form our
judgment on those dispositions from the rules and principles of a court
of justice, but from those of private discretion,--not looking for what
would serve to criminate another, but what is sufficient to direct
ourselves. By a comparison of a series of the discourses and actions of
certain men for a reasonable length of time, it is impossible not to
obtain sufficient indication of the general tendency of their views and
principles. There is no other rational mode of proceeding. It is true,
that in some one or two perhaps not well-weighed expressions, or some
one or two unconnected and doubtful affairs, we may and ought to judge
of the actions or words by our previous good or ill opinion of the man.
But this allowance has its bounds. It does not extend to any regular
course of systematic action, or of constant and repeated discourse. It
is against every principle of common sense, and of justice to one's self
and to the public, to judge of a series of speeches and actions from the
man, and not of the man from the whole tenor of his language and
conduct. I have stated the above matters, not as inferring a criminal
charge of evil intention. If I had meant to do so, perhaps they are
stated with tolerable exactness. But I have no such view. The intentions
of these gentlemen may be very pure. I do not dispute it. But I think
they are in some great error. If these things are done by Mr. Fox and
his friends with good intentions, they are not done less dangerously;
for it shows these good intentions are not under the direction of safe
maxims and principles.

48. Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, and the gentlemen who call themselves the
Phalanx, have not been so very indulgent to others. They have thought
proper to ascribe to those members of the House of Commons, who, in
exact agreement with the Duke of Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam, abhor
and oppose the French system, the basest and most unworthy motives for
their conduct;--as if none could oppose that atheistic, immoral, and
impolitic project set up in France, so disgraceful and destructive, as I
conceive, to human nature itself, but with some sinister intentions.
They treat those members on all occasions with a sort of lordly
insolence, though they are persons that (whatever homage they may pay to
the eloquence of the gentlemen who choose to look down upon them with
scorn) are not their inferiors in any particular which calls for and
obtains just consideration from the public: