The gentlemen of the party in which Mr. Burke has always acted, in
passing upon him the sentence of retirement,[6] have done nothing more
than to confirm the sentence which he had long before passed upon
himself. When that retreat was choice, which the tribunal of his peers
inflict as punishment, it is plain he does not think their sentence
intolerably severe. Whether they, who are to continue in the Sinope
which shortly he is to leave, will spend the long years, which I hope
remain to them, in a manner more to their satisfaction than he shall
slide down, in silence and obscurity, the slope of his declining days,
is best known to Him who measures out years, and days, and fortunes.

The quality of the sentence does not, however, decide on the justice of
it. Angry friendship is sometimes as bad as calm enmity. For this reason
the cold neutrality of abstract justice is, to a good and clear cause, a
more desirable thing than an affection liable to be any way disturbed.
When the trial is by friends, if the decision should happen to be
favorable, the honor of the acquittal is lessened; if adverse, the
condemnation is exceedingly embittered. It is aggravated by coming from
lips professing friendship, and pronouncing judgment with sorrow and
reluctance. Taking in the whole view of life, it is more safe to live
under the jurisdiction of severe, but steady reason, than under the
empire of indulgent, but capricious passion. It is certainly well for
Mr. Burke that there are impartial men in the world. To them I address
myself, pending the appeal which on his part is made from the living to
the dead, from the modern Whigs to the ancient.

The gentlemen, who, in the name of the party, have passed sentence on
Mr. Burke's book, in the light of literary criticism, are judges above
all challenge. He did not, indeed, flatter himself that as a writer he
could claim the approbation of men whose talents, in his judgment and in