STATE OF DELAWARE 385 



give only an example or two to show how rudely the 

 Illustrious Assembly is handled. To the Defender of 

 the Fatherland, General Washington, the Congress de- 

 cided to erect a statue on horseback, the work .to be 

 done by the first artist of France, and the statue to be 

 set up at the meeting-place of the Congress. This 

 resolution was followed shortly afterwards by that 

 fixing two ' foederal-towns,' on the Delaware and the 

 Potowmack, in which alternately the Congress was to 

 assemble. Whereupon, in the ' Freeman's Journal,' 

 some one brought forward the hypothesis that the Con- 

 gress migrating from one town to the other, the 

 mounted statue must necessarily go along ; and very 

 likely this horse, as the Trojan, would be hollow -bellied 

 so as to lodge on the journey the gentlemen of the 

 Congress, and for the private archives of the same 

 there would be room in a part of the anatomy equally 

 so. Again, it was proposed to build a floating town for 

 the Congress, known to be poor and greatly in debt, 

 sending it and all its luggage down the Delaware from 

 Trenton, along the coast into the Chesapeak Bay, and 

 up the Potowmack to Georgetown, comfortably and at 

 a saving of heavy expense. It was announced further + 

 that at the earliest possible day there would be seen 

 swinging in America an immeasurably great pendulum ; 

 for the Americans, having observed the unequal and 

 uncertain workings of the European machines of state, 

 having discovered the irregularities to which that polit- 

 ical system is subject, had devised a working mech- 

 anism for keeping their affairs going in an orderly 

 course. The centre of oscillation of the pendulum hit 

 upon for this purpose would be somewhere in the 

 planet Mars, the weight to be composed of certain 

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