country can have little, I trust, to ap prehend from the precedent. I am, &c. EXTRACTS FROM THE ANSWER TO THE FOREGOING LETTER. Madam, I have payed due atten tion to your commands refpecting, &c. Accept, I entreat you, my most grateful thanks for your friendly attentions, particularly during my late indifpofition. The letter and fupplements, with which you have been pleased to honour mẹ, did not, I beg leave to affure you, find me an impatient reader---nor were they peevishly thrown thrown afide ;---on the contrary, I repeatedly perused them, and in every perufal felt all the pleasure and fatisfaction, which it was poffible for me to experience in reading so affecting a letter upon fo melancholy a fubject.---It is indeed in itself truly melancholy, but becomes much more fo to me, when it is connected in my mind with certain other circumstances, and is confidered as one of the many symptoms of that general ruin, with which, I fear, the whole moral, and Chriftian, and political world is threatened. The bodily indifpofition, from which I am not yet recovered, may at this moment perhaps increase the force of my. apprehenfions---but it was not originally the cause of them---for I have long entertained them, and in my very best state of health have felt the force of them on feveral occafions to fuch a degree, that I have been frequently and irresistibly led to forebode an approach of great and unusual calamities. You perceive, madam, that my mind has been pretty much in unifon with yours; and that I was not quite unprepared for an attentive perufal of the letters, &c. with which you honoured me. I beg leave to affure you, that I shall have great pleasure in obeying your commands on this occafion to the utmost of my power; and as the main fubject of your letter is clofely connected with the cause of the apprehenfions, which I have taken the liberty of dif clofing to you, you have a double affurance, that I will give it the very best confideration, of which I am capable. I know I know that they, who forebode evils, are in fome cafes fufpected of wishing them to come to pafs, and that on that account it is deemed no proof of discretion to speak of fuch things.---I know however at the fame time, that my heart never harboured fuch an inhuman wish, and that the only motive I ever had for expreffing an apprehenfion of approaching evils, was to fuggeft, or to call upon others to fuggeft fuch means, as might be most likely to prevent them---and in doing fo, I hope I fhall be justified by the old maxim, that prevention is better than remedy. I shall now avail myself of the example you have given, and conclude my letter with a promise of one or more Supplements, and an humble affurance that I am, &c, SUP SUPPLEMENTS. My health mends daily and my fpirits grow better, but I find no abatement of the serious apprehenfions, which I mentioned to you in my last letter---nor shall I, I fear, find any, till the caufes of them are removed. If the evils I forebode fhould come to pass, I fear that in their progress they will resemble a fire, which breaks out in a great city.---In its commencement it may bę fuppreffed; but if it once has made confiderable progrefs, all attempts to stop it prove vain and ufelefs.---It spreads in every quarter, rages and devours---and is at length extinguifhed when the materials, which fed its fury, are confumed. The |