@spendius,
When business propositions pander to easy temptations it is bound to produce a tendency towards what " may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion" outcomes in.
A sensualist and sybaritic society being chucked under the chin by a range of rhetorical flourishes of cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men and women.
Notice that General Washington excluded women. No doubt due to him being acquainted with Elbridge Gerry's wife and mother of his 2 month old son who Manasseh Cutler, a Massachusetts clergyman and agent for the Ohio Company, (ahem!) described as " young, very handsome and exceedingly amiable".
I love that vignette, whether true or not, as a guide to the general ambience of the Convention which agreed and ratified the Constitution in what was a very similar manner to how the NFL rules were drawn up. On sheets of paper by people determined to distance themselves from the past. No evolution from the foggy ruins of time. Hatched out by the heat of the sun. "Beam me up Scottie".
Hence "history is bunk". Right on Henry. A true American.
When did you last see a lady described quite like that before? No doubt many lewd jests were offered in the banqueting rooms of the Indian Queen where the bachelors and those who had left their wives at home frequently supped and dined. Rather sumptuously no doubt. Mr Gerry being necessarily absent.
