University of Virginia Library

7018. PROGRESS, Sluggish.—

There is
a snail-paced gait for the advance of new
ideas on the general mind, under which we
must acquiesce. A forty years' experience of
popular assemblies has taught me, that you
must give them time for every step you take.
If too hard pushed, they balk, and the machine
retrogrades.—
To Joel Barlow. Washington ed. v, 217. Ford ed., ix, 169.
(W. Dec. 1807)