(if they be properly treated,) I despair neither of the public
fortune nor of the public mind. There is much to be done, undoubtedly,
and much to be retrieved. We must walk in new ways, or we can never
encounter our enemy in his devious march. We are not at an end of our
struggle, nor near it. Let us not deceive ourselves: we are at the
beginning of great troubles. I readily acknowledge that the state of
public affairs is infinitely more unpromising than at the period I have
just now alluded to; and the position of all the powers of Europe, in
relation to us, and in relation to each other, is more intricate and
critical beyond all comparison. Difficult indeed is our situation. In
all situations of difficulty, men will be influenced in the part they
take, not only by the reason of the case, but by the peculiar turn of
their own character. The same ways to safety do not present themselves
to all men, nor to the same men in different tempers. There is a
courageous wisdom: there is also a false, reptile prudence, the result,
not of caution, but of fear. Under misfortunes, it often happens that
the nerves of the understanding are so relaxed, the pressing peril of
the hour so completely confounds all the faculties, that no future
danger can be properly provided for, can be justly estimated, can be so
much as fully seen. The eye of the mind is dazzled and vanquished. An
abject distrust of ourselves, an extravagant admiration of the enemy,
present us with no hope but in a compromise with his pride by a
submission to his will. This short plan of policy is the only counsel
which will obtain a hearing. We plunge into a dark gulf with all the
rash precipitation of fear. The nature of courage is, without a
question, to be conversant with danger: but in the palpable night of
their terrors, men under consternation suppose, not that it is the
danger which by a sure instinct calls out the courage to resist it, but
that it is the courage which produces the danger. They therefore seek
for a refuge from their fears in the fears themselves, and consider a
temporizing meanness as the only source of safety.

The rules and definitions of prudence can rarely be exact, never
universal. I do not deny, that, in small, truckling states, a timely
compromise with power has often been the means, and the only means; of
drawling out their puny existence; but a great state is too much
envied, too much dreaded, to find safety in humiliation. To be secure,