, and draw ruin on themselves,
that I am to be sorry that you are in possession of shops, and of
warehouses, and of wholesome laws to protect them? Are you to build no
houses, because desperate men may pull them down upon their own heads?
Or, if a malignant wretch will cut his own throat, because he sees you
give alms to the necessitous and deserving, shall his destruction be
attributed to your charity, and not to his own deplorable madness? If we
repent of our good actions, what, I pray you, is left for our faults and
follies? It is not the beneficence of the laws, it is the unnatural
temper which beneficence can fret and sour, that is to be lamented. It
is this temper which, by all rational means, ought to be sweetened and
corrected. If froward men should refuse this cure, can they vitiate
anything but themselves? Does evil so react upon good, as not only to
retard its motion, but to change its nature? If it can so operate, then
good men will always be in the power of the bad,--and virtue, by a
dreadful reverse of order, must lie under perpetual subjection and
bondage to vice.

As to the opinion of the people, which some think, in such cases, is to
be implicitly obeyed,--near two years' tranquillity, which follows the
act, and its instant imitation in Ireland, proved abundantly that the
late horrible spirit was in a great measure the effect of insidious art,
and perverse industry, and gross misrepresentation. But suppose that the
dislike had been much more deliberate and much more general than I am
persuaded it was,--when we know that the opinions of even the greatest
multitudes are the standard of rectitude, I shall think myself obliged
to make those opinions the masters of my conscience. But if it may be
doubted whether Omnipotence itself is competent to alter the essential
constitution of right and wrong, sure I am that such _things_ as they
and I are possessed of no such power. No man carries further than I do
the policy of making government pleasing to the people. But the widest
range of this politic complaisance is confined within the limits of
justice. I would not only consult the interest of the people, but I
would cheerfully gratify their humors. We are all a sort of children
that must be soothed and managed. I think I am not austere or formal in
my nature. I would bear, I would even play my part in, any innocent
buffooneries, to divert them. But I never will act the tyrant for their
amusement. If they will m