But our enemies have now lost their hopes, and our friends, I hope, are
recovered from their fears. To fancy that our government can be
subverted by the rabble, whom its lenity has pampered into impudence, is
to fear that a city may be drowned by the overflowing of its kennels.
The distemper which cowardice or malice thought either decay of the
vitals, or resolution of the nerves, appears, at last, to have been
nothing more than a political _phtheiriasis_, a disease too loathsome
for a plainer name, but the effect of negligence rather than of
weakness, and of which the shame is greater than the danger.
Among the disturbers of our quiet are some animals of greater bulk, whom
their power of roaring persuaded us to think formidable; but we now
perceive that sound and force do not always go together. The noise of a
savage proves nothing but his hunger.
After all our broils, foreign and domestick, we may, at last, hope to
remain awhile in quiet, amused with the view of our own success. We have
gained political strength, by the increase of our reputation; we have
gained real strength, by the reparation of our navy; we have shown
Europe, that ten years of war have not yet exhausted us; and we have
enforced our settlement on an island on which, twenty years ago, we
durst not venture to look.
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