You have imputed my silence, I trust, to some cause neither disagreeable to yourself nor unworthy of me.  Your letter of the 26th of Nov. had been misdirected to Penrith, where the postmaster detained it some time, expecting probably that I should come to that place, which I have often occasion to visit.  When it reached me I was engaged in assisting my wife to make out some of my mangled and almost illegible MSS., which inevitably involved me in endeavours to correct and improve them.  My eyes are subject to frequent inflammations, of which I had an attack (and am still suffering from it) while that was going on.  You would nevertheless have heard from me almost as soon as I received your letter, could I have replied to it in terms in any degree accordant to my wishes.  Your exhortations troubled me in a way you cannot be in the least aware of; for I have been repeatedly urged by some of my most valued friends, and at times by my own conscience, to undertake the task you have set before me.  But I will deal frankly with you.  A conviction of my incompetence to do justice to the momentous subject has kept me, and I fear will keep me, silent.  My sixty-second year will soon be completed, and though I have been favoured thus far in health and strength beyond most men of my age, yet I feel its effects upon my spirits; they sink under a pressure of apprehension to which, at an earlier period of my life, they would probably have been superior.  There is yet another obstacle:  I am no ready master of prose writing, having been little practised in the art.  This last consideration will not weigh with you; nor would it have done with myself a few years ago; but the bare mention of it will serve to show that years have deprived me of courage, in the sense the word bears when applied by Chaucer to the animation of birds in spring time.

What I have already said precludes the necessity of otherwise confirming your assumption that I am opposed to the spirit you so justly characterise.[122] To your opinions upon this subject, my judgment (if I may borrow your own word) ‘responds.’  Providence is now trying this empire through her political institutions.  Sound minds find their expediency in principles; unsound, their principles in expediency.  On the proportion of these minds to each other the issue depends.  From calculations of partial expediency in opposition to general principles, whether those calculations be governed by fear or presumption, nothing but mischief is to be looked for; but, in the present stage of our affairs, the class that does the most harm consists of well-intentioned men, who, being ignorant of human nature, think that they may help the thorough-paced reformers and revolutionists to a certain point, then stop, and that the machine will stop with them.  After all, the question is, fundamentally, one of piety and morals; of piety, as disposing men who are anxious for social improvement to wait patiently for God’s good time; and of