It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals, that their
maxims have a plausible air; and, on a cursory view, appear equal to
first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as
copper coin; and about as valuable. They serve equally the first
capacities and the lowest; and they are, at least, as useful to the
worst men as to the best. Of this stamp is the cant of NOT MEN, BUT
MEASURES; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every
honourable engagement. When I see a man acting this desultory and
disconnected part, with as much detriment to his own fortune as
prejudice to the cause of any party, I am not persuaded that he is
right; but I am ready to believe he is in earnest. I respect virtue in
all its situations; even when it is found in the unsuitable company of
weakness. I lament to see qualities rare and valuable, squandered away
without any public utility. But when a gentleman with great visible
emoluments abandons the party in which he has long acted, and tells you,
it is because he proceeds upon his own judgment; that he acts on the
merits of the several measures as they arise; and that he is obliged to
follow his own conscience, and not that of others; he gives reasons
which it is impossible to controvert, and discovers a character which it
is impossible to mistake. What shall we think of him who never differed
from a certain set of men until the moment they lost their power, and
who never agreed with them in a single instance afterwards? Would not
such a coincidence of interest and opinion be rather fortunate? Would it
not be an extraordinary cast upon the dice, that a man's connexions
should degenerate into faction, precisely at the critical moment when
they lose their power, or he accepts a place? When people desert their
connexions, the desertion is a manifest FACT, upon which a direct simple
issue lies, triable by plain men. Whether a MEASURE of government be
right or wrong, IS NO MATTER OF FACT, but a mere affair of opinion, on