The complaint or its cause ought to be removed,
and wise and lenient arts ought to precede the measures of vigor. They
ought to be the _ultima_, not the _prima_, not the _tota_ ratio of a
wise government. God forbid, that, on a worthy occasion, authority
should want the means of force, or the disposition to use it! But where
a prudent and enlarged policy does not precede it, and attend it too,
where the hearts of the better sort of people do not go with the hands
of the soldiery, you may call your Constitution what you will, in effect
it will consist of three parts, (orders, if you please,) cavalry,
infantry, and artillery,--and of nothing else or better. I agree with
you in your dislike of the discourses in Francis Street: but I like as
little some of those in College Green. I am even less pleased with the
temper that predominated in the latter, as better things might have been
expected in the regular family mansion of public discretion than, in a
new and hasty assembly of unexperienced men, congregated under
circumstances of no small irritation. After people have taken your
tests, prescribed by yourselves as proofs of their allegiance, to be
marked as enemies, traitors, or at best as suspected and dangerous
persons, and that they are not to be believed on their oaths, we are not
to be surprised, if they fall into a passion, and talk as men in a
passion do, intemperately and idly.
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