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often men are governed by names, and that their minds might revolt at the idea of a formal tax, although they would submit to pay it fifty-fold under the name of depreciation. Even at this day, with all our additional light,--the combined light of science and of experience,--it is difficult to see what else they could have done without strengthening dangerously the hands of their domestic enemies. Nor let this be taken as a proof that they engaged rashly in an unequal contest, even though it was necessarily in part a war of paper against gold. They have been accused of this by their friends as well as by their enemies: they have been accused of sacrificing a positive good to an uncertain hope,--of suffering their passions to hurry them into a war for which they had made no adequate preparation, and had not the means of making any,--that they wilfully, almost wantonly, incurred the fearful responsibility of staking the lives and fortunes of those who were looking to them for guidance upon the chances of a single cast. But the accusation is unjust. As far as human foresight could reach, they had calculated these chances carefully. They knew the tenure by which they held their authority, and that, if they ran counter to the popular will, the people would fall from them,--that, if they should fail in making their position good, they would be the first, almost the only victims,--that, then as ever, "the thunderbolts on highest mountains light." Charles Carroll added "of Carrollton" to his name, so that, if the Declaration he was setting it to should bring forfeiture and confiscation, there might be no mistake about the victim. Nor was it without a touch of sober earnestness that Harrison, bulky and fat, said to the lean and shadowy Gerry, as he laid down his pen,--"When hanging-time comes, I shall have the advantage of you. I shall be dead in a second, while you will be kicking in the air half an hour after I am gone." But they knew also, that, if there are dangers which we do not perceive till we come full upon them, there are likewise helps which we do not see till we find ourselves face to face with them,--and that in the life of nations, as in the life of individuals, there are moments when all that the wisest and most conscientious can do is to see that everything is in its place, every man at his post, and resolutely bide the shock. While this subject was pressing upon Congress, it was occupying no less seriously lea
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