Page:An address to the thinking independent part of the community.djvu/10

( 10 ) light of day. For a time, a calm and fallen silence ensued; but it lasted not long. Frequent flight eruptions soon gave signs of internal heat and agitation.—The fears of administration increase. New expedients are resorted to, but of a similar nature, and attended with similar success. Endeavouring to Another the bursting flame, they have heaped on it materials which have served only to feed its fury.

It is far from my intention in what I have said, to intimate, that the abuses in our government, great as they may well be thought, are yet great enough to justify an attempt on the part of the people to correct them by force. It is as repugnant to my disposition, as I am fore it is inconsistent with the happiness of mankind, to recur to that last desperate remedy of an oppressed people, 'till the condition of society become far more deplorable and hopeless, than it can possibly appear to be in this country. I think there are few fixations so intolerable, in which a good man will not prefer the patient progress of reason, which if it move slowly to its end, hazards nothing in the attainment of it, to the rash efforts of force, which, while it hurries precipitately to its object, at the fame time hazards every thing. But I think it very unwise in government to persist in irritating the people when pursuing a reasonable object, 'till the duty of submis-sion