At what distance the direct danger from such factions may be it is not easy to fix.  An adaptation of circumstances to designs and principles is necessary.  But these cannot be wanting for any long time, in the ordinary course of sublunary affairs.  Great discontents frequently arise in the best constituted governments from causes which no human wisdom can foresee and no human power can prevent.  They occur at uncertain periods, but at periods which are not commonly far asunder.  Governments of all kinds are administered only by men; and great mistakes, tending to inflame these discontents, may concur.  The indecision of those who happen to rule at the critical time, their supine neglect, or their precipitate and ill-judged attention, may aggravate the public misfortunes.  In such a state of things, the principles, now only sown, will shoot out and vegetate in full luxuriance.  In such circumstances the minds of the people become sore and ulcerated.  They are put out of humor with all public men and all public parties; they are fatigued with their dissensions; they are irritated at their coalitions; they are made easily to believe (what much pains are taken to make them believe) that all oppositions are factious, and all courtiers base and servile.  From their disgust at men, they are soon led to quarrel with their frame of government, which they presume gives nourishment to the vices, real or supposed, of those who administer in it.  Mistaking malignity for sagacity, they are soon led to cast off all hope from a good administration of affairs, and come to think that all reformation depends, not on a change of actors, but upon an alteration in the machinery.  Then will be felt the full effect of encouraging doctrines which tend to make the citizens despise their Constitution.  Then will be felt the plenitude of the mischief of teaching the people to believe that all ancient institutions are the results of ignorance, and that all prescriptive government is in its nature usurpation.  Then will be felt, in all its energy, the danger of encouraging a spirit of litigation in persons of that immature and imperfect state of knowledge which serves to render them susceptible of doubts, but incapable of their solution.  Then will be felt, in all its aggravation, the pernicious consequence of destroying all docility in the minds of those who are not formed for finding their own way in the labyrinths of political theory, and are made to reject the clew and to disdain the guide.  Then will be felt, and too late will be acknowledged, the ruin which follows the disjoining of religion from the state, the separation of morality from policy, and the giving conscience no concern and no coactive or coercive force in the most material of all the social ties, the principle of our obligations to government.