crupulous justice. To
deliver examples to posterity, and to regulate the opinion of future
times, is no slight or trivial undertaking; nor is it easy to commit
more atrocious treason against the great republick of humanity, than by
falsifying its records and misguiding its decrees.

To scatter praise or blame without regard to justice, is to destroy the
distinction of good and evil. Many have no other test of actions than
general opinion; and all are so far influenced by a sense of reputation,
that they are often restrained by fear of reproach, and excited by hope
of honour, when other principles have lost their power; nor can any
species of prostitution promote general depravity more than that which
destroys the force of praise, by shewing that it may be acquired without
deserving it, and which, by setting free the active and ambitious from
the dread of infamy, lets loose the rapacity of power, and weakens the
only authority by which greatness is controlled.

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It
becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise
expectation, or animate enterprise. It is therefore not only necessary,
that wickedness, even when it is not safe to censure it, be denied
applause, but that goodness be commended only in proportion to its
degree; and that the garlands, due to the great benefactors of mankind,
be not suffered to fade upon the brow of him who can boast only petty
services and easy virtues.

Had these maxims been universally received, how much would have been
added to the task of dedication, the work on which all the power of
modern wit has been exhausted. How few of these initial panegyricks had
appeared, if the author had been obliged first to find a man of virtue,
then to distinguish the distinct species and degree of his desert, and
at last to pay him only the honours which he might justly claim. It is
much easier to learn the name of the last man whom chance has exalted to
wealth and power, to obtain by the intervention of some of his
domesticks the privilege of addressing him, or, in confidence of the
general acceptance of flattery, to venture on an address without any
previous solicitation; and after having heaped upon him all the virtues
to which philosophy had assigned a name, inform him how much more might
be truly said, did not the fear of giving pain to his modesty repress
the raptures of wonder and the zeal of veneration.

Nothing has