Such complaints and humours have existed in
all times; yet as all times have 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.
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