be in the
least aware of; for I have been repeatedly urged by some of my most
valued friends, and at times by my own conscience, to undertake the task
you have set before me. But I will deal frankly with you. A conviction
of my incompetence to do justice to the momentous subject has kept me,
and I fear will keep me, silent. My sixty-second year will soon be
completed, and though I have been favoured thus far in health and
strength beyond most men of my age, yet I feel its effects upon my
spirits; they sink under a pressure of apprehension to which, at an
earlier period of my life, they would probably have been superior. There
is yet another obstacle: I am no ready master of prose writing, having
been little practised in the art. This last consideration will not weigh
with you; nor would it have done with myself a few years ago; but the
bare mention of it will serve to show that years have deprived me of
_courage_, in the sense the word bears when applied by Chaucer to the
animation of birds in spring time.

What I have already said precludes the necessity of otherwise confirming
your assumption that I am opposed to the spirit you so justly
characterise.[122] To your opinions upon this subject, my judgment (if I
may borrow your own word) 'responds.' Providence is now trying this
empire through her political institutions. Sound minds find their
expediency in principles; unsound, their principles in expediency. On
the proportion of these minds to each other the issue depends. From
calculations of partial expediency in opposition to general principles,
whether those calculations be governed by fear or presumption, nothing
but mischief is to be looked for; but, in the present stage of our
affairs, the class that does the most harm consists _of
well-intentioned_ men, who, being ignorant of human nature, think that
they may help the thorough-paced reformers and revolutionists to a
_certain_ point, then stop, and that the machine will stop with them.
After all, the question is, fundamentally, one of piety and morals; of
piety, as disposing men who are anxious for social improvement to wait
patiently for God's good time; and of morals, as guarding them from
doing evil that good may come, or thinking that any ends _can_ be so
good as to justify wrong means for attaining them. In fact, means, in
the concerns of this life, are infinitely more important than ends,
which are to be valued mainly according to the qualities and virtues