The whole people was distributed into
political societies, in which they acted in support of such
interests in the State as they severally affected. For it was then
thought no crime, to endeavour by every honest means to advance to
superiority and power those of your own sentiments and opinions.
This wise people was far from imagining that those connections had
no tie, and obliged to no duty; but that men might quit them without
shame, upon every call of interest. They believed private honour to
be the great foundation of public trust; that friendship was no mean
step towards patriotism; that he who, in the common intercourse of
life, showed he regarded somebody besides himself, when he came to
act in a public situation, might probably consult some other
interest than his own. Never may we become plus sages que les
sages, as the French comedian has happily expressed it--wiser than
all the wise and good men who have lived before us. It was their
wish, to see public and private virtues, not dissonant and jarring,
and mutually destructive, but harmoniously combined, growing out of
one another in a noble and orderly gradation, reciprocally
supporting and supported.
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