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10 ly if there is any thing like divinity in man, it is his admiration of virtue.

But who alive can exhibit this portrait? If our age, on that supposition, more fruitful than any other, had produced two HAMILTONS, one of them might have de15 picted the other. To delineate genius, one must feel its power: HAMILTON, and he alone, with all its inspirations, could have transfused its whole fervid soul into the picture, and swelled its lineaments into life. The writer's mind, expanding with its own pecular enthusi20 asm, and glowing with kindred fires, would then have stretched to the dimensions of his subject.

Such is the infirmity of human nature, it is very dif ficult for a man, who is greatly the superiour of his associates, to preserve their friendship without abatement; 25 yet, though he could not possibly conceal his superiority, he was so little inclined to display it, he was so much at ease in his possession, that no jealousy or envy chilled his bosom, when his friends obtained praise. He was indeed so entirely the friend of his friends, so mag30 nanimous, so superiour, or, more properly, so insensible to all exclusive selfishness of spirit; so frank, so ardent, yet so little overbearing, so much trusted, admired, beloved, almost adored, that his power over their affections was entire, and lasted through his life. We do not be35 lieve, that he left any worthy man his foe, who had ever been his friend.

Men of the most elevated minds, have not always the readiest discernment of character. Perhaps he was sometimes too sudden and too lavish in bestowing his 40 confidence; his manly spirit disdaining artifice, suspected none. But while the power of his friends over him seemed to have no limits, and really had none, in respect to those things which were of a nature to be yielded, no man, not the Roman Cato himself, was more 45 inflexible on every point that touched, or seemed to touch integrity and honour. With him, it was not enough to be unsuspected; his bosom would have glowed like a furnace, at his own whispers of reproach. Mere purity would have seemed to him below praise;

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50 and such were his habits, and such his nature, that the pecuniary temptations which many others can only with great exertion and self-denial resist, had no attractions for him. He was very far from obstinate; yet, as his friends assailed his opinions with less profound thought 55 than he had devoted to them, they were seldom shaken by discussion. He defended them, however, with as much mildness as force, and evinced, that if he did not yield, it was not for want of gentleness or modesty.

The tears that flow on this fond recital will never dry 60 up. My heart, penetrated with the remembrance of the man, grows liquid as I write, and I could pour it out like water. I could weep too for my country, which, mournful as it is, does not know the half of its loss. It deeply laments, when it turns its eyes back, 65 and sees what HAMILTON was; but my soul stiffens with despair, when I think what HAMILTON would have been. Ames.

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With the jacobins of France, marriage is in effect annihilated; children are encouraged to cut the throats of their parents; mothers are taught that tenderness is no part of their character; and to demonstrate their at5 tachment to their party, that they ought to make no scruple to rake with their bloody hands in the bowels of those who come from their own.

To all this let us join the practice of cannibalism, with which, in the proper terms, and with the greatest 10 truth, their several factions accuse each other. By cannibalism, I mean their devouring, as a nutriment of their ferocity, some part of the bodies of those they have murdered their drinking the blood of their victims, and forcing the victims themselves to drink the blood of their 15 kindred, slaughtered before their faces. By cannibalism, I mean also to signify all their nameless, unmanly, and abominable insults on the bodies of those they slaughter.

As to those whom they suffer to die a natural death,

20 they do not permit them to enjoy the last consolations of mankind, or those rights of sepulture, which indicate hope, and which mere nature has taught to mankind in all countries to soothe the afflictions, and to cover the infirmity of mortal condition. They disgrace men in 25 the entry into life: they vitiate and enslave them through the whole course of it; and they deprive them of all comfort at the conclusion of their dishonoured and depraved existence. Endeavouring to persuade the people that they are no better than beasts, the whole 30 body of their institution tends to make them beasts of prey, furious and savage. For this purpose the active part of them is disciplined into a ferocity which has no parallel. To this ferocity there is joined not one of the rude, unfashioned virtues which accompany the vices, 35 where the whole are left to grow up together in the rankness of uncultivated nature. But nothing is left to nature in their systems.

