text:  Is it the hands of his countrymen that are to bind him to the horns of the altar?" A sense of this hazardous line of observations however soon struck the keen understanding of the great pleader; and he admitted in all its fulness the necessity of respecting public tranquillity of relinquishing doubtful projects of good and of studying the prosperity of a nation rather through the "microscope of experience" than by "vague though splendid telescopic glances" at times and things beyond our power