This distemper of remedy, grown habitual, relaxes and wears out, by a
vulgar and prostituted use, the spring of that spirit which is to be
exerted on great occasions. It was in the most patient period of Roman
servitude that themes of tyrannicide made the ordinary exercise of boys
at school--cum perimit saevos classis numerosa tyrannos. In the ordinary
state of things, it produces in a country like ours the worst effects,
even on the cause of that liberty which it abuses with the dissoluteness
of an extravagant speculation. Almost all the high-bred republicans
of my time have, after a short space, become the most decided,
thorough-paced courtiers; they soon left the business of a tedious,
moderate, but practical resistance, to those of us whom, in the pride
and intoxication of their theories, they have slighted as not much
better than Tories. Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the most sublime
speculations; for, never intending to go beyond speculation, it costs
nothing to have it magnificent. But even in cases where rather levity
than fraud was to be suspected in these ranting speculations, the
issue has been much the same. These professors, finding their extreme
principles not applicable to cases which call only for a qualified,
or, as I may say, civil, and legal resistance, in such cases employ
no resistance at all. It is with them a war or a revolution, or it is
nothing. Finding their schemes of politics not adapted to the state of
the world in which they live, they often come to think lightly of all
public principle; and are ready, on their part, to abandon for a very
trivial interest what they find of very trivial value. Some indeed are
of more steady and persevering natures; but these are eager politicians
out of parliament, who have little to tempt them to abandon their
favourite projects. They have some change in the Church or State, or
both, constantly in their view. When that is the case, they are always
bad citizens, and perfectly unsure connections. For, considering their
speculative designs as of infinite value, and the actual arrangement of
the state as of no estimation, they are at best indifferent about it.
They see no merit in the good, and no fault in the vicious management of
public affairs; they rather rejoice in the latter, as more propitious to
revolution. They see no merit or demerit in any man, or any action, or
any political principle, any further than as they may forward or retard
their design of change: they therefore take up, one day, the most
violent and stretched prerogative, and another time the wildest
democratic ideas of freedom, and pass from the one to the other without
any sort of regard to cause, to person, or to party.