2. Is it that their
government may issue in a republic, and too much strengthen our
republican principles? But this is the hope of the great mass of our
constituents, & not their dread. They do not look with longing to
the happy mean of a limited monarchy. 3. But says the doctrine I am
combating, the change the French are undergoing may possibly end in
something we know not what, and bring on us danger we know not
whence. In short it may end in a Rawhead & bloody-bones in the dark.
Very well. Let Rawhead & bloody bones come, & then we shall be
justified in making our peace with him, by renouncing our antient
friends & his enemies. For observe, it is not the _possibility of
danger_ which absolves a party from his contract: for that
possibility always exists, & in every case. It existed in the
present one at the moment of making the contract. If _possibilities_
would avoid contracts, there never could be a valid contract. For
possibilities hang over everything. Obligation is not suspended,
till the danger is become real, & the moment of it so imminent, that
we can no longer avoid decision without forever losing the
opportunity to do it. But can a danger which has not yet taken it's
shape, which does not yet exist, & never may exist, which cannot
therefore be defined, can such a danger I ask, be so imminent that if
we fail to pronounce on it in this moment we can never have another
opportunity of doing it?
4.
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