Most of the topics I have used are drawn from fear and apprehension.
Topics derived from fear or addressed to it are, I well know, of
doubtful appearance. To be sure, hope is in general the incitement to
action. Alarm some men,--you do not drive them to provide for their
security; you put them to a stand; you induce them, not to take measures
to prevent the approach of danger, but to remove so unpleasant an idea
from their minds; you persuade them to remain as they are, from a new
fear that their activity may bring on the apprehended mischief before
its time. I confess freely that this evil sometimes happens from an
overdone precaution; but it is when the measures are rash, ill-chosen,
or ill-combined, and the effects rather of blind terror than of
enlightened foresight. But the few to whom I wish to submit my thoughts
are of a character which will enable them to see danger without
astonishment, and to provide against it without perplexity.
To what lengths this method of circulating mutinous manifestoes, and of
keeping emissaries of sedition in every court under the name of
ambassadors, to propagate the same principles and to follow the
practices, will go, and how soon they will operate, it is hard to say;
but go on it will, more or less rapidly, according to events, and to the
humor of the time.
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