nted all
plausibility in his attack upon that provision which belonged more to
mine than to me. He would soon have supplied every deficiency, and
symmetrized every disproportion. It would not have been for that
successor to resort to any stagnant, wasting reservoir of merit in me,
or in any ancestry. He had in himself a salient, living spring of
generous and manly action. Every day he lived he would have repurchased
the bounty of the crown, and ten times more, if ten times more he had
received. He was made a public creature, and had no enjoyment whatever
but in the performance of some duty. At this exigent moment the loss of
a finished man is not easily supplied.

But a Disposer whose power we are little able to resist, and whose
wisdom it behoves us not at all to dispute, has ordained it in another
manner, and (whatever my querulous weakness might suggest) a far better.
The storm has gone over me; and I lie like one of those old oaks which
the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my
honors, I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate on the earth.
There, and prostrate there, I most unfeignedly recognize the Divine
justice, and in some degree submit to it. But whilst I humble myself
before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to repel the attacks of
unjust and inconsiderate men. The patience of Job is proverbial. After
some of the convulsive struggles of our irritable nature, he submitted
himself, and repented in dust and ashes. But even so, I do not find him
blamed for reprehending, and with a considerable degree of verbal
asperity, those ill-natured neighbors of his who visited his dunghill to
read moral, political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am
alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my Lord, I
greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season I would give a peck of
refuse wheat for all that is called fame and honor in the world. This is
the appetite but of a few. It is a luxury, it is a privilege, it is an
indulgence for those who are at their ease. But we are all of us made to
shun disgrace, as we are made to shrink from pain and poverty and
disease. It is an instinct; and under the direction of reason, instinct
is always in the right. I live in an inverted order. They who ought to
have succeeded me are gone before me. They who should have been to me as
posterity are in the place of ancestors. I owe to the dearest relation
(which ever must subsist in memory)