upon a plan of apology and difculpation, falls miferably short of the mark of publick duty. That duty demands and requires, that what is right fhould not only be made known, but made prevalent; that what is evil fhould not only be detected, but defeated. When the publick man omits to put himself in a situation of doing his duty with effect, it is an omiffion that fruftrates the purposes of his truft almoft as much as if he had formally betrayed it. It is furely no very rational account of a man's life, that he has always acted right; but has taken special care, to act in such a manner that his endeavours could not poffibly be productive of any confequence. I do not wonder that the behaviour of many parties fhould have made persons of tender and fcrupulous virtue fomewhat out of humour with all forts of connexion in politicks. I admit that people frequently acquire in fuch confederacies a narrow, bigotted, and profcriptive fpirit; that they are apt to fink the idea of the general good in this circumfcribed and partial interest. But, where duty renders a critical fituation a neceffary one, it is our business to keep free from the evils attendant upon it; and not to fly from the fituation itself, If a fortrefs is feated in an unwholefome air, an officer of the garrifon is obliged to be attentive to his health, but he must not defert his ftation. Every profeffion, not excepting the glorious one of a fol dier, dier, or the facred one of a prieft, is liable to its own particular vices; which, however, form no argument against thofe ways of life; nor are the vices themselves inevitable to every individual in thofe profeffions. Of fuch a nature are connexions in politicks; effentially neceffary for the full performance of our publick duty, accidentally liable to degenerate into faction. Commonwealths are made of families, free commonwealths of parties alfo; and we may as well affirm, that our natural regards and ties of blood tend inevitably to make men bad citizens, as that the bonds of our party weaken thofe by which we are held to our country. Some legiflators went fo far as to make neutrality in party a crime against the state. I do not know whether this might not have been rather to overftrain the principle. Certain it is, the best patriots in the greateft commonwealths have always commended and promoted fuch connexions. Idem fentire de republica, was with them a principal ground of friendship and attachment; nor do I know any other capable of forming firmer, dearer, more pleafing, more honourable, and more virtuous habitudes. The Romans carried this principle a great way. Even the holding of offices together, the difpofition of which arofe from chance. not selection, gave rife to a relation which continued for life. It was called neceffitudo fortis; and it was looked upon with a facred reverence, Breaches Breaches of any of these kinds of civil relation were confidered as acts of the moft diftinguifhed turpitude. The whole people was distributed into political focieties, in which they acted in fupport of fuch interefts in the state as they feverally affected. For it was then thought no crime, to endeavour by every honeft means to advance to fuperiority and power thofe of your own fentiments and opinions. This wife people was far from imagining that those connexions had no tie, and obliged to no duty; but that men might quit them without shame, upon every call of intereft. They believed private honour to be the great foundation of publick truft; that friendship was no mean ftep towards patriotifm; that he who, in the common intercourfe of life, fhewed he regarded fomebody befides himfelf, when he came to act in a publick fituation, might probably confult fome other intereft than his own. Never may we become plus fages que les fages, as the French comedian has happily expreffed it, wifer than all the wife and good men who have lived before us. It was their wifh, to fee publick and private virtues, not diffonant and jarring, and mutually destructive, but harmoniously combined, growing out of one another in a noble and orderly gradation, reciprocally fupporting and fupported. In one of the most fortunate periods of our hiftory this country was governed by a connexion; I mean the great con nexion nexion of Whigs in the reign of Queen Anne. They were complimented upon the principle of this connexion by a poet who was in high esteem with them. Addifon, who knew their fentiments, could not praise them for what they confidered as no proper fubject of commendation. As a poet who knew his business, he could not applaud them for a thing which in general estimation was not highly reputable. Addreffing himself to Britain, Thy favourites grow not up by fortune's Sport, The Whigs of those days believed that the only proper method of rifing into power was through hard effays of practifed friendship and experimented fidelity. At that time it was not imagined, that patriotifm was a bloody idol, which required the facrifice of children and parents, or deareft connexions in private life, and of all the virtues that rife from those relations. They were not of that ingenious paradoxical morality, to imagine that a fpirit of moderation was properly fhewn in patiently bearing the fufferings of your friends; or that difinterestednefs was clearly manifested at the expence of other people's fortune. They believed that no men could act with effect, who did not act in concert; that no men could act in concert, who did not act with confidence; that no men could act with confidence, who were not bound together by common opinions, common affections, and common interefts. These wife men, for fuch I muft call Lord Sunderland, Lord Godolphin, Lord Somers, and Lord Marlborough, were too well principled in thefe maxims upon which the whole fabrick of publick ftrength is built, to be blown off their ground by the breath of every childish talker. They were not afraid that they should be called an ambitious Junto; or that their refolution to ftand or fall together fhould, by placemen, be interpreted into a fcuffle for places. Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national intereft, upon fome particular principle in which they are all agreed. For my part, I find it impoffible to conceive, that any one believes in his own politicks, or thinks them to be of any weight, who refuses to adopt the means of having them reduced into practice. It is the bufinefs of the fpeculative philofopher to mark the proper ends of govern, ment. It is the bufinefs of the politician, who is the philofopher in action, to find out proper means towards thofe ends, and to employ them with effect. Therefore every honourable connexion will avow it is their firft purpofe, to purfue every juft method |