We have given them stated and
privileged days to collect and catechize us, opportunities of delivering
their oracles to the people in mass, and of moulding their minds as
wax in the hollow of their hands. But in despite of their fulminations
against endeavors to enlighten the general mind, to improve the reason
of the people, and encourage them in the use of it, the liberality of
this State will support this institution, and give fair play to the
cultivation of reason. Can you ever find a more eligible occasion of
visiting once more your native country, than that of accompanying Mr.
Correa, and of seeing with him this beautiful and hopeful institution
_in ovo_.
Although I had laid down as a law to myself, never to write, talk, or
even think of politics, to know nothing of public affairs, and therefore
had ceased to read newspapers, yet the Missouri question aroused
and filled me with alarm. The old schism of federal and republican
threatened nothing, because it existed in every State, and united them
together by the fraternism of party. But the coincidence of a marked
principle, moral and political, with a geographical line, once
conceived, I feared would never more be obliterated from the mind; that
it would be recurring on every occasion, and renewing irritations, until
it would kindle such mutual and mortal hatred, as to render separation
preferable to eternal discord. I have been among the most sanguine in
believing that our Union would be of long duration.
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