2679. ENGLAND, Punished.—
England
is now a living example that no nation however
powerful, any more than an individual,
can be unjust with impunity. Sooner or later
public opinion, an instrument merely moral
in the beginning, will find occasion physically
to inflict its sentences on the unjust. Nothing
else could have kept the other nations of
Europe from relieving her under her present
crisis. The lesson is useful to the weak as
well as the strong.—
To James Madison.
Ford ed., viii, 300.
(M.
April. 1804)
