I do not wonder that the behaviour of many parties should have made
persons of tender and scrupulous virtue somewhat out of humour with
all sorts of connection in politics. I admit that people frequently
acquire in such confederacies a narrow, bigoted, and proscriptive
spirit; that they are apt to sink the idea of the general good in
this circumscribed and partial interest. But, where duty renders a
critical situation a necessary one, it is our business to keep free
from the evils attendant upon it, and not to fly from the situation
itself. If a fortress is seated in an unwholesome air, an officer
of the garrison is obliged to be attentive to his health, but he
must not desert his station. Every profession, not excepting the
glorious one of a soldier, or the sacred one of a priest, is liable
to its own particular vices; which, however, form no argument
against those ways of life; nor are the vices themselves inevitable
to every individual in those professions. Of such a nature are
connections in politics; essentially necessary for the full
performance of our public duty, accidentally liable to degenerate
into faction.
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