1792 Philip Freneau
A motion for opening the doors of the Senate chamber has again been lost. What means this conduct? Are you freemen who ought to know the individual conduct of your legislators, or are you an inferior order of beings incapable of comprehending the sublimity of senatorial functions, and unworthy to be entrusted with their opinions? How are you to know the just from the unjust steward when they are covered with the mantle of concealment? . . . What are you to expect when stewards of your household refuse to give account of their stewardship? . . . The Peers of America disdain to be seen by vulgar eyes . . . The Senate . . . usurps the secret privileges of the House of Lords. . . . Let it be impressed upon your minds that you depend not upon your representatives but that they depend upon you, and let this truth be ever present to you, that secrecy in your representatives is a worm which will prey and fatten upon the vitals of your liberty.
