prophecy.

* * * * *

Gentlemen, you have my opinions on the present state of public affairs.
Mean as they may be in themselves, your partiality has made them of some
importance. Without troubling myself to inquire whether I am under a
formal obligation to it, I have a pleasure in accounting for my conduct
to my constituents. I feel warmly on this subject, and I express myself
as I feel. If I presume to blame any public proceeding, I cannot be
supposed to be personal. Would to God I could be suspected of it! My
fault might be greater, but the public calamity would be less extensive.
If my conduct has not been able to make any impression on the warm part
of that ancient and powerful party with whose support I was not honored
at my election, on my side, my respect, regard, and duty to them is not
at all lessened. I owe the gentlemen who compose it my most humble
service in everything. I hope that whenever any of them were pleased to
command me, that they found me perfectly equal in my obedience. But
flattery and friendship are very different things; and to mislead is not
to serve them. I cannot purchase the favor of any man by concealing from
him what I think his ruin.

By the favor of my fellow-citizens, I am the representative of an
honest, well-ordered, virtuous city,--of a people who preserve more of
the original English simplicity and purity of manners than perhaps any
other. You possess among you several men and magistrates of large and
cultivated understandings, fit for any employment in any sphere. I do,
to the best of my power, act so as to make myself worthy of so honorable
a choice. If I were ready, on any call of my own vanity or interest, or
to answer any election purpose, to forsake principles (whatever they
are) which I had formed at a mature age, on full reflection, and which
had been confirmed by long experience, I should forfeit the only thing
which makes you pardon so many errors and imperfections in me.

Not that I think it fit for any one to rely too much on his own
understanding, or to be filled with a presumption not becoming a
Christian man in his own personal stability and rectitude. I hope I am
far from that vain confidence which almost always fails in trial. I know
my weakness in all respects, as much at least as any enemy I have; and I
attempt to take security against it. The only method which has ever been
found effectual to preserve any man against the corrup