REPLIES TO THE STRICTURES

OF

A LANDHOLDER.

BY

ELBRIDGE GERRY,

PRINTED IN

THE MASSACHUSETTS CENTINEL

AND

THE AMERICAN HERALD,

JANUARY-APRIL,

NOTE.

THE refusal of Gerry to sign or support the Constitution, being the only northern member of the federal convention to do so, made him the general target of attack by the federal writers of New England. To most of these Gerry paid no attention, but the charges of "A Landholder" were so positive, and so evidently written by a fellow member of the federal convention, that an answer was necessary.

To neither of the two pieces here printed did Gerry put his name, but the subject and internal evidence are both conclusive that they were written by him. Not being able to find a copy of the American Herald, I have been compelled to reprint the second article from the New York Journal. For more on this subject see the letters of A Landholder and of Luther Martin in this collection.

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REPLY TO A LANDHOLDER, I.

THE MASSACHUSETTS CENTINEL,

(Number 32 of Volume VIII)

SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 1788.

MR. RUSSELL:

You are desired to inform the publick from good authority, that Mr. GERRY, by giving his dissent to the proposed Constitution, could have no motives for preserving an office, for he holds none under the United States, or any of them; that he has not, as has been asserted, exchanged Continental for State Securities, and if he had, it would have been for his interest to have supported the new system, because thereby the states are restrained from impairing the obligation of contracts, and by a transfer of such securities, they may be recovered in the new federal court; that he never heard, in the Convention, a motion. made, much less did make any, " for the redemption of the old continental money;" but that he proposed the public debt should be made neither better nor worse by the new system, but stand precisely on the same ground by the Articles of Confederation; that had there been such a motion, he was not interested in it, as he did not then, neither does he now, own the value of ten pounds in continental money; that he neither was called on for his reasons for not signing, but stated them fully in the progress of the business. His objections are chiefly contained in his letter to the Legislature; that he believes his colleagues men of too much honour to assert what is not truth; that his reasons in the Convention "were totally different from those which he published," that his only motive for dissenting from the Constitution, was a