There was a great deal of good sense, and much truth in what the governor wrote, on this occasion; but of what avail could it prove with the ignorant and short-sighted, who put more trust in one honeyed phrase of the journal, that flourished about the ‘people’ and their ‘rights,’ than in all the arguments that reason, sustained even by revelation, could offer to show the fallacies and dangers of this new doctrine, As a matter of course, the wiles of the demagogue were not without fruits.  Although every man in the colony, either in his own person, or in that of his parent or guardian, had directly entered into the covenants of the fundamental law, as that law then existed, they now began to quarrel with its provisions, and to advance doctrines that would subvert everything as established, in order to put something new and untried in its place. Progress was the great desideratum; and change was the hand-maiden of progress.  A sort of ‘puss in the corner’ game was started, which was to enable those who had no places to run into the seats of those who had.  This is a favourite pursuit of man, all over the world, in monarchies as well as in democracies; for, after all that institutions can effect, there is little change in men by putting on, or in taking off ermine and robes, or in wearing ‘republican simplicity,’ in office or out of office; but the demagogue is nothing but the courtier, pouring out his homage in the gutters, instead of in an ante-chamber.

Nor did the governor run into extremes in his attempts to restrain the false reasoning and exaggerations of the demagogue and his deluded, or selfish followers.  Nothing would be easier than to demonstrate that their notions of the rights of numbers was wrong, to demonstrate that were their theories carried out in practice, there could be, and would be nothing permanent or settled in human affairs; yet not only did each lustrum, but each year, each month, each week, each hour, each minute demand its reform.  Society must be periodically reduced to its elements, in order to redress grievances.  The governor did not deny that men had their natural rights, at the very moment he insisted that these rights were just as much a portion of the minority as of the majority.  He was perfectly willing that equal laws should prevail, as equal laws did prevail in the colony, though he was not disposed to throw everything into confusion merely to satisfy a theory.  For a long time, therefore, he opposed the designs of the new-school, and insisted on his vested rights, as established in the fundamental law, which had made him ruler for life.  But “it is hard to kick against the pricks.”  Although the claim of the governor was in every sense connected with justice, perfectly sacred, it could not resist the throes of cupidity, selfishness, and envy.  By this time, the newspaper, that palladium of liberty, had worked the minds of the masses to a state in which the naked pretension of possessing rights that were