Page:The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.djvu/164

158 In matters that admit of investigation and proof, publick opinion in the end, when passion, prejudice and malice have had their day, is very apt to come to a just decision, but this is often too late to repair the wrong done to the sufferer. In matters that, by their nature, cannot be clearly established, artifice, the industry of the designing, and studied misrepresentations, permanently take the place of facts, history itself being, as a whole, but an equivocal relation of all the minor events, and a profound mystification as to motives.

Publick opinion will be acted on in this country, by its enemies, as the easiest and most effectual mode of effecting their purposes, bodies of men never being sufficiently clear-sighted to detect remote consequences. It is said to be a common practice in Europe, for the governments to incite commotions, when they wish to alarm the country on the subject of any particular opinion, as the surest and promptest method of checking its advance. The excesses of the French revolution are now attributed to the schemes of agents of this sort; the opponents of liberty finding it impossible to stem the torrent, having recourse to the opposite policy of pushing it into revolting extremes.

Excitement is a word that, as regards the publick in a country like this, ought to be expunged from its dictionary. In full possession of the power, there is every motive for deliberation and enquiry on the part of the people, and every inducement to abstain from undue agitation. "Excitement," may favor the views of selfish individuals, but it can never advance the interests of truth. All good citizens should turn a deaf ear to every proposal to aid in producing an "excitement," as it is calling into existence a uniform enemy of reason, and the most certain agent of defeating the