Chapter XXVII

PROSPERITY OF ALBANY-GENERAL REFLECTIONS

I

HOPE my readers will share the satisfaction I feel, in contemplating, at this distance, the growing prosperity of Albany, which is, I am told, greatly increased in size and consequence, far superior, indeed, to any inland town on the continent, so important from its centrical situation, that it has been proposed as the seat of congress, which, should the party attached to Britain ever gain the ascendancy over the southern states, would very probably be the case; the morality, simple manners, and consistent opinions of the inhabitants, still bearing evident traces of that integrity and simplicity which once distinguished them. The reflections which must result from the knowledge of these circumstances are so obvious, that it is needless to point them out.

A reader that has patience to proceed thus far, in a narration too careless and desultory for the grave, and too heavy and perplexed for the gay, too minute for the busy, and too serious for the idle; such a reader must have been led on by an interest in the virtues of the leading character, and will be sufficiently awake to their remaining effects.

Very different, however, must be the reflections that arise from a more general view of the present state of our ancient colonies.

"O for that warning voice, which he who saw
Th' Apocalypse, heard cry, That a voice, like
The deep and dreadful organ-pipe of Heaven,"

would speak terror to those whose delight is in change and agitation; to those who wantonly light up the torch of discord, which many waters will not extinguish. Even when peace succeeds to the breathless fury of such a contest, it comes too late to restore the virtues, the hopes, the affections that have perished in it. The gangrene of the land is not healed, and the prophets vainly cry peace! peace! where there is no peace.

However upright the intentions may be of the first leaders of popular insurrection, it may be truly said of them, in the end, instruments of cruelty are in their habitations: nay, must be, for when they have proceeded a certain length, conciliation or lenity would be cruelty to their followers, who are gone too far, to return to the place from which they set out. Rectitude, hitherto upheld by laws, by custom, and by fear, now walks alone, in unaccustomed paths, and like a tottering infant, falls at the first assault, or first obstacle it meets; but falls to rise no more. Let any one who has mixed much with mankind, say, what would be the consequence if restraint were withdrawn, and impunity offered to

all whose probity is not fixed on the basis of real piety, or supported by singular fortitude, and that sound sense which, discerning remote consequences, preserves integrity as armor of proof against the worst that can happen.

True it is, that amidst these convulsions of the moral world, exigencies bring out some characters that sweep across the gloom like meteors in a tempestuous night, which would not have been distinguished in the sunshine of prosperity. It is in the swell of the turbulent ocean that the mightiest living handy-works of the author of nature are to be met with. Great minds no doubt are called out by exigencies, and put forth all their powers. Though Hercules slew the Hydra and cleansed the Augæan stable, all but poets and heroes must have regretted that any such monsters existed. Seriously beside the rancor, the treachery, and the dereliction of every generous sentiment and upright motive, which are the rank production of the blood manured field of civil discord, after the froth and feculence of its cauldron have boiled over, still the deleterious dregs remain. Truth is the first victim to fear and policy; when matters arrive at that crisis, every one finds a separate interest; mutual confidence, which cannot outlive sincerity, dies next, and all the kindred virtues drop in succession. It becomes a man's interest that his brothers and his father

should join the opposite party, that some may be applauded for steadiness or enriched by confisca

tions; to such temptations the mind, fermenting with party hatred, yields with less resistance than could be imagined by those who have never witnessed such scenes of horror darkened by duplicity. After so deep a plunge in depravity, how difficult, how near to impossible is a return to the paths of rectitude! This is but a single instance of the manner in which moral feeling is undermined in both parties. But as our nature, destined to suffer and to mourn, and to have the heart made better by affliction, finds adversity a less dangerous trial than prosperity, especially where it is great and sudden, in all civil conflicts the triumphant party may, with moral truth, be said to be the greatest sufferers. Intoxicated as they often are with power and affluence, purchased with the blood and tears of their friends and countrymen, the hard task remains to them of chaining up and reducing to submission the many headed monster, whom they have been forced to let loose and gorge with the spoils of the vanquished. Then, too, comes on the difficulty of dividing power where no one has a right, and every one a claim; of ruling those whom they have taught to despise authority; and of reviving that sentiment of patriotism, and that love of glory, which faction and self-interest have extinguished.

When the white and red roses were the symbols of faction in England, and when the contest between Biliol and Bruce made way for invasion and tyranny

in Scotland, the destruction of armies and of cities, public executions, plunder and confiscations, were the least evils that they occasioned. The annihilation of public virtue and private confidence; the exasperation of hereditary hatred; the corrupting the milk of human kindness, and breaking asunder every sacred tie by which man and man are held together; all these dreadful results of civil discord are the means of visiting the sins of civil war on the third and fourth generation of those who have kindled it. Yet the extinction of charity and kindness in dissensions like these, is not to be compared to that which is the consequence of an entire subversion of the accustomed form of government. Attachment to a monarch or line of royalty, aims only at a single object, and is at worst loyalty and fidelity misplaced; yet war once begun on such a motive, loosens the bands of society, and opens to the ambitious and the rapacious the way to power and plunder. Still, however, the laws, the customs, and the frame of government stand where they did. When the contest is decided, and the successful competitor established, if the monarch possesses ability and courts popularity, he, or at any rate his immediate successor, may rule happily, and reconcile those who were the enemies, not of his place, but of his person. The mighty image of sovereign power may change its "head of gold" for one of silver; but still it stands firm on its basis, supported by all those whom it protects. But when thrown