VOLUME VII.

CHAPTER LXXIII.

Si ad honestatem nati sumus ea aut sola expetenda est, aut
certe omni pondere gravior est habenda quam reliqua omnia.
--Tully.

Cas. Brutus, I do observe you now of late:
I have not from your eyes that gentleness,
And shew of love as I was wont to have.
--Julius Caesar.

I rose at my usual early hour; sleep had tended to calm, and, I hope,
also, to better my feelings. I had now leisure to reflect, that I had not
embraced my party from any private or interested motive; it was not,
therefore, from a private or interested motive that I was justified in
deserting it. Our passions are terrible sophists! When Vincent had told
me, the day before, that it was from men, not measures, that I was to
change, and that such a change could scarcely deserve the name, my heart
adopted the assertion, and fancied it into truth.

I now began to perceive the delusion; were government as mechanically
perfect as it has never yet been (but as I trust it may yet be), it would
signify little who were the mere machines that regulated its springs: but
in a constitution like ours, the chief character of which--pardon me, ye
De Lolmites--is its uncertainty; where men invariably make the measures
square to the dimensions of their own talent or desire; and where,
reversing the maxim of the tailor, the measures so rarely make the men;
it required no penetration to see how dangerous it was to entrust to the