Many people in the world are ever ready to set up the pretensions of
their acting with zeal, purely to serve the public, and pretend that
it is through the warmth of their friendship that they do the same to
individuals; but the main spring of all the actions of the agents of
treachery, and of bad men, is set a-going with the view only of serving
themselves. It is thus that the unprincipled and mercenary thief-taker
would like well to be accounted a public spirited man; and he cannot
help boasting of his services as such. The hangman’s pretensions are
of the same kind: but however useful and necessary some of such a
description of men may be, to keep down the wicked part of mankind, who
are a nuisance to civilized society, yet the instruments themselves are
very like in character to the Weasel in the Fable. The same may be said
of those factious writers, who pester the public with their clamorous
charges, under the mask of patriotism, but whose real motive is either
to gain money by the sale of their highly seasoned scandals, or to run
down their corrupt opponents in order to obtain their places.
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