e uninteresting.

"Our affairs," said the same gentleman in a letter of the 27th of
June, "seem to lead to some crisis, some revolution--something that I
can not foresee or conjecture. I am uneasy and apprehensive, more so
than during the war. _Then_, we had a fixed object, and though the
means and time of obtaining it were often problematical, yet I did
firmly believe that we should ultimately succeed, because I did firmly
believe that justice was with us. The case is now altered; we are
going, and doing wrong, and therefore I look forward to evils and
calamities, but without being able to guess at the instrument, nature,
or measure of them.

"That we shall again recover, and things again go well, I have no
doubt. Such a variety of circumstances would not, almost miraculously,
have combined to liberate and make us a nation, for transient and
unimportant purposes. I therefore believe we are yet to become a great
and respectable people--but when or how, only the spirit of prophecy
can discern.

"There doubtless is much reason to think and to say that we are
wofully, and, in many instances, wickedly misled. Private rage for
property suppresses public considerations, and personal rather than
national interests have become the great objects of attention.
Representative bodies will ever be faithful copies of their originals,
and generally exhibit a chequered assemblage of virtue and vice, of
abilities and weakness. The mass of men are neither wise nor good, and
the virtue, like the other resources of a country, can only be drawn
to a point by strong circumstances, ably managed, or strong
governments, ably administered. New governments have not the aid of
habit and hereditary respect, and being generally the result of
preceding tumult and confusion, do not immediately acquire stability
or strength. Besides, in times of commotion, some men will gain
confidence and importance who merit neither; and who, like political
mountebanks, are less solicitous about the health of the credulous
crowd, than about making the most of their nostrums and prescriptions.

"What I most fear is, that the better kind of people (by which I mean
the people who are orderly and industrious, who are content with their
situations, and not uneasy in their circumstances) will be led by the
insecurity of property, the loss of confidence in their rulers, and
the want of public faith and rectitude, to consider the charms of
liberty as imaginary and delus