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occurs to me, would have been an exploit as awkward in the performance as it is in the grammar.
It is the ideas however,[1] and not the mode in which they are expressed that I purpose to examine. To these let us return, with all the indulgent tenderness for our national character, consistent with truth. If a gentleman in a ball-room had broken his thigh, so that it became necessary in the course of events, for him to assume a recumbent position; would a decent respect to the company he was in require, that he should declare the causes why he could not dance? I do not make this comparison for the sake of its mirth but simply as a convenient parallel to illustrate the anti-climax of this peculiar species of gravity.
"To declare the causes" which impel to certain acts, that had just been stated to arise from necessity and the laws of nature and of nature's God, favors the impression, that the writer had forgotten at the close of his sentence, the ideas he had advanced at the beginning. It reminds me of the edifying exposition of a sick man to his physician. "Oh doctor," said the patient, "necessity obliges me to send for you." Well, said the physician, what is the matter? "Oh Sir! matter enough; my throat is all stopped up—can't breathe—head aches ready to split, with terrible pains in the side and back; besides I a'nt very well myself."
The distinction we ought to make, between the "laws of nature" and the "laws of nature's God," the writer, doubtless, were he living, would be able to explain. But being dead, we are left to conjecture what the difference is. I will put the best construction upon it, and suppose, by "the laws of nature" the writer meant that physical arrangement of the globe, by which an ocean separated us from the ruling power, making the propriety of an independent government, more obvious on that account. And by the expression "laws of nature's God" he contemplated those ever springing aspirations in the heart of man, to possess all the liberty he could get, and power too. If this was the meaning, it suffers only for the want of an interpretation. If it was not, the latter clause is merely an useless expansion of the first—a mode of expression admissible in the paroxysms of frantic eloquence on a fourth of July; but entirely out of place in a grave piece of writing.[2]
