REFINED POLICY THE PARENT OF CONFUSION.

Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion; and ever will be so as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is, let me say, of no mean force in the government of mankind. Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle. -Speech on Concil. with America.

TRUE POLICY BASED ON JUSTICE.

It is with the greatest difficulty that I am able to separate policy from justice. Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.— Reflect. on Rev. in France.

WE MUST HAVE LEADERS.

In a mass we cannot be left to ourselves.

We must have leaders. If none will undertake to lead us right, we shall find guides who will contrive to conduct us to shame and ruin.

But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people. If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty, soberly limited and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular. Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity to his cause. Moderation will be stigmatised as the virtue of cowards; and compromise as the prudence of traitors; until, in hopes of preserving the credit which may enable him to temper, and moderate, on some occasions, the popular leader is obliged to become active in propagating

doctrines, and establishing powers, that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might have aimed.—Reflect. on Rev. in France.

Is it that the people are changed, that the commonwealth cannot be protected by its laws? I hardly think it. On the contrary, I conceive that these things happen because men are not changed, but remain always what they always were; they remain what the bulk of us ever must be, when abandoned to our vulgar propensities, without guide, leader, or control; that is, made to be full of a blind elevation in prosperity; to despise untried dangers; to be overpowered with unexpected reverses; to find no clue in a labyrinth of difficulties, to get out of a present inconvenience with any risk of future ruin; to follow and to bow to fortune; to admire successful though wicked enterprise, and to imitate what we admire.-First Letter on Reg. Peace.

G

OF GREAT MEN.

Great men are the guideposts and landmarks in the state.-Speech on Amer. Taxation.

The great must submit to the dominion of prudence and of virtue; or none will long submit to the dominion of the great.

"Dis te minorem quod geris imperas."

This is the feudal tenure which they cannot alter.-Letter to W. Eliot.

THE STATESMAN.

A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution. Reflect. on Rev. in France.

Statesmen are placed on an eminence that they may have a larger horizon than we can possibly command. They have a

whole before them, which we can contemplate only in the parts, and often without the necessary relations. Ministers are not only our natural rulers, but our natural guides.— First Letter on Reg. Peace.

The temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought therefore to be the first study of a statesman. And the knowledge of this temper it is by no means impossible for him to attain, if he has not an interest in being ignorant of what it is his duty to learn. Thoughts on Pres. Discontents.

Steady, independent minds, when they have an object of so serious a concern to mankind as government under their contemplation, will disdain to assume the part of satirists and declaimers. They will judge of human institutions as they do of human characters. They will sort out the good from the evil, which is mixed in mortal institutions as it is in mortal men.-Reflect. on Rev. in France.