"You have entered early in life upon the great theater of the world,
which is full of temptations and vice of every kind. You are not wholly
unacquainted with history, in which you have read of crimes which your
inexperienced mind could scarcely believe credible. You have been taught
to think of them with horror, and to view vice as
'A monster of so frightful mien,
That, to be hated, needs but to be seen.'
"Yet you must keep a strict guard upon yourself, or the odious monster
will soon lose its terror by becoming familiar to you. The modern
history of our own times furnishes as black a list of crimes as can be
paralleled in ancient times, even if we go back to Nero, Caligula, or
Caesar Borgia. Young as you are, the cruel war into which we have been
compelled by the haughty tyrant of Britain and the bloody emissaries of
his vengeance, may stamp upon your mind this certain truth, that the
welfare and prosperity of all countries, communities, and, I may add,
individuals, depend upon their morals. That nation to which we were once
united, as it has departed from justice" eluded and subverted the wise
laws which formerly governed it, and suffered the worst of crimes to go
unpunished, has lost its valor, wisdom, and humanity, and, from being
the dread and terror of Europe, has sunk into derision and infamy....
"Some author, that I have met with, compares a judicious traveler to a
river, that increases its stream the further it flows from its source;
or to certain springs, which, running through rich veins of minerals,
improve their qualities as they pass along.
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