and provided for them in preference to
every other claim.

With the Earl of Bute they had no personal connection; no correspondence
of councils. They neither courted him nor persecuted him. They practised
no corruption; nor were they even suspected of it. They sold no offices.
They obtained no reversions or pensions, either coming in or going out,
for them selves, their families, or their dependents.

In the prosecution of their measures they were traversed by an
opposition of a new and singular character; an opposition of placemen
and pensioners. They were supported by the confidence of the nation. And
having held their offices under many difficulties and discouragements,
they left them at the express command, as they had accepted them at the
earnest request, of their royal master.

These are plain facts; of a clear and public nature; neither extended by
elaborate reasoning, nor heightened by the coloring of eloquence. They
are the services of a single year.

The removal of that administration from power is not to them premature;
since they were in office long enough to accomplish many plans of public
utility; and, by their perseverance and resolution, rendered the way
smooth and easy to their successors; having left their king and their
country in a much better condition than they found them. By the temper
they manifest, they seem to have now no other wish than that their
successors may do the public as real and as faithful service as they
have done.

OBSERVATIONS

ON A LATE PUBLICATION,

INTITULED

"THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION."

"O Tite, si quid ego adjuvero curamve levasso,
Quae nunc te coquit, et versat sub pectore fixa,
Ecquid erit pretii?"

ENN. ap. CIC.

1769.

Party divisions, whether on the whole operating for good or evil, are
things inseparable from free government. This is a truth which, I
believe, admits little dispute, having been established by the uniform
experience of all ages. The part a good citizen ought to take in these
divisions has been a matter of much deeper controversy. But God forbid
that any controversy relating to our essential morals should admit of no
decision. It appears to me, that this question, like most of the others
which regard our duties in life, is to be determined by our station in
it. Private men may be wholly neutral, and entirely innocent: but they
who are legally invested with public trust, or s