Yet something must be done, or the fabric must fall, for it certainly is tottering.
Ignorance and design are difficult to combat.

Out of these proceed illiberal sentiments, improper jealousies, and a train of evils which oftentimes in republican governments must be sorely felt before they can be removed.

The former, that is ignorance, being a fit soil for the latter to work in, tools are employed by them which a generous mind would disdain to use; and which nothing but time, and their own puerile or wicked productions, can show the inefficacy and dangerous tendency of.

I think often of our situation, and view it with concern.

From the high ground we stood upon, from the plain path which invited our footsteps, to be so fallen! so lost! it is really mortifying.[1] [Footnote 1: Ford, xi, 31.] One of the chief causes of the discontents which troubled the public was the increasing number of persons who had been made debtors after the war by the more and more pressing demands of their creditors.
These debtors knew nothing about economics; they only knew that they were being crushed by persons more lucky than themselves.