man means well to his country; it is not enough that in his single
person he never did an evil act, but always voted according to his
conscience, and even harangued against every design which he
apprehended to he prejudicial to the interests of his country. This
innoxious and ineffectual character, that seems formed upon a plan
of apology and disculpation, falls miserably short of the mark of
public duty. That duty demands and requires, that what is right
should not only be made known, but made prevalent; that what is evil
should not only be detected, but defeated. When the public man
omits to put himself in a situation of doing his duty with effect,
it is an omission that frustrates the purposes of his trust almost
as much as if he had formally betrayed it. It is surely no very
rational account of a man's life that he has always acted right; but
has taken special care to act in such a manner that his endeavours
could not possibly be productive of any consequence.

I do not wonder that the behaviour of many parties should have made
persons of tender and scrupulous virtue somewhat out of humour with
all sorts of connection in politics. I admit that people frequently
acquire in such confederacies a narrow, bigoted, and proscriptive
spirit; that they are apt to sink the idea of the general good in
this circumscribed and partial interest. But, where duty renders a
critical situation a necessary one, it is our business to keep free
from the evils attendant upon it, and not to fly from the situation
itself. If a fortress is seated in an unwholesome air, an officer
of the garrison is obliged to be attentive to his health, but he
must not desert his station. Every profession, not excepting the
glorious one of a soldier, or the sacred one of a priest, is liable
to its own particular vices; which, however, form no argument
against those ways of life; nor are the vices themselves inevitable