business; no personal confidence, no friendship, no common interest,
subsisting among them; it is evidently impossible that they can act a
public part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy. In a connection,
the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of the whole, has
his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents are wholly
unserviceable to the public. No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory
into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported,
desultory, unsystematic endeavours, are of power to defeat the subtle
designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine,
the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied
sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.


GREAT MEN.

Great men are the guide-posts and land-marks in the state. The credit of
such men at court, or in the nation, is the sole cause of all the public
measures. It would be an invidious thing (most foreign, I trust, to what
you think my disposition) to remark the errors into which the authority
of great names has brought the nation, without doing justice at the same
time to the great qualities whence that authority arose. The subject is
instructive to those who wish to form themselves on whatever of
excellence has gone before them. There are many young members in the
house (such of late has been the rapid succession of public men) who
never saw that prodigy, Charles Townshend; nor of course know what a
ferment he was able to excite in everything by the violent ebullition of
his mixed virtues and failings. For failings he had undoubtedly--many of
us remember them; we are this day considering the effect of them. But he
had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent,
generous, perhaps an immoderate, passion for fame; a passion which is