industry; and give way to enterprise. So
will prosperity return. The stream, which has been checked, will flow
with recruited vigour--and, when another century shall have passed away,
the ambition of France will be as little formidable to our then-existing
Posterity as it is now to us. But the lessons of History must be
studied;--they teach us that, under every form of civil polity, war will
contrive to lift up its head, and most pertinaciously in those States
where the People have most sway. When I recur to these admonitions, it
is to entreat that the discontented would exercise their understandings,
rather than consult their passions; first separating real from mistaken
grievances, and then endeavouring to ascertain (which cannot be done
with a glance of the mind) how much is fairly attributable to the
Government; how much to ourselves; and how large a portion of what we
have to endure has been forced upon us by a foreign Power, over whom we
could exercise no controul but by arms. The course here recommended will
keep us, as we are, free and happy--will preserve us from what, through
want of these and like precautions, other Nations have been hurried
into--domestic broils, sanguinary tribunals, civil slaughter in the
field, anarchy, and (sad cure and close of all!) tranquillity under the
iron grasp of military despotism. Years before this catastrophe, what
would have become of your Elective Franchise, Freeholders of
Westmoreland? The Coadjutors of the obscure Individuals who, from a
distance, first excited this movement under a pretence of recovering
your Rights, would have played the whirlwind among your Property, and
crushed you, less perhaps out of malice, than because, in their frenzy,
they could not help it.

A conviction that the subject is ill understood by those who were
unprepared for what has just been said, is the excuse to my own mind,
Gentlemen, for having made so protracted a demand upon your attention.
The ruinous tendencies of this self-flattering enterprize can only be
checked by timely and general foresight. The contest in which we are
engaged has been described by Persons noticing it from a distance, as
the work of a Cabal of Electioneering Jobbers, who have contrived to set
up the Thanet against the Lowther interests, that both Parties might
spend their money for the benefit of those who cared for neither. The
Thanet interest in the County of Westmoreland!--one might almost as well
talk of an inter