The Crisis


III.

IN THE progress of politics, as in the common occurrences of life, we
are not only apt to forget the ground we have travelled over, but
frequently neglect to gather up experience as we go. We expend, if I
may so say, the knowledge of every day on the circumstances that
produce it, and journey on in search of new matter and new
refinements: but as it is pleasant and sometimes useful to look back,
even to the first periods of infancy, and trace the turns and
windings through which we have passed, so we may likewise derive many
advantages by halting a while in our political career, and taking a
review of the wondrous complicated labyrinth of little more than
yesterday.

Truly may we say, that never did men grow old in so short a time! We
have crowded the business of an age into the compass of a few months,
and have been driven through such a rapid succession of things, that
for the want of leisure to think, we unavoidably wasted knowledge as
we came, and have left nearly as much behind us as we brought with
us: but the road is yet rich with the fragments, and, before we
finally lose sight of them, will repay us for the trouble of stopping
to pick them up.

Were a man to be totally deprived of memory, he would be incapable of
forming any just opinion; every thing about him would seem a chaos: