Indeed, a
darkness next to the fog of this awful day lowered over the whole
region. For a little time the helm appeared abandoned.
Ipse diem noctemque negat discernere coelo,
Nec meminisse viae media Palinurus in unda.
At that time I was connected with men of high place in the community.
They loved liberty as much as the Duke of Bedford can do; and they
understood it at least as well. Perhaps their politics, as usual, took a
tincture from their character, and they cultivated what they loved. The
liberty they pursued was a liberty inseparable from order, from virtue,
from morals, and from religion,--and was neither hypocritically nor
fanatically followed. They did not wish that liberty, in itself one of
the first of blessings, should in its perversion become the greatest
curse which could fall upon mankind. To preserve the Constitution
entire, and practically equal to all the great ends of its formation,
not in one single part, but in all its parts, was to them the first
object. Popularity and power they regarded alike. These were with them
only different means of obtaining that object, and had no preference
over each other in their minds, but as one or the other might afford a
surer or a less certain prospect of arriving at that end. It is some
consolation to me, in the cheerless gloom which darkens the evening of
my life, that with them I commenced my political career, and never for a
moment, in reality nor in appearance, for any length of time, was
separated from their good wishes and good opinion.
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