Transcription

How well then should a people love their country, which they govern and nature favors! Reason and time will concur in making the Americans reverence and love their government. Before this shall be effected, the danger to the national government will not spring from the diversity of manners, customs and interests. Almost every event of our history has contributed something to dispose the public mind to enthusiasm. The ruin of most republics has been caused by fits of honest frenzy, during which they destroy the pillars of their own security. The more diverse and hostile the interests and opinions of the people are, the less are they all liable at the same moment to the agency of this cause. For in this case, the torrent of enthusiasm would be confined within the channel which it might first take. The ray in passing thro [sic] another medium would be refracted and finally lost. Opposite and equal forces would destroy each other. But out people reason and act so nearly alike, that they will be heated at the same moment. They are all conductors for the electrical fluid, which passes so unaccountably thro [sic] the mind, and communicates so intense an heat in its passage.