I do not, my dear sir, conceive you to be of that sophistical, captious
spirit, or of that uncandid dulness, as to require, for every general
observation or sentiment, an explicit detail of the correctives and
exceptions which reason will presume to be included in all the general
propositions which come from reasonable men. You do not imagine that I
wish to confine power, authority, and distinction to blood, and names,
and titles. No, sir. There is no qualification for government but virtue
and wisdom, actual or presumptive. Wherever they are actually found,
they have, in whatever state, condition, profession, or trade, the
passport of heaven to human place and honour. Woe to that country which
would madly and impiously reject the service of the talents and virtues,
civil, military, or religious, that are given to grace and to serve it;
and would condemn to obscurity everything formed to diffuse lustre and
glory around a state. Woe to that country, too, that, passing into the
opposite extreme, considers a low education, a mean, contracted view
of things, a sordid, mercenary occupation, as a preferable title to
command. Everything ought to be open; but not indifferently to every
man. No rotation; no appointment by lot; no mode of election operating
in the spirit of sortition, or rotation, can be generally good in
a government conversant in extensive objects. Because they have no
tendency, direct or indirect, to select the man with a view to the duty,
or to accommodate the one to the other. I do not hesitate to say, that
the road to eminence and power, from obscure condition, ought not to
be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be
the rarest of all rare things, in ought to pass through some sort of
probation. The temple of honour ought to be seated on an eminence. If
it be opened through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is
never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle.