The truest Patriot the greatest Hero.
Is he not in reality the truest patriot who fills up his station in private life well; he who loves and promotes peace both public and private, who knowing that his country’s prosperity depends much more on its virtues than its arms, resolves that his individual endeavours shall not be wanting to promote this desirable end? And is he not the greatest hero who is able to despise public honour for the sake of private usefulness, he who has learnt to subdue his own inclinations, to deny himself those gratifications which are inconsistent with virtue and piety, who has conquered his passions and brought them low even as a child that is weaned: is not such a man greater than he that taketh a city, sheddeth blood as it were water, or calls for the thundering applause of assembled multitudes? But if persons in general held these sentiments, if utility were substituted for show, and religious usefulness for worldly activity, how very little our public men would have to do! Truly they would be driven to turn their swords into ploughshares, and study the Gospel instead of the statutes.
The old Philosophers.
Horace Walpole, who possessed great knowledge of life, though himself disfigured by arrogant conceits, has left this satirical view of the wisdom of the ancient philosophers:
“I thought that philosophers were virtuous, upright men, who loved wisdom, and were above the little passions and foibles of humanity. I thought they assumed that proud title as an earnest to the world, that they intended to be something more than mortal; that they engaged themselves to be patterns of excellence, and would utter no opinion, would pronounce no decision, but what they believed the quintessence of truth; that they always acted without prejudice and respect of persons. Indeed, we know that the ancient philosophers were a ridiculous composition of arrogance, disputation, and contradictions! that some of them acted against all ideas of decency; that others affected to doubt of their own senses; that some, for venting unintelligible nonsense, pretended to think themselves superior to kings; that they gave themselves airs of accounting for all that we do and do not see—and yet, that no two of them agreed in a single hypothesis; that one thought fire, another water, the origin of all things; and that some were even so absurd and impious as to displace God, and enthrone matter in his place. I do not mean to disparage such wise men, for we are really obliged to them: they anticipated and helped us off with an exceeding deal of nonsense, through which we might possibly have passed if they had not prevented us.”
Glory of the Past.
To be honoured and even privileged by the laws, opinions, and inveterate usages of our country, growing out of the prejudice of ages, has nothing to provoke horror and indignation in any man. Even to be too tenacious of those privileges is not absolutely a crime. The strong struggle in every individual to preserve possession of what he has found to belong to him, and to distinguish him, is one of the securities against injustice and despotism implanted in our nature. It operates as an instinct to secure property, and to preserve communities in a settled state. What is there to shock in this? Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society. Omnes boni nobilitati semper favemus was the saying of a wise and good man. It is, indeed, one side of a liberal and benevolent mind to incline to it with some sort of partial propensity. He feels no ennobling principle in his own heart who wishes to level all the artificial institutions which have been adopted for giving a body to opinion and permanence to fugitive esteem. It is a sour, malignant, and envious disposition, without taste for the reality, or for any image or representation of virtue, that sees with joy the unmerited fall of what had long flourished in splendour and in honour. I do not like to see anything destroyed, any void produced in society, any ruin on the face of the land.—Burke.