they become
capable of sacrificing those very persons to whom they had before
sacrificed their original friends. It is now only in the ordinary course
of business to alter an opinion, or to betray a connection. Frequently
relinquishing one set of men and adopting another, they grow into a
total indifference to human feeling, as they had before to moral
obligation; until at length, no one original impression remains upon
their minds: every principle is obliterated; every sentiment effaced.

In the mean time, that power, which all these changes aimed at securing,
remains still as tottering and as uncertain as ever. They are delivered
up into the hands of those who feel neither respect for their persons,
nor gratitude for their favors; who are put about them in appearance to
serve, in reality to govern them; and, when the signal is given, to
abandon and destroy them in order to set up some new dupe of ambition,
who in his turn is to be abandoned and destroyed. Thus living in a state
of continual uneasiness and ferment, softened only by the miserable
consolation of giving now and then preferments to those for whom they
have no value; they are unhappy in their situation, yet find it
impossible to resign. Until, at length, soured in temper, and
disappointed by the very attainment of their ends, in some angry, in
some haughty, or some negligent moment, they incur the displeasure of
those upon whom they have rendered their very being dependent. Then
_perierunt tempora longi servitii;_ they are cast off with scorn; they
are turned out, emptied of all natural character, of all intrinsic
worth, of all essential dignity, and deprived of every consolation of
friendship. Having rendered all retreat to old principles ridiculous,
and to old regards impracticable, not being able to counterfeit
pleasure, or to discharge discontent, nothing being sincere, or right,
or balanced in their minds, it is more than a chance, that, in the
delirium of the last stage of their distempered power, they make an
insane political testament, by which they throw all their remaining
weight and consequence into the scale of their declared enemies, and the
avowed authors of their destruction. Thus they finish their course. Had
it been possible that the whole, or even a great part of these effects
on their minds, I say nothing of the effect upon their fortunes, could
have appeared to them in their first departure from the right line, it
is certain they would h