should
express our gratitude by our virtues, and not merely with our mouths,
and that, when we are giving thanks for acts of mercy, we should render
ourselves worthy of them by doing acts of mercy ourselves. My Lords,
these considerations, independent of those which were our first movers
in this business, strongly urge us at present to pursue with all zeal
and perseverance the great cause we have now in hand. And we feel this
to be the more necessary, because we cannot but be sensible that light,
unstable, variable, capricious, inconstant, fastidious minds soon tire
in any pursuit that requires strength, steadiness, and perseverance.
Such persons, who we trust are but few, and who certainly do not
resemble your Lordships nor us, begin already to say, How long is this
business to continue? Our answer is, It is to continue till its ends are
obtained.

We know, that, by a mysterious dispensation of Providence, injury is
quick and rapid, and justice slow; and we may say that those who have
not patience and vigor of mind to attend the tardy pace of justice
counteract the order of Providence, and are resolved not to be just at
all. We, therefore, instead of bending the order of Nature to the laxity
of our characters and tempers, must rather confirm ourselves by a manly
fortitude and virtuous perseverance to continue within those forms, and
to wrestle with injustice, until we have shown that those virtues which
sometimes wickedness debauches into its cause, such as vigor, energy,
activity, fortitude of spirit, are called back and brought to their true
and natural service,--and that in the pursuit of wickedness, in the
following it through all the winding recesses and mazes of its
artifices, we shall show as much vigor, as much constancy, as much
diligence, energy, and perseverance, as any others can do in endeavoring
to elude the laws and triumph over the justice of their country. My
Lords, we have thought it the more necessary to say this, because it has
been given out that we might faint in this business. No: we follow, and
trust we shall always follow, that great emblem of antiquity, in which
the person who held out to the end of a long line of labors found the
reward of all the eleven in the twelfth. Our labor, therefore, will be
our reward; and we will go on, we will pursue with vigor and diligence,
in a manner suitable to the Commons of Great Britain, every mode of
corruption, till we have thoroughly eradicated it.

I