Economy in my plans
was, as it ought to be, secondary, subordinate, instrumental. I acted on
state principles. I found a great distemper in the commonwealth, and
according to the nature of the evil and of the object I treated it. The
malady was deep; it was complicated, in the causes and in the symptoms.
Throughout it was full of contra-indicants. On one hand, government,
daily growing more invidious from an apparent increase of the means of
strength, was every day growing more contemptible by real weakness. Nor
was this dissolution confined to government commonly so called. It
extended to Parliament, which was losing not a little in its dignity and
estimation by an opinion of its not acting on worthy motives. On the
other hand, the desires of the people (partly natural and partly infused
into them by art) appeared in so wild and inconsiderate a manner with
regard to the economical object, (for I set aside for a moment the
dreadful tampering with the body of the Constitution itself,) that, if
their petitions had literally been complied with, the state would have
been convulsed, and a gate would have been opened through which all
property might be sacked and ravaged. Nothing could have saved the
public from the mischiefs of the false reform but its absurdity, which
would soon have brought itself, and with it all real reform, into
discredit. This would have left a rankling wound in the hearts of the
people, who would know they had failed in the accomplishment of their
wishes, but who, like the rest of mankind in all ages, would impute the
blame to anything rather than to their own proceedings.
Pages:
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195