o wise implicated in the charge brought
against them. But, in the name of my countrymen, I do repeat these
accusations, and tax them with an utter want of _intellectual_
courage--of that higher quality, which is never found without one or
other of the three accompaniments, talents, genius, or
principle;--talents matured by experience, without which it cannot exist
at all; or the rapid insight of peculiar genius, by which the fitness of
an act may be instantly determined, and which will supply higher motives
than mere talents can furnish for encountering difficulty and danger,
and will suggest better resources for diminishing or overcoming them.
Thus, through the power of genius, this quality of intellectual courage
may exist in an eminent degree, though the moral character be greatly
perverted; as in those personages, who are so conspicuous in history,
conquerors and usurpers, the Alexanders, the Caesars, and Cromwells; and
in that other class still more perverted, remorseless and energetic
minds, the Catilines and Borgias, whom poets have denominated 'bold, bad
men.' But, though a course of depravity will neither preclude nor
destroy this quality, nay, in certain circumstances will give it a
peculiar promptness and hardihood of decision, it is not on this account
the less true, that, to _consummate_ this species of courage, and to
render it equal to all occasions, (especially when a man is not acting
for himself, but has an additional claim on his resolution from the
circumstance of responsibility to a superior) _Principle_ is
indispensibly requisite. I mean that fixed and habitual principle, which
implies the absence of all selfish anticipations, whether of hope or
fear, and the inward disavowal of any tribunal higher and more dreaded
than the mind's own judgment upon its own act. The existence of such
principle cannot but elevate the most commanding genius, add rapidity to
the quickest glance, a wider range to the most ample comprehension; but,
without this principle, the man of ordinary powers must, in the trying
hour, be found utterly wanting. Neither, without it, can the man of
excelling powers be trustworthy, or have at all times a calm and
confident repose in himself. But he, in whom talents, genius, and
principle are united, will have a firm mind, in whatever embarrassment
he may be placed; will look steadily at the most undefined shapes of
difficulty and danger, of possible mistake or mischance; nor will they
a