive reply, while the majority substantially echoed the music of the speech, and were soothed for the insult offered to the State by the flattering unction which His Excellency poured forth upon themselves. Thus the members of that Convention, for going upon a State-errand, undertaken with known reluctance, are accused by their Governor, and in fact attainted by an act of the General Court, of misdemeanors, which although they cannot by the Constitution, work forfeiture or corruption of blood, ought justly to be visited with forfeiture of character, and are by the public accuser and his court intended to produce that effect. In these circumstances-in a country whose Constitution prohibits the passing of bills of attainder, and secures to the humblest culprit the right of a hearing and defence and trial by his peers; it would not probably, be deemed in any view of equity, a departure from the respect due to the Chief Magistrate and his friends, for the parties thus criminated to appear before the public in vindication of their characters; though they would still be in the predicament of those unfortunates, who, under the very ancient "regime" of a country from which I trust His Excellency would not wish to take example, were first scourged, and then heard in their defence. Perhaps allowance would be made by the liberal (of which I hope there are many) among His Excellency's supporters, for a tone of indignation, in the aged patriots, statesmen, and warriors of the revolution, (who from different States were members of that Convention) in defending their civic and military wreaths from the indecorous grasp of a Chief Magistrate with whom they need not shrink to compare their claims in every department of merit and duty to their country. And even the humble individual who addresses you, after many years of service in public life, might be excused for protesting with some vehemence against the injustice of being sent to his account as a conspirator against the government of his country in consequence merely of having served upon a Committee of the Gen

eral Court sitting in Hartford instead of Boston, and thus undertaking a mission forced upon him by three-fourths of the Legislature against his most earnest remonstrance, and to the great sacrifice of his convenience; without any equivalent in diplomatic perquisites and outfits by which the wreaths and laurels of His Excellency have been gilded. But whatever hope I might reasonably cherish of a fair indulgence from every friend of justice in repelling this official libel; yet if the solitary interest of my own good name were all that was endangered by it, I should suffer it to waste its venom "on the desert air," and leave to posterity to award the praise or censure that shall hereafter appear to be due to "combinations," authorized or unauthorized-civil or military; whether at Hartford, the supposed scene of my machinations, or at Newburgh, where history has laid a plot in which some of His Excellency's intimate friends were thought to be implicated. (See Note A.)

To this impartial tribunal I would refer my own cause rather than appear before the public in any communication which may wear the semblance of a labored vindication of my own political character. My disinclination to enter upon any such vindication has ever been invincible. In proof of its reality I can. adduce the restraint which I have invariably imposed upon myself. In a long course of public vocations, (which I sincerely wish had been as beneficial to my country as they have been laborious and unproductive to me,) no personal justification has ever been attempted by me in any recollected instance against the pitiless censures and calumnies which have been showered upon me.* It has been my fashion of thinking, that if a man is sustained by public favor, he has no occasion to engage in the difficult task of speaking of himself. If on the contrary, the people have grown tired, or dissatisfied with his services, he becomes an object of pity if not of contempt, when (destitute of the resource which in a retreat from public station, ministers not only to consolation, but delight—a retrospection of the best motives, and of a constant communion of sentiment with wise and honorable men,) he whines over the

*I do not consider a letter once written to Gen. Heath, nor a series of numbers written by "One of the Convention," nor a late letter on the subject of the Massachusetts Claim, as forming exceptions to this remark.