I am not of opinion that the race of men, and the
commonwealths they create, like the bodies of individuals, grow effete
and languid and bloodless, and ossify, by the necessities of their own
conformation, and the fatal operation of longevity and time. These
analogies between bodies natural and politic, though they may sometimes
illustrate arguments, furnish no argument of themselves. They are but
too often used, under the color of a specious philosophy, to find
apologies for the despair of laziness and pusillanimity, and to excuse
the want of all manly efforts, when the exigencies of our country call
for them the more loudly.
How often has public calamity been arrested on the very brink of ruin by
the seasonable energy of a single man! Have we no such man amongst us? I
am as sure as I am of my being, that one vigorous mind, without office,
without situation, without public functions of any kind, (at a time when
the want of such a thing is felt, as I am sure it is,) I say, one such
man, confiding in the aid of God, and full of just reliance in his own
fortitude, vigor, enterprise, and perseverance, would first draw to him
some few like himself, and then that multitudes, hardly thought to be in
existence, would appear and troop about him.
If I saw this auspicious beginning, baffled and frustrated as I am, yet
on the very verge of a timely grave, abandoned abroad and desolate at
home, stripped of my boast, my hope, my consolation, my helper, my
counsellor, and my guide, (you know in part what I have lost, and would
to God I could clear myself of all neglect and fault in that loss,) yet
thus, even thus, I would rake up the fire under all the ashes that
oppress it.
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