public sentiment was improving. "Everything," he concluded, "my dear
Trumbull, will come right at last, as we have often prophesied.
My only fear is that we shall lose a little reputation first." A
fortnight later he wrote to the governor of Virginia: "That the
prospect before us is, as you justly observe, fair, none can deny; but
what use we shall make of it is exceedingly problematical; not but
that I believe all things will come right at last, but like a young
heir come a little prematurely to a large inheritance, we shall wanton
and run riot until we have brought our reputation to the brink of
ruin, and then like him shall have to labor with the current of
opinion, when compelled, perhaps, to do what prudence and common
policy pointed out as plain as any problem in Euclid in the first
instance." The soundness of the view is only equaled by the accuracy
of the prediction. He might five years later have repeated this
sentence, word for word, only altering the tenses, and he would have
rehearsed exactly the course of events.

While he wrote thus he keenly watched Congress, and marked its sure
and not very gradual decline. He did what he could to bring about
useful measures, and saw them one after the other come to naught. He
urged the impost scheme, and felt that its failure was fatal to the
financial welfare of the country, on which so much depended. He
always was striving to do the best with existing conditions, but the
hopelessness of every effort soon satisfied him that it was a waste of
time and energy. So he turned again in the midst of his canal schemes
to renew his exhortations to leading men in the various States on the
need of union as the only true solution of existing troubles.

To James McHenry, of Maryland, he wrote in August, 1785: "I confess to
you candidly that I can foresee no evil greater than disunion; than