And yet before I come to the end of my letter I may repent of my
temerity and unsay my charge. For are not all our circlets of
will as so many little eddies rounded in by the great Circle of
Necessity, and _could_ the Truth-speaker, perhaps now the best
Thinker of the Saxon race, have written otherwise? And must
not we say that Drunkenness is a virtue rather than that Cato
has erred?

I wish I could gratify you with any pleasing news of the
regeneration, education, prospects, of man in this continent.
But your philanthropy is so patient, so far-sighted, that present
evils give you less solicitude. In the last six years government
in the United States has been fast becoming a job, like great
charities. A most unfit person in the Presidency has been doing
the worst things; and the worse he grew, the more popular. Now
things seem to mend. Webster, a good man and as strong as if he
were a sinner, begins to find himself the centre of a great and
enlarging party and his eloquence incarnated and enacted by them;
yet men dare not hope that the majority shall be suddenly
unseated. I send herewith a volume of Webster's that you may see
his speech on Foot's Resolutions, a speech which the Americans
have never done praising. I have great doubts whether the book
reaches you, as I know not my agents. I shall put with it the
little book of my Swedenborgian druggist,* of whom I told you.
And if, which is hardly to be hoped, any good book should be
thrown out of our vortex of trade and politics, I shall not fail
to give it the same direction.

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