unattainable perfection. The very idea of consistency is exploded. The
convenience of the business of the day is to furnish the principle for
doing it. Then the whole ministerial cant is quickly got by heart. The
prevalence of faction is to be lamented. All opposition is to be
regarded as the effect of envy and disappointed ambition. All
administrations are declared to be alike. The same necessity justifies
all their measures. It is no longer a matter of discussion, who or what
administration is; but that administration is to be supported, is a
general maxim. Flattering themselves that their power is become
necessary to the support of all order and government, everything which
tends to the support of that power is sanctified, and becomes a part of
the public interest.


MORAL DEBASEMENT PROGRESSIVE.

I believe the instances are exceedingly rare of men immediately passing
over a clear, marked line of virtue into declared vice and corruption.
There are a sort of middle tints and shades between the two extremes;
there is something uncertain on the confines of the two empires which
they first pass through, and which renders the change easy and
imperceptible. There are even a sort of splendid impositions so well
contrived, that, at the very time the path of rectitude is quitted for
ever, men seem to be advancing into some higher and nobler road of
public conduct. Not that such impositions are strong enough in
themselves; but a powerful interest, often concealed from those whom it
affects, works at the bottom, and secures the operation. Men are thus
debauched away from those legitimate connexions, which they had formed
on a judgment, early perhaps but sufficiently mature, and wholly
unbiassed.