present, were yet of some importance to parties; and I have known
them suffer by it. The sober part give their sanction, at first through
inattention and levity; at last they give it through necessity. A
violent spirit is raised, which the presiding minds after a time find it
impracticable to stop at their pleasure, to control, to regulate, or
even to direct.

This shows, in my opinion, how very quick and awakened all men ought to
be, who are looked up to by the public, and who deserve that confidence,
to prevent a surprise on their opinions, when dogmas are spread and
projects pursued by which the foundations of society may be affected.
Before they listen even to moderate alterations in the government of
their country, they ought to take care that principles are not
propagated for that purpose which are too big for their object.
Doctrines limited in their present application, and wide in their
general principles, are never meant to be confined to what they at
first pretend. If I were to form a prognostic of the effect of the
present machinations on the people from their sense of any grievance
they suffer under this Constitution, my mind would be at ease. But there
is a wide difference between the multitude, when they act against their
government from a sense of grievance or from zeal for some opinions.
When men are thoroughly possessed with that zeal, it is difficult to
calculate its force. It is certain that its power is by no means in
exact proportion to its reasonableness. It must always have been
discoverable by persons of reflection, but it is now obvious to the
world, that a theory concerning government may become as much a cause of
fanaticism as a dogma in religion. There is a boundary to men's
passions, when they act from feeling; none when they are under the
influence of imagination. Remove a grievance, and, when men act from
feeling, you go a great way towards quieting a commotion. But the good
or bad conduct of a government, the protection men have enjoyed or the
oppression they have suffered under it, are of no sort of moment, when a
faction, proceeding upon speculative grounds, is thoroughly heated
against its form. When a man is from system furious against monarchy or
episcopacy, the good conduct of the monarch or the bishop has no other
effect than further to irritate the adversary. He is provoked at it as
furnishing a plea for preserving the thing which he wishes to destroy.
His mind will be heated as m