They are
certainly the most specious, and they cost them neither reflection
to frame, nor pains to modify, nor management to support. The task
is of another nature to those who mean to promise nothing that it is
not in their intentions, or may possibly be in their power to
perform; to those who are bound and principled no more to delude the
understandings than to violate the liberty of their fellow-subjects.
Faithful watchmen we ought to be over the rights and privileges of
the people. But our duty, if we are qualified for it as we ought,
is to give them information, and not to receive it from them; we are
not to go to school to them to learn the principles of law and
government. In doing so we should not dutifully serve, but we
should basely and scandalously betray, the people, who are not
capable of this service by nature, nor in any instance called to it
by the Constitution. I reverentially look up to the opinion of the
people, and with an awe that is almost superstitious. I should be
ashamed to show my face before them, if I changed my ground, as they
cried up or cried down men, or things, or opinions; if I wavered and
shifted about with every change, and joined in it, or opposed, as
best answered any low interest or passion; if I held them up hopes,
which I knew I never intended, or promised what I well knew I could
not perform.
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