When men receive obligations from the Crown, through the pious hands
of fathers, or of connections as venerable as the paternal, the
dependencies which arise from thence are the obligations of gratitude,
and not the fetters of servility. Such ties originate in virtue, and
they promote it. They continue men in those habitudes of friendship,
those political connexions, and those political principles, in which
they began life. They are antidotes against a corrupt levity, instead
of causes of it. What an unseemly spectacle would it afford, what a
disgrace would it be to the commonwealth that suffered such things, to
see the hopeful son of a meritorious minister begging his bread at the
door of that treasury, from whence his father dispensed the economy
of an empire, and promoted the happiness and glory of his country!
Why should he be obliged to prostrate his honour, and to submit his
principles at the levee of some proud favourite, shouldered and thrust
aside by every impudent pretender, on the very spot where a few days
before he saw himself adored?--obliged to cringe to the author of the
calamities of his house, and to kiss the hands that are red with his
father's blood.