This eBook was produced by David Widger
Si ad honestatem nati sumus ea aut sola expetenda est, aut
certe omni pondere gravior est habenda quam reliqua omnia.
—Tully.
Cas. Brutus, I do observe you now of late:
I have not from your eyes that gentleness,
And shew of love as I was wont to have.
—Julius Caesar.
I rose at my usual early hour; sleep had tended to calm, and, I hope,also, to better my feelings. I had now leisure to reflect, that I had notembraced my party from any private or interested motive; it was not,therefore, from a private or interested motive that I was justified indeserting it. Our passions are terrible sophists! When Vincent had toldme, the day before, that it was from men, not measures, that I was tochange, and that such a change could scarcely deserve the name, my heartadopted the assertion, and fancied it into truth.
I now began to perceive the delusion; were government as mechanicallyperfect as it has never yet been (but as I trust it may yet be), it wouldsignify little who were the mere machines that regulated its springs: butin a constitution like ours, the chief character of which—pardon me, yeDe Lolmites—is its uncertainty; where men invariably make the measuressquare to the dimensions of their own talent or desire; and where,reversing the maxim of the tailor, the measures so rarely make the men;it required no penetration to see how dangerous it was to entrust to thearistocratic prejudice of Lincoln, or the vehement imbecility ofLesborough, the execution of the very same measures which might safely becommitted to the plain sense of Dawton, and, above all, to the great andvarious talents of his coadjutors. But what made the vital differencebetween the two parties was less in the leaders than the body. In theDawton faction, the best, the purest, the wisest of the day wereenrolled; they took upon themselves the origin of all the activemeasures, and Lord Dawton was the mere channel through which thosemeasures flowed; the plain, the unpretending, and somewhat feeblecharacter of Lord Dawton's mind, readily conceded to the abler componentsof his party, the authority it was so desirable that they should exert.In Vincent's party, with the exception of himself, there was scarcely anindividual with the honesty requisite for loving the projects theyaffected to propose, or the talents that were necessary for carrying theminto effect, even were their wishes sincere; nor were either the haughtyLincoln, or his noisy and overbearing companion, Lesborough, at all of atemper to suffer that quiet, yet powerful interference of others, towhich Dawton unhesitatingly submitted.
I was the more resolved to do all possible justice to Dawton's party,from the inclination I naturally had to lean towards the other; and inall matters, where private pique or self-interest can possibly penetrate,it has ever been the object of my maturer consideration to direct myparticular attention to that side of the question which such unduepartizans are the least likely to espouse. While I was gradually, butclearly, feeling my way to a decision, I received the following note fromGuloseton:—
"I said nothing to you last night of what is now to be the subject of myletter, lest you should suppose it arose rather from the heat of anextempore conviviality, than its real source, viz. a sincere esteem foryour mind, a sincere affection for your heart, and a sincere sympathy inyour resentment and your inter