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decree was folemnly promulgated by the head of the Court corps, the Earl of Bute himself, in a fpeech which he made, in the year 1766, against the then Adminiftration, the only Adminiftration which he has ever been known directly and publicly to oppose.

It is indeed in no way wonderful, that such perfons fhould make fuch declarations. That Connexion and Faction are equivalent terms, is an opinion which has been carefully inculcated at all times by unconftitutional Statefmen. The reafon is evident. Whilft men are linked together, they eafily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil defign. They are enabled to fathom it with common counfel, and to oppofe it with united ftrength. Whereas, when they lie difperfed, without concert, order, or difcipline, communication is uncertain, counfel difficult, and refiftance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with each other's principles, nor experienced in each other's talents, nor at all practifed in their mutual habitudes and difpofitions by joint efforts in business; no perfonal confidence, no friendship, no common intereft, fubfifting among them; it is evidently impoffible that they can act a public part with uniformity, perfeverance, or efficacy. In a connexion, the most inconfiderable man, by adding to the weight of the whole, has his value, and his ufe; out of it, the greatest talents are wholly unserviceable to the publick. No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthufiafm, can flatter himfelf that his fingle, unfupported, defultory, unsyste

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matic endeavours are of power to defeat the subtle defigns and united Cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must affociate; elfe they will fall, one by one, an unpitied facrifice in a contemptible struggle.

It is not enough in a fituation of truft in the commonwealth, that a man means well to his country; it is not enough that in his fingle perfon he never did an evil act, but always voted according to his confcience, and even harangued against every defign which he apprehended to be prejudicial to the interefts of his country. This innoxious and ineffectual character, that seems formed upon a plan of apology and difculpation, falls miferably fhort of the mark of public duty. That duty demands and requires, that what is right should not only be made known, but made prevalent; that what is evil fhould not only be detected, but defeated. When the public man omits to put himself in a fituation of doing his duty with effect, it is an omiffion that fruftrates the purposes of his truft almost 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 fuch 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 perfons 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 spirit; that they

they are apt to fink the idea of the general good in this circumfcribed and partial intereft. 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 station. Every profeffion, not excepting the glorious one of a foldier, or the facred one of a priest, is liable to its own particular vices; which, however, form no argument against those 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 public 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 those 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 overstrain the principle. Certain it is, the best patriots in the greatest 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

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more virtuous habitudes. The Romans carried this principle a great way. Even the holding of offices together, the difpofition of which arose. from chance not selection, gave rise to a relation which continued for life. It was called neupon

ceffitudo fortis; and it was looked with a facred reverence. Breaches of any of these kinds of civil relation were confidered as acts of the most distinguished turpitude. The whole people was diftributed into political focieties, in which they acted in fupport of fuch interefts in the State as they severally affected. For it was then thought no crime, to endeavour by every honest 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 public truft; that friendship was no mean ftep towards patriotism; that he who, in the common intercourse of life, fhewed he regarded fomebody befides himself, when he came to act in a public 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 wish, to fee public and private virtues, not diffonant and jarring, and mutually destructive, but harmoniously combined, growing out of one another in a noble and orderly gradation,

gradation, reciprocally supporting and supported. In one of the moft fortunate periods of our hiftory this country was governed by a connexion; I mean the great connexion of Whigs in the reign of Q. Anne. They were complimented upon the principle of this connexion by a poet who was in high esteem with them. Addison, who knew their fentiments, could not praise them for what they confidered as no proper fubject of commendation. As a poet who knew his bufinefs, he could not applaud them for a thing which in general eftimation was not highly reputable. Addreffing himself to Britain,

Thy favourites grow not up by fortune's Sport,
Or from the crimes or follies of a court.
On the firm bafis of defert they rife,

From long-try'd faith, and friendship's holy ties.

The Whigs of thofe 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 thofe relations. They were not of that ingenious paradoxical morality, to imagine that a spirit of moderation was properly fhewn in patiently bearing the fufferings of your friends; or that difinterestedness was clearly manifefted at the expence of other peoples fortune. They believed that no men could act with effect, who did not act in concert ;

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