ay require. The English,
however, exert a different spirit in such circumstances; they first
act, and when too late, begin to examine. From a knowledge of this
disposition, there are several here, who make it their business to
frame new reports at every convenient interval, all tending to denounce
ruin, both on their contemporaries and their posterity. This
denunciation is eagerly caught up by the public: away they fling to
propagate the distress; sell out at one place, buy in at another,
grumble at their governors, shout in mobs, and when they have thus for
some time behaved like fools, sit down coolly to argue and talk wisdom,
to puzzle each other with syllogism, and prepare for the next report
that prevails, which is always attended with the same success.

Thus are they ever rising above one report, only to sink into another.
They resemble a dog in a well, pawing to get free. When he has raised
his upper parts above water, and every spectator imagines him
disengaged, his lower parts drag him down again and sink him to the
nose; he makes new efforts to emerge, and every effort increasing his
weakness, only tends to sink him the deeper. . .

{84} This people would laugh at my simplicity, should I advise them to
be less sanguine in harbouring gloomy predictions, and examine coolly
before they attempted to complain. I have just heard a story, which,
though transacted in a private family, serves very well to describe the
behaviour of the whole nation, in cases of threatened calamity. As
there are public, so there are private incendiaries here. One of the
last, either for the amusement of his friends, or to divert a fit of
the spleen, lately sent a threatening letter to a worthy family in my
neighbourhood, to this effect:

"Sir,--Knowing you to be very rich, and finding myself to be very poor,
I think proper to inform you, that I have learned the secret of
poisoning man, woman, and child, without danger of detection. Don't be
uneasy, Sir, you may take your choice of being poisoned in a fortnight,
or poisoned in a month, or poisoned in six weeks; you shall have full
time to settle all your affairs. Though I am poor, I love to do things
like a gentleman. But, Sir, you must die. Blood, Sir, blood is my
trade; so I could wish you would this day six weeks take leave of your
friends, wife, and family, for I cannot possibly allow you longer time.
To convince you more certainly of the power of my art, by which you may