in which they will be enabled to produce a pretended reform and a real revolution.  If ever the body of this compound Constitution of ours is subverted, either in favor of unlimited monarchy or of wild democracy, that ruin will most certainly be the result of this very sort of machinations against the House of Commons.  It is not from a confidence in the views or intentions of any statesman that I think he is to be indulged in these perilous amusements.

47.  Before it is made the great object of any man’s political life to raise another to power, it is right to consider what are the real dispositions of the person to be so elevated.  We are not to form our judgment on those dispositions from the rules and principles of a court of justice, but from those of private discretion,—­not looking for what would serve to criminate another, but what is sufficient to direct ourselves.  By a comparison of a series of the discourses and actions of certain men for a reasonable length of time, it is impossible not to obtain sufficient indication of the general tendency of their views and principles.  There is no other rational mode of proceeding.  It is true, that in some one or two perhaps not well-weighed expressions, or some one or two unconnected and doubtful affairs, we may and ought to judge of the actions or words by our previous good or ill opinion of the man.  But this allowance has its bounds.  It does not extend to any regular course of systematic action, or of constant and repeated discourse.  It is against every principle of common sense, and of justice to one’s self and to the public, to judge of a series of speeches and actions from the man, and not of the man from the whole tenor of his language and conduct.  I have stated the above matters, not as inferring a criminal charge of evil intention.  If I had meant to do so, perhaps they are stated with tolerable exactness.  But I have no such view.  The intentions of these gentlemen may be very pure.  I do not dispute it.  But I think they are in some great error.  If these things are done by Mr. Fox and his friends with good intentions, they are not done less dangerously; for it shows these good intentions are not under the direction of safe maxims and principles.

48.  Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, and the gentlemen who call themselves the Phalanx, have not been so very indulgent to others.  They have thought proper to ascribe to those members of the House of Commons, who, in exact agreement with the Duke of Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam, abhor and oppose the French system, the basest and most unworthy motives for their conduct;—­as if none could oppose that atheistic, immoral, and impolitic project set up in France, so disgraceful and destructive, as I conceive, to human nature itself, but with some sinister intentions.  They treat those members on all occasions with a sort of lordly insolence, though they are persons that (whatever homage they may pay to the eloquence of