emember, persisted for several
years in refusing her concurrence, although the enemy remained the whole
period at our gates, or rather in the very bowels of our country. Nor
was her pliancy in the end effected by a less motive, than the fear of
being chargeable with protracting the public calamities, and endangering
the event of the contest. Every candid reader will make the proper
reflections on these important facts.

A patient who finds his disorder daily growing worse, and that an
efficacious remedy can no longer be delayed without extreme danger,
after coolly revolving his situation, and the characters of different
physicians, selects and calls in such of them as he judges most capable
of administering relief, and best entitled to his confidence. The
physicians attend; the case of the patient is carefully examined; a
consultation is held; they are unanimously agreed that the symptoms are
critical, but that the case, with proper and timely relief, is so far
from being desperate, that it may be made to issue in an improvement of
his constitution. They are equally unanimous in prescribing the remedy,
by which this happy effect is to be produced. The prescription is no
sooner made known, however, than a number of persons interpose, and,
without denying the reality or danger of the disorder, assure the
patient that the prescription will be poison to his constitution, and
forbid him, under pain of certain death, to make use of it. Might not
the patient reasonably demand, before he ventured to follow this advice,
that the authors of it should at least agree among themselves on some
other remedy to be substituted? And if he found them differing as
much from one another as from his first counsellors, would he not
act prudently in trying the experiment unanimously recommended by the
latter, rather than be hearkening to those who could neither deny the
necessity of a speedy remedy, nor agree in proposing one?

Such a patient and in such a situation is America at this moment.
She has been sensible of her malady. She has obtained a regular and
unanimous advice from men of her own deliberate choice. And she is
warned by others against following this advice under pain of the most
fatal consequences. Do the monitors deny the reality of her danger? No.
Do they deny the necessity of some speedy and powerful remedy? No. Are
they agreed, are any two of them agreed, in their objections to the
remedy proposed, or in the proper one to b