ad to do with his political associates. This boon
they have not chosen to grant him. With many expressions of good-will,
in effect they tell him he has loaded the stage too long. They conceive
it, though an harsh, yet a necessary office, in full Parliament to
declare to the present age, and to as late a posterity as shall take any
concern in the proceedings of our day, that by one book he has disgraced
the whole tenor of his life.--Thus they dismiss their old partner of the
war. He is advised to retire, whilst they continue to serve the public
upon wiser principles and under better auspices.

Whether Diogenes the Cynic was a true philosopher cannot easily be
determined. He has written nothing. But the sayings of his which are
handed down by others are lively, and may be easily and aptly applied on
many occasions by those whose wit is not so perfect as their memory.
This Diogenes (as every one will recollect) was citizen of a little
bleak town situated on the coast of the Euxine, and exposed to all the
buffets of that inhospitable sea. He lived at a great distance from
those weather-beaten walls, in ease and indolence, and in the midst of
literary leisure, when he was informed that his townsmen had condemned
him to be banished from Sinope; he answered coolly, "And I condemn them
to live in Sinope."

The gentlemen of the party in which Mr. Burke has always acted, in
passing upon him the sentence of retirement,[6] have done nothing more
than to confirm the sentence which he had long before passed upon
himself. When that retreat was choice, which the tribunal of his peers
inflict as punishment, it is plain he does not think their sentence
intolerably severe. Whether they, who are to continue in the Sinope
which shortly he is to leave, will spend the long years, which I hope
remain to them, in a manner more to their satisfaction than he shall
slide down, in silence and obscurity, the slope of his declining days,
is best known to Him who measures out years, and days, and fortunes.

The quality of the sentence does not, however, decide on the justice of
it. Angry friendship is sometimes as bad as calm enmity. For this reason
the cold neutrality of abstract justice is, to a good and clear cause, a
more desirable thing than an affection liable to be any way disturbed.
When the trial is by friends, if the decision should happen to be
favorable, the honor of the acquittal is lessened; if adverse, the
condemnation is exceedingly