Transcription

being protected, almost every good man has aided in propping a tottering authority. He has felt the weight of his individual strength and counsels. Government has leaned upon the people, and a wife and virtuous people have adopted a Constitution worthy of themselves. Already it has procured us the respect of Europe. Let us learn to reverence it as the glory and safeguard of our country. Every people has a partial fondness for their own country. National pride and prejudice are found to be as strong, and unchangeable in favor of the most wretched terrirory [sic], as of the most fertile and salubrious.
  Tho nature has covered the earth with barrenness, and the air with pestilence, and tho society is still more cursed with despotism, the people with resent reflections on their country, as the cruelest of all insults, and will consider an exile from it as the most deplorable of all misfortunes.