principles, and steadiness of conduct.

But steadiness, sir, is the effect only of integrity, and congruity the
consequence of conviction: he that speaks always what he thinks, and
endeavours by diligent inquiry to think aright before he ventures to
declare his sentiments; he that follows, in his searches, no leader but
reason, nor expects any reward from them but the advantage of
discovering truth, and the pleasure of communicating it, will not easily
change his opinion, because it will seldom be easy to show that he who
has honestly inquired after truth, has failed to attain it.

For my part, I am not ashamed nor afraid to affirm, that thirty years
have made no change in any of my political opinions; I am now grown old
in this house, but that experience which is the consequence of age, has
only confirmed the principles with which I entered it many years ago;
time has verified the predictions which I formerly uttered, and I have
seen my conjectures ripened into knowledge.

I should be, therefore, without excuse, if either terrour could
affright, or the hope of advantage allure me from the declaration of my
opinions; opinions which I was not deterred from asserting, when the
prospect of a longer life than I can now expect might have added to the
temptations of ambition, or aggravated the terrours of poverty and
disgrace; opinions for which I would willingly have suffered the
severest censures, even when I had espoused them only in compliance with
reason, without the infallible certainty of experience.

Of truth it has been always observed, sir, that every day adds to its
establishment, and that falsehoods, however specious, however supported
by power, or established by confederacies, are unable to stand before