they have left; and standing on the firm ground of the
British Constitution, let us be satisfied to admire, rather than attempt
to follow in their desperate flights, the aeronauts of France.

I have told you candidly my sentiments. I think they are not likely to
alter yours. I do not know that they ought. You are young; you cannot
guide, but must follow, the fortune of your country. But hereafter they
may be of some use to you, in some future form which your commonwealth
may take. In the present it can hardly remain; but before its final
settlement, it may be obliged to pass, as one of our poets says,
"through great varieties of untried being," and in all its
transmigrations to be purified by fire and blood.

I have little to recommend my opinions but long observation and much
impartiality. They come from one who has been no tool of power, no
flatterer of greatness, and who in his last acts does not wish to belie
the tenor of his life. They come from one almost the whole of whose
public exertion has been a struggle for the liberty of others,--from one
in whose breast no anger durable or vehement has ever been kindled but
by what he considered as tyranny, and who snatches from his share in the
endeavors which are used by good men to discredit opulent oppression the
hours he has employed on your affairs, and who in so doing persuades
himself he has not departed from his usual office. They come from one
who desires honors, distinctions, and emoluments but little, and who
expects them not at all,--who has no contempt for fame, and no fear of
obloquy,--who shuns contention, though he will hazard an opinion; from
one who wishes to preserve consistency, but who would preserve
consistency by varying his means to secure the unity of his end,--and,
when the equipoise of the vessel in which he sails may be endangered by
overloading it upon one side, is desirous of carrying the small weight
of his reasons to that which may preserve its equipoise.

FOOTNOTES:

[77] Ps. cxlix.

[78] Discourse on the Love of our Country, Nov. 4, 1789, by Dr. Richard
Price, 3d edition, p. 17 and 18.

[79] "Those who dislike that mode of worship which is prescribed by
public authority ought, if they can find _no_ worship _out_ of the
Church which they approve, _to set up a separate worship for
themselves_; and by doing this, and giving an example of a rational and
manly worship, men of _weight_ from their _rank_ and literature may do
the great