I
have omitted no exertion to prevent him and them from sinking to that
level to which the meretricious French faction his Grace at least
coquets with omit no exertion to reduce both. I have done all I could to
discountenance their inquiries into the fortunes of those who hold large
portions of wealth without any apparent merit of their own. I have
strained every nerve to keep the Duke of Bedford in that situation
which alone makes him my superior. Your Lordship has been a witness of
the use he makes of that preeminence.
But be it that this is virtue; be it that there is virtue in this
well-selected rigor: yet all virtues are not equally becoming to all men
and at all times. There are crimes, undoubtedly there are crimes, which
in all seasons of our existence ought to put a generous antipathy in
action,--crimes that provoke an indignant justice, and call forth a warm
and animated pursuit. But all things that concern what I may call the
preventive police of morality, all things merely rigid, harsh, and
censorial, the antiquated moralists at whose feet I was brought up would
not have thought these the fittest matter to form the favorite virtues
of young men of rank. What might have been well enough, and have been
received with a veneration mixed with awe and terror, from an old,
severe, crabbed Cato, would have wanted something of propriety