to the world, withholds itself from those that are invidious.  Gentlemen who are, with me, verging towards the decline of life, and are apt to form their ideas of kings from kings of former times, might dread the anger of a reigning prince;—­they who are more provident of the future, or by being young are more interested in it, might tremble at the resentment of the successor; they might see a long, dull, dreary, unvaried visto of despair and exclusion, for half a century, before them.  This is no pleasant prospect at the outset of a political journey.

Besides this, Sir, the private enemies to be made in all attempts of this kind are innumerable; and their enmity will be the more bitter, and the more dangerous too, because a sense of dignity will oblige them to conceal the cause of their resentment.  Very few men of great families and extensive connections but will feel the smart of a cutting reform, in some close relation, some bosom friend, some pleasant acquaintance, some dear, protected dependant.  Emolument is taken from some; patronage from others; objects of pursuit from all.  Men forced into an involuntary independence will abhor the authors of a blessing which in their eyes has so very near a resemblance to a curse.  When officers are removed, and the offices remain, you may set the gratitude of some against the anger of others, you may oppose the friends you oblige against the enemies you provoke.  But services of the present sort create no attachments.  The individual good felt in a public benefit is comparatively so small, comes round through such an involved labyrinth of intricate and tedious revolutions, whilst a present personal detriment is so heavy, where it falls, and so instant in its operation, that the cold commendation of a public advantage never was and never will be a match for the quick sensibility of a private loss; and you may depend upon it, Sir, that, when many people have an interest in railing, sooner or later, they will bring a considerable degree of unpopularity upon any measure.  So that, for the present at least, the reformation will operate against the reformers; and revenge (as against them at the least) will produce all the effects of corruption.

This, Sir, is almost always the case, where the plan has complete success.  But how stands the matter in the mere attempt?  Nothing, you know, is more common than for men to wish, and call loudly too, for a reformation, who, when it arrives, do by no means like the severity of its aspect.  Reformation is one of those pieces which must be put at some distance in order to please.  Its greatest favorers love it better in the abstract than in the substance.  When any old prejudice of their own, or any interest that they value, is touched, they become scrupulous, they become captious; and every man has his separate exception.  Some pluck out the black hairs, some the gray; one point must be given up to one, another point must be yielded to another; nothing is suffered to prevail upon its own principle; the whole is so frittered down and disjointed, that scarcely a trace of the original scheme remains.  Thus, between the resistance of power, and the unsystematical process of popularity, the undertaker and the undertaking are both exposed, and the poor reformer is hissed off the stags both by friends and foes.