The same discipline which hardens their hearts relaxes their morals. Whilst courts of justice were thrust 40 out by revolutionary tribunals, and silent churches were only the funeral monuments of departed religion, there were no fewer than nineteen or twenty theatres, great and small, most of them kept open at the public expense, and all of them crowded every night. Among 45 the gaunt, haggard forms of famine and nakedness, amidst the yells of murder, the tears of affliction, and the cries of despair; the song, the dance, the mimic scene, the buffoon laughter, went on as regularly as in the gay` hour of festive peace. I have it from good authority, 50 that under the scaffold of judicial murder, and the gaping planks that poured down blood on the spectators, the space was hired out for a shew of dancing dogs. I think, without concert, we have made the very same remark on reading some of their pieces, which being writ55 ten for other purposes, let us into a view of their social life. It struck us that the habits of Paris had no resemblance to the finished virtues, or to the polished vice, and elegant, though not blameless luxury, of the capital of a great empire. Their society was more like that of a

60 den of outlaws upon a doubtful frontier; of a lewd tavern for the revels and debauches of banditti, assassins, bravos and smugglers mixed with bombastic players, the refuse and rejected offal of strolling theatres, puffing out ill-sorted verses about virtue, mixed with the 65 licentious and blasphemous songs, proper to the brutal and hardened course of life belonging to that sort of wretches. This system of manners in itself is at war with all orderly and moral society, and is in its neighbourhood unsafe. If great bodies of that kind were any 70 where established in a bordering territory, we should have a right to demand of their governments the suppression of such a nuisance. What are we to do if the government and the whole community is of the same description? Yet that government has thought proper to 75 invite ours to lay by its unjust hatred, and to listen to the voice of humanity as taught by their example.

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Burke.

You, T. Attius, I know, had every where given it out, that I was to defend my client, not from facts, not upon the footing of innocence, but by taking advantage merely of the law in his behalf. Have I done so? I 5 appeal to yourself. Have I sought to cover him behind a legal defence only? On the contrary, have I not pleaded his cause as if he had been a senator, liable, by the Cornelian law, to be capitally convicted; and shown, that neither proof nor probable presumption lies against 10 his innocence? In doing so, I must acquaint you, that I have complied with the desire of Cluentius himself. For when he first consulted me in this cause, and when I informed him that it was clear no action could be brought against him from the Cornelian law, he instant15 ly besought and obtested me, that I would not rest his defence upon that ground: saying, with tears in his eyes, that his reputation was as dear to him as his life; and that what he sought, as an innocent man, was not only to be absolved from any penalty, but to be acquit20 ted in the opinion of all his fellow-citizens.

Hitherto, then, I have pleaded this cause upon his plan. But my client must forgive me, if now I shall plead it upon my own. For I should be wanting to myself, and to that regard which my character and sta25 tion require me to bear to the laws of the state, if I should allow any person to be judged of by a law which does not bind him. You, Attius, indeed have told us, that it was a scandal and reproach, that a Roman knight should be exempted from those penalties to which a 30 senator, for corrupting judges, is liable. But I must tell you, that it would be a much greater reproach, in a state that is regulated by law, to depart from the law. What safety have any of us in our persons, what security for our rights, if the law shall be set aside? By 35 what title do you, Q. Naso, sit in that chair, and preside in this judgment? By what right, T. Attius, do you accuse, or do I defend? Whence all the solemnity and pomp of judges, and clerks, and officers, of which this house is full? Does not all proceed from the law, 40 which regulates the whole departments of the state; which as a common bond, holds its members together; and, like the soul within the body, actuates and directs all the public functions? On what ground, then, dare you speak lightly of the law, or move that, in a crim45 inal trial, judges should advance one step beyond what it permits them to go? The wisdom of our ancestors has found, that as senators and magistrates enjoy higher dignities, and greater advantages than other members of the state, the law should also, with regard to them, be more strict, and the purity and uncorruptedness of 50 their morals be guarded by more severe sanctions. But if it be your pleasure that this institution should be altered, if you wish to have the Cornelian law concerning bribery extended to all ranks, then let us join, not in violating the law, but in proposing to have this alter55 ation made by a new law. My client, Cluentius, will be the foremost in this measure, who now, while the old law subsists, rejected its defence, and required his cause to be pleaded, as if he had been bound by it. But, though he would not avail himself of the law, you

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