rivate interest. For,
if all men who act in a public situation are equally selfish, corrupt,
and venal, what reason can be given for desiring any sort of change,
which, besides the evils which must attend all changes, can be
productive of no possible advantage? The active men in the state are
true samples of the mass. If they are universally depraved, the
commonwealth itself is not sound. We may amuse ourselves with talking as
much as we please of the virtue of middle or humble life; that is, we
may place our confidence in the virtue of those who have never been
tried. But if the persons who are continually emerging out of that
sphere be no better than those whom birth has placed above it, what
hopes are there in the remainder of the body which is to furnish the
perpetual succession of the state? All who have ever written on
government are unanimous, that among a people generally corrupt liberty
cannot long exist. And, indeed, how is it possible, when those who are
to make the laws, to guard, to enforce, or to obey them, are, by a tacit
confederacy of manners, indisposed to the spirit of all generous and
noble institutions?

I am aware that the age is not what we all wish. But I am sure that the
only means of checking its precipitate degeneracy is heartily to concur
with whatever is the best in our time, and to have some more correct
standard of judging what that best is than the transient and uncertain
favor of a court. If once we are able to find, and can prevail on
ourselves to strengthen an union of such men, whatever accidentally
becomes indisposed to ill-exercised power, even by the ordinary
operation of human passions, must join with that society, and cannot
long be joined without in some degree assimilating to it. Virtue will
catch as well as vice by contact; and the public stock of honest, manly
principle will daily accumulate. We are not too nicely to scrutinize
motives as long as action is irreproachable. It is enough (and for a
worthy man perhaps too much) to deal out its infamy to convicted guilt
and declared apostasy.

This, Gentlemen, has been from the beginning the rule of my conduct; and
I mean to continue it, as long as such a body as I have described can
by any possibility be kept together; for I should think it the most
dreadful of all offences, not only towards the present generation, but
to all the future, if I were to do anything which could make the
minutest breach in this great conservatory of