These, and many
more like these, grafting public principles on private honor, have
redeemed the present age, and would have adorned the most splendid
period in your history. Where could any man, conscious of his own
inability to act alone, and willing to act as he ought to do, have
arranged himself better? If any one thinks this kind of society to be
taken up as the best method of gratifying low personal pride or
ambitious interest, he is mistaken, and knows nothing of the world.
Preferring this connection, I do not mean to detract in the slightest
degree from others. There are some of those whom I admire at something
of a greater distance, with whom I have had the happiness also
perfectly to agree, in almost all the particulars in which I have
differed with some successive administrations; and they are such as it
never can be reputable to any government to reckon among its enemies.
I hope there are none of you corrupted with the doctrine taught by
wicked men for the worst purposes, and received by the malignant
credulity of envy and ignorance, which is, that the men who act upon the
public stage are all alike, all equally corrupt, all influenced by no
other views than the sordid lure of salary and pension. The thing I know
by experience to be false. Never expecting to find perfection in men,
and not looking for divine attributes in created beings, in my commerce
with my contemporaries I have found much human virtue.
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