The moral certainty, therefore, is, that there will be an anti-federal
majority in the ensuing legislature; and the very high probability is,
that this will bring Jefferson into the chief magistracy, unless it be
prevented by the measure which I shall now submit to your
consideration; namely, the immediate calling together of the existing
legislature.

I am aware that there are weighty objections to the measure; but the
reasons for it appear to me to outweigh the objections; and, in times
like these in which we live, it will not do to be over scrupulous. It
is easy to sacrifice the substantial interests of society by a strict
adherence to ordinary rules.

In observing this I shall not be supposed to mean that any thing ought
to be done which integrity will forbid; but merely that the scruples
of delicacy and propriety, as relative to a common course of things,
ought to yield to the extraordinary nature of the crisis. They ought
not to hinder the taking of a legal and constitutional step to prevent
an atheist in religion and a fanatic in politics from getting
possession of the helm of state.

You, sir, know in a great degree the anti-federal party; but I fear
you do not know them as well as I do. 'Tis a composition, indeed, of
very incongruous materials, but all tending to mischief--some of them
to the overthrow of the government, by stripping it of its due
energies; others of them to a revolution after the manner of
Bonaparte. I speak from indubitable facts, not from conjectures and
inferences. In proportion as the true character of the party is
understood, is the force of the considerations which urge to every