d not that
of others, he gives reasons which it is impossible to controvert, and
discovers a character which it is impossible to mistake. What shall we
think of him who never differed from a certain set of men until the
moment they lost their power, and who never agreed with them in a single
instance afterwards? Would not such a coincidence of interest and
opinion be rather fortunate? Would it not be an extraordinary cast upon
the dice that a man's connections should degenerate into faction,
precisely at the critical moment when they lose their power or he accepts
a place? When people desert their connections, the desertion is a
manifest fact, upon which a direct simple issue lies, triable by plain
men. Whether a _measure_ of Government be right or wrong is _no matter
of fact_, but a mere affair of opinion, on which men may, as they do,
dispute and wrangle without end. But whether the individual thinks the
measure right or wrong is a point at still a greater distance from the
reach of all human decision. It is therefore very convenient to
politicians not to put the judgment of their conduct on overt acts,
cognisable in any ordinary court, but upon such a matter as can be
triable only in that secret tribunal, where they are sure of being heard
with favour, or where at worst the sentence will be only private
whipping.

I believe the reader would wish to find no substance in a doctrine which
has a tendency to destroy all test of character as deduced from conduct.
He will therefore excuse my adding something more towards the further
clearing up a point which the great convenience of obscurity to
dishonesty has been able to cover with some degree of darkness and doubt.

In order to throw an odium on political connection, these politicians
suppose it a necessary incident to it that you are blindly to follow the
opinions of your party when in direct opposition to your own clear ideas,
a degree of servitude that no worthy man could bear the thought of
submitting to, and such as, I believe, no connections (except some Court
factions) ever could be so senselessly tyrannical as to impose. Men
thinking freely will, in particular instances, think differently. But
still, as the greater Part of the measures which arise in the course of
public business are related to, or dependent on, some great leading
general principles in Government, a man must be peculiarly unfortunate in
the choice of his political company if he does not