proper ends of
government. It is the business of the politician, who is the philosopher
in action, to find out proper means towards those ends, and to employ
them with effect. Therefore every honorable connection will avow it is
their first purpose, to pursue every just method to put the men who hold
their opinions into such a condition as may enable them to carry their
common plans into execution, with all the power and authority of the
state. As this power is attached to certain situations, it is their duty
to contend for these situations. Without a proscription of others, they
are bound to give to their own party the preference in all things; and
by no means, for private considerations, to accept any offers of power
in which the whole body is not included; nor to suffer themselves to be
led, or to be controlled, or to be overbalanced, in office or in
council, by those who contradict the very fundamental principles on
which their party is formed, and even those upon which every fair
connection must stand. Such a generous contention for power, on such
manly and honorable maxims, will easily be distinguished from the mean
and interested struggle for place and emolument. The very style of such
persons will serve to discriminate them from those numberless impostors,
who have deluded the ignorant with professions incompatible with human
practice, and have afterwards incensed them by practices below the level
of vulgar rectitude.

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
honorable 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 ac