racy is heartily to
concur with whatever is the best in our time: and to have some more
correct standard of judging what that best is than the transient and
uncertain favour of a court. If once we are able to find and can
prevail on ourselves to strengthen an union of such men, whatever
accidentally becomes indisposed to ill-exercised power, even by the
ordinary operation of human passions, must join with that society, and
cannot long be joined without in some degree assimilating to it.
Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact, and the public stock of
honest, manly principle will daily accumulate. We are not too nicely
to scrutinise motives as long as action is irreproachable. It is
enough (and for a worthy man perhaps too much) to deal out its infamy
to convicted guilt and declared apostasy.

This, gentlemen, has been from the beginning the rule of my conduct;
and I mean to continue it as long as such a body as I have described
can by any possibility {87} be kept together, for I should think it the
most dreadful of all offences, not only towards the present generation
but to all the future, if I were to do anything which could make the
minutest breach in this great conservatory of free principles. Those
who perhaps have the same intentions but are separated by some little
political animosities will I hope discern at last how little conducive
it is to any rational purpose to lower its reputation. For my part,
gentlemen, from much experience, from no little thinking, and from
comparing a great variety of things, I am thoroughly persuaded that the
last hope of preserving the spirit of the English constitution, or of
re-uniting the dissipated members of the English race upon a common
plan of tranquillity and liberty, does entirely depend on their firm
and lasting union, and above all on their keeping themselves from that
despair which is so very apt to fall on those whom a violence of
character and a mixture of ambitious views do not support through a
long, painful, and unsuccessful struggle.

There never, gentlemen, was a period in which the stedfastness of some
men has been put to so sore a trial. It is not very difficult for
well-formed minds to abandon their interest, but the separation of fame
and virtue is a harsh divorce. Liberty is in danger of being made
unpopular to Englishmen. Contending for an imaginary power we begin to
acquire the spirit of domination and to lose the relish of an honest
equality