e last. How could it? All the causes which had produced the first
spoliation would still operate. They would operate more powerfully than
before. The distress would be far greater than before. The fences which
now protect property would all have been broken through, levelled, swept
away. The new proprietors would have no title to show to anything that
they held except recent robbery. With what face then could they complain
of being robbed? What would be the end of these things? Our experience,
God be praised, does not enable us to predict it with certainty. We can
only guess. My guess is that we should see something more horrible than
can be imagined--something like the siege of Jerusalem on a far larger
scale. There would be many millions of human beings, crowded in a narrow
space, deprived of all those resources which alone had made it possible
for them to exist in so narrow a space; trade gone; manufactures gone;
credit gone. What could they do but fight for the mere sustenance
of nature, and tear each other to pieces till famine, and pestilence
following in the train of famine, came to turn the terrible commotion
into a more terrible repose? The best event, the very best event, that I
can anticipate,--and what must the state of things be, if an Englishman
and a Whig calls such an event the very best?--the very best event,
I say, that I can anticipate is that out of the confusion a strong
military despotism may arise, and that the sword, firmly grasped by some
rough hand, may give a sort of protection to the miserable wreck of all
that immense prosperity and glory. But, as to the noble institutions
under which our country has made such progress in liberty, in wealth,
in knowledge, in arts, do not deceive yourselves into the belief that
we should ever see them again. We should never see them again. We should
not deserve to see them. All those nations which envy our greatness
would insult our downfall, a downfall which would be all our own work;
and the history of our calamities would be told thus: England had
institutions which, though imperfect, yet contained within themselves
the means of remedying every imperfection; those institutions her
legislators wantonly and madly threw away; nor could they urge in their
excuse even the wretched plea that they were deceived by false promises;
for, in the very petition with the prayer of which they were weak enough
to comply, they were told, in the plainest terms, that public rui