There must be marks of deliberation; there
must be traces of design; there must be indications of malice; there
must be tokens of ambition. There must be force in the body where they
exist; there must be energy in the mind. When all these circumstances
combine, or the important parts of them, the duty of the vicinity calls
for the exercise of its competence: and the rules of prudence do not
restrain, but demand it.
In describing the nuisance erected by so pestilential a manufactory, by
the construction of so infamous a brothel, by digging a night-cellar for
such thieves, murderers, and house-breakers as never infested the world,
I am so far from aggravating, that I have fallen infinitely short of the
evil. No man who has attended to the particulars of what has been done
in France, and combined them with the principles there asserted, can
possibly doubt it. When I compare with this great cause of nations the
trifling points of honor, the still more contemptible points of
interest, the light ceremonies, the undefinable punctilios, the disputes
about precedency, the lowering or the hoisting of a sail, the dealing in
a hundred or two of wildcat-skins on the other side of the globe, which
have often kindled up the flames of war between nations, I stand
astonished at those persons who do not feel a resentment, not more
natural than politic, at the atrocious insults that this monstrous
compound offers to the dignity of every nation, and who are not alarmed
with what it threatens to their safety.
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