And it is from the blindness and insensibility of these, and the train whom they draw along with them, that the throes of nations have been so ill recompensed by the births which have followed; and that revolutions, after passing from crime to crime and from sorrow to sorrow, have often ended in throwing back such heavy reproaches of delusiveness upon their first promises.
I am satisfied that no enlightened Patriot will impute to me a wish to disparage the characters of men high in authority, or to detract from the estimation which is fairly due to them.

My purpose is to guard against unreasonable expectations.

That specific knowledge,--the paramount importance of which, in the present condition of Europe, I am insisting upon,--they, who usually fill places of high trust in old governments, neither do--nor, for the most part, can--possess: nor is it necessary, for the administration of affairs in ordinary circumstances, that they should .-- The progress of their own country, and of the other nations of the world, in civilization, in true refinement, in science, in religion, in morals, and in all the real wealth of humanity, might indeed be quicker, and might correspond more happily with the wishes of the benevolent,--if Governors better understood the rudiments of nature as studied in the walks of common life; if they were men who had themselves felt every strong emotion 'inspired by nature and by fortune taught;' and could calculate upon the force of the grander passions.
Yet, at the same time, there is temptation in this.

To know may seduce; and to have been agitated may compel.

Arduous cares are attractive for their own sakes.