ts takes up the state at the wrong end, and is a low and
senseless contrivance, (as making the sole constitution of a supreme
power,)--I should then allow that their early rashness ought to be
remembered to the last moment of their lives.

You gently reprehend me, because, in holding out the picture of your
disastrous situation, I suggest no plan for a remedy. Alas! Sir, the
proposition of plans, without an attention to circumstances, is the very
cause of all your misfortunes; and never shall you find me aggravating,
by the infusion of any speculations of mine, the evils which have arisen
from the speculations of others. Your malady, in this respect, is a
disorder of repletion. You seem to think that my keeping back my poor
ideas may arise from an indifference to the welfare of a foreign and
sometimes an hostile nation. No, Sir, I faithfully assure you, my
reserve is owing to no such causes. Is this letter, swelled to a second
book, a mark of national antipathy, or even of national indifference? I
should act altogether in the spirit of the same caution, in a similar
state of our own domestic affairs. If I were to venture any advice, in
any case, it would be my best. The sacred duty of an adviser (one of the
most inviolable that exists) would lead me, towards a real enemy, to act
as if my best friend were the party concerned. But I dare not risk a
speculation with no better view of your affairs than at present I can
command; my caution is not from disregard, but from solicitude for your
welfare. It is suggested solely from my dread of becoming the author of
inconsiderate counsel.

It is not, that, as this strange series of actions has passed before my
eyes, I have not indulged my mind in a great variety of political
speculations concerning them; but, compelled by no such positive duty as
does not permit me to evade an opinion, called upon by no ruling power,
without authority as I am, and without confidence, I should ill answer
my own ideas of what would become myself, or what would be serviceable
to others, if I were, as a volunteer, to obtrude any project of mine
upon a nation to whose circumstances I could not be sure it might be
applicable.

Permit me to say, that, if I were as confident as I ought to be
diffident in my own loose, general ideas, I never should venture to
broach them, if but at twenty leagues' distance from the centre of your
affairs. I must see with my own eyes, I must, in a manner, touch with my