not_ been alike, true political sagacity manifests itself, in
distinguishing that complaint which only characterises the general
infirmity of human nature from those which are symptoms of the particular
distemperature of our own air and season.

* * * * *

Nobody, I believe, will consider it merely as the language of spleen or
disappointment, if I say that there is something particularly alarming in
the present conjuncture. There is hardly a man, in or out of power, who
holds any other language. That Government is at once dreaded and
contemned; that the laws are despoiled of all their respected and
salutary terrors; that their inaction is a subject of ridicule, and their
exertion of abhorrence; that rank, and office, and title, and all the
solemn plausibilities of the world, have lost their reverence and effect;
that our foreign politics are as much deranged as our domestic economy;
that our dependencies are slackened in their affection, and loosened from
their obedience; that we know neither how to yield nor how to enforce;
that hardly anything above or below, abroad or at home, is sound and
entire; but that disconnection and confusion, in offices, in parties, in
families, in Parliament, in the nation, prevail beyond the disorders of
any former time: these are facts universally admitted and lamented.

This state of things is the more extraordinary, because the great parties
which formerly divided and agitated the kingdom are known to be in a
manner entirely dissolved. No great external calamity has visited the
nation; no pestilence or famine. We do not labour at present under any
scheme of taxation new or oppressive in the quantity or in the mode. Nor
are we engaged in unsuccessful war, in which our misfortunes might easily
pervert our judgment, and our minds, sore from the loss of national
glory, might feel every blow of fortune as a crime in Government.

* * * * *

It is impossible that the cause of this strange distemper should not
sometimes become a subject of discourse. It is a compliment due, and
which I willingly pay, to those who administer our affairs, to take
notice in the first place of their speculation. Our Ministers are of
opinion that the increase of our trade and manufactures, that our growth
by colonisation and by conquest, have concurred to accumulate immense
wealth in the hands of some individuals; and this again being dispersed
amongst the people, has rendered them universally proud, fero