Great, indeed, have been the revolutions in the world, since you and I
have had any thing to do with it. To me they have been like the howlings
of the winter storm over the battlements, while warm in my bed. The
unprincipled tyrant of the land is fallen, his power reduced to its
original nothingness, his person only not yet in the mad-house, where
it ought always to have been. His equally unprincipled competitor, the
tyrant of the ocean, in the mad-house indeed, in person, but his
power still stalking over the deep. '_Quem deus vult perdere, prius
dementat_.' The madness is acknowledged; the perdition of course
impending. Are we to be the instruments? A friendly, a just, and a
reasonable conduct on their part, might make us the main pillar of their
prosperity and existence. But their deep-rooted hatred to us seems to
be the means which Providence permits to lead them to their final
catastrophe. '_Nullam enim in terris gentem esse, nullum infestiorem
populum, nomini Romano_, said the General who erased Capua from the list
of powers. What nourishment and support would not England receive from
an hundred millions of industrious descendants, whom some of her people
now born will live to see here. What their energies are, she has lately
tried. And what has she not to fear from an hundred millions of such
men, if she continues her maniac course of hatred and hostility to them.
I hope in God she will change.
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