The evil arising from hence is this;
that the Colonists having once found the possibility of enjoying the advantages
of order in the midst of a struggle for liberty, such struggles will not
henceforward seem so terrible to the settled and sober part of mankind as they
had appeared before the trial. Pursuing the same plan [Footnote: 30] of
punishing by the denial of the exercise of government to still greater lengths,
we wholly abrogated the ancient government of Massachusetts. We were confident
that the first feeling if not the very prospect, of anarchy would instantly
enforce a complete submission. The experiment was tried. A new, strange,
unexpected face of things appeared. Anarchy is found tolerable. A vast province
has now subsisted, and subsisted in a considerable degree of health and vigor
for near a twelvemonth, without Governor, without public Council, without
judges, without executive magistrates. How long it will continue in this state,
or what may arise out of this unheard-of situation, how can the wisest of us
conjecture? Our late experience has taught us that many of those fundamental
principles, formerly believed infallible, are either not of the importance they
were imagined to be, or that we have not at all adverted to some other far more
important and far more powerful principles, which entirely overrule those we had
considered as omnipotent.
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