Look, gentlemen, to the WHOLE TENOUR of your member's conduct. Try
whether his ambition or his avarice have jostled him out of the straight
line of duty; or whether that grand foe of the offices of active
life, that master vice in men of business, a degenerate and inglorious
sloth--has made him flag and languish in his course. This is the object
of our inquiry. If our member's conduct can bear this touch, mark it for
sterling. He may have fallen into errors; he must have faults; but our
error is greater, and our fault is radically ruinous to ourselves, if
we do not bear, if we do not even applaud, the whole compound and mixed
mass of such a character. Not to act thus is folly; I had almost said it
is impiety. He censures God, who quarrels with the imperfections of man.
Gentlemen, we must not be peevish with those who serve the people. For
none will serve us whilst there is a court to serve but those who are of
a nice and jealous honour. They who think everything, in comparison of
that honour, to be dust and ashes, will not bear to have it soiled and
impaired by those for whose sake they make a thousand sacrifices to
preserve it immaculate and whole. We shall either drive such men from
the public stage, or we shall send them to the court for protection;
where, if they must sacrifice their reputation, they will at least
secure their interest. Depend upon it, that the lovers of freedom will
be free. None will violate their conscience to please us, in order
afterwards to discharge that conscience, which they have violated, by
doing us faithful and affectionate service. If we degrade and deprave
their minds by servility, it will be absurd to expect, that they who
are creeping and abject towards us, will ever be bold and incorruptible
assertors of our freedom, against the most seducing and the most
formidable of all powers. No! human nature is not so formed; nor shall
we improve the faculties or better the morals of public men, by our
possession of the most infallible receipt in the world for making cheats
and hypocrites.
Let me say with plainness, I who am no longer in a public character,
that if by a fair, by an indulgent, by a gentlemanly behaviour to our
representatives, we do not give confidence to their minds, and a liberal
scope to their understandings; if we do not permit our members to act
upon a VERY enlarged view of things; we shall at length infallibly
degrade our national representation into a confused and scuffling bustle
of local agency. When the popular member is narrowed in his ideas, and
rendered timid in his proceedings, the service of the crown will be the
sole nursery of statesmen. Among the frolics of the court, it may at
length take that of attending to its business. Then the monopoly of
mental power will be added to the power of all other kinds it possesses.
On the side of the people there will be nothing but impotence: for
ignorance is impotence; narrowness of mind is impotence; timidity is
itself impotence, and makes all other qualities that go along with it,
impotent and useless.