Nothing can alter the honest purpose of him whose mind is embued with
good principles. He will despise an insidious bribe, and the greater
the offer which is designed to buy his silence, the louder and more
indignantly will he open out against the miscreant who would thus
practise upon him. He knows that the favours held out to him are not
marks of the love and regard of him who would confer them, but are
meant as the price at which he is to sell his honour and his virtue.
With a mind unpolluted, his noble resolution never fails to produce
the happiest consequences, by preserving his friends and himself from
the mischievous projects laid against them. So true it is, that virtue
is its own reward; while corruption and venality are sure in the end
to bring the greatest miseries on those, and their adherents, who are
so base, or perhaps inconsiderate, as to subject themselves to future
evils of the most fatal nature, for the sake of a little present profit.
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