s
treated the king's servants as men with whom, some time or other,
they might probably be in friendship. When a man who stands forth
for the public, has gone that length from which there is no
practicable retreat, when he has given that kind of personal
offense, which a pious monarch never pardons, I then begin to
think him in earnest, and that he will never have occasion to
solicit the forgiveness of his country. But instances of a
determination so entire and unreserved are rarely to be met with.
Let us take mankind as they are; let us distribute the virtues and
abilities of individuals, according to the offices they affect;
and when they quit the service, let us endeavor to supply their
places with better men than we have lost. In this country there
are always candidates enough for popular favor. The temple of fame
is the shortest passage to riches and preferment.

"Above all things, let me guard my countrymen against the
meanness and folly of accepting of a trifling or moderate
compensation for extraordinary and essential injuries. Our enemy
treats us as the cunning trader does the unskillful Indian; they
magnify their generosity, when they give us baubles of little
proportionate value for ivory and gold. The same House of Commons
who robbed the constituent body of their right of free election;
who presume to make a law, under pretense of declaring it; who
paid our good king's debts, without once inquiring how they were
incurred; who gave thanks for repeated murders committed at home,
and for national infamy incurred abroad; who screened Lord
Mansfield; who imprisoned the magistrates of the metropolis for
asserting the subjects' right to the protection of the laws; who
erased a judicial record, and ordered all proceedings in criminal
suit to be suspended; this very House of Commons have graciously
consented that their own members may be compelled to pay their
debts, and that contested elections shall, for the future, be
determined with some decent regard to the merits of the case. The
event of the suit is of no consequence to the crown. While
parliaments are septennial, the purchase of the sitting member or
of the petitioner, makes but the difference of a day. Concessions
such as these, are of little moment to the sum of things; unless
it be to prove that the worst of men are sensible of the injuries
they have done us, and perhaps to demon