remark, however, exhibits his penetration:

"He said, if the rising broke out anywhere, it would be
at Glasgow and Paisley; where many rich merchants and all
they supported would be sure to suffer, while no one could
certainly foretell how soon it might be put down. This led
him to his favorite notion, that the loyal should be taught
to rely more upon themselves, and less upon the Government,
in their own defense against the disloyal. It was this, he
thought, that formed and kept up a national character: while
every one was accustomed to rely upon the Government, upon a
sort of commutation for what they paid to it, personal energy
went to sleep, and the end was lost: that in England, he
observed, every man who had the commonest independence, one,
two, five or six hundred, or a thousand a year, had his own
little plan of comfort--his favorite personal pursuit, whether
his library, his garden, his hunting, or his farm, which he
was unwilling to allow anything (even his own defense) to
disturb; he therefore deceived himself into a notion that if
there was a storm it would not reach him, and went on his own
train till it was actually broke in upon by force. This led
to supineness and apathy as to public exertion; which would in
the end ruin us: the disposition therefore must be changed,
by forcing them to exert themselves; which would not be if
Government did everything in civil war, they nothing: hence
his wish for a volunteer force. All this was exceedingly
sound, and showed the reach of his reflecting mind as an
observer of human nature, as well as a statesman and soldier,
more than anything I have yet seen."