and upholding the
republican extremes, upon a belief that all short of these are but an
unsatisfactory part of a great and glorious experiment. Now, the rabid
Tory prefers an open foe to a false friend; but your go-between, your
midway sneak, your shuttlecock, your perjured miser who will swear to
any thing for an extra per centage--all these are his detestation: and
although he will readily acknowledge some good and some wise in the
adversary's ranks, still he recognises that tri-coloured banner as the
one under which all naturally fight, who are poor in both worlds--with
neither money nor religion. Thus much of my reasonable rabies.

One may hate principles without hating men; and for this sentiment we
have the Highest Example. Things are either right or wrong; if right,
do; if wrong, forbear: nothing can be absolutely indifferent, and to do
a little actual evil in order to compass great hypothetical good, is
false morality, and, therefore bad government. Why should not honesty
and plain-dealing be as inviolable publicly as privately? Why be guilty
of such mean self-stultification as to say one thing and do another? It
is criminal in rulers to give a helping hand to the evil which they deem
unavoidable; let them, in preference, cease to rule, and imitate the
noble threat of that king for half a century whose conscience bade him
abdicate rather than do wrong.

But to come abruptly on a title-page: often-times, in reading
deleterious leading articles in wrong-sided newspapers, have I longed to
set before the world of faction

A MANUAL OF GOOD POLITICS,

which indeed has already been half-done, if decently begun be
synonymous. With this view has my author's mind heretofore thought over
many scriptural texts, characters, doctrines, and usages; yet, let me
freely confess the upshot of those efforts to be little satisfactory:
for I fear much, that though there be grounds enough to go upon for one
who is already fixed in right political principle, [orthodoxy being, as
is common among arguers, _my_ doxy,] there may not be sufficient so to
reason from as to convince the thousands, ready and willing to gainsay
them: and Locke's utter annihilation of poor ridiculous well-intentioned
Filmer, makes one wary, of taking up and defending a position so little
tenable, as, for instance, Adam's primary grant for the foundation of
absolute monarchy, or of attempting to nullify natural freedom by the
dubious succession of pat