To attain to this envied situation, the candidates for fortune too
frequently abandon the paths of virtue; for unhappily, the road which
leads to the one, and that which leads to the other, lie sometimes in
very opposite directions. But the ambitious man flatters himself that,
in the splendid situation to which he advances, he will have so many
means of commanding the respect and admiration of mankind, and will be
enabled to act with such superior propriety and grace, that the luster
of his future conduct will entirely cover or efface the foulness of
the steps by which he arrived at that elevation. In many governments
the candidates for the highest stations are above the law, and if they
can attain the object of their ambition, they have no fear of being
called to account for the means by which they acquired it. They often
endeavor, therefore, not only by fraud and falsehood, the ordinary and
vulgar arts of intrigue and cabal, but sometimes by the perpetration
of the most enormous crimes, by murder and assassination, by rebellion
and civil war, to supplant and destroy those who oppose or stand in
the way of their greatness. They more frequently miscarry than
succeed, and commonly gain nothing but the disgraceful punishment
which is due to their crimes.
But tho they should be so lucky as to attain that wished-for
greatness, they are always most miserably disappointed in the
happiness which they expect to enjoy in it. It is not ease or
pleasure, but always honor, of one kind or another, tho frequently an
honor very ill understood, that the ambitious man really pursues. But
the honor of his exalted station appears, both in his own eyes and in
those of other people, polluted and defiled by the baseness of the
means through which he rose to it. Tho by the profusion of every
liberal expense; tho by excessive indulgence in every profligate
pleasure--the wretched but usual resource of ruined characters; tho by
the hurry of public business, or by the prouder and more dazzling
tumult of war, he may endeavor to efface, both from his own memory and
from that of other people, the remembrance of what he has done, that
remembrance never fails to pursue him. He invokes in vain the dark and
dismal powers of forgetfulness and oblivion. He remembers himself what
he has done, and that remembrance tells him that other people must
likewise remember it. Amidst all the gaudy pomp of the most
ostentatious greatness, amidst the venal and vile adulation of the
great and of the learned, amidst the more innocent tho more foolish
acclamations of the common people, amidst all the pride of conquest
and the triumph of successful war, he is still secretly pursued by the
avenging furies of shame and remorse; and while glory seems to
surround him on all sides, he himself, in his own imagination, sees
black and foul infamy fast pursuing him, and every moment ready to
overtake him from behind.
Even the great Cæsar, tho he had the magnanimity to dismiss his
guards, could not dismiss his suspicions. The remembrance of Pharsalia
still haunted and pursued him. When, at the request of the senate, he
had the generosity to pardon Marcellus, he told that assembly that he
was not unaware of the designs which were carrying on against his
life; but that, as he had lived long enough both for nature and for
glory, he was contented to die, and therefore despised all
conspiracies. He had, perhaps, lived long enough for nature; but the
man who felt himself the object of such deadly resentment, from those
whose favor he wished to gain, and whom he still wished to consider as
his friends, had certainly lived too long for real glory, or for all
the happiness which he could ever hope to enjoy in the love and esteem
of his equals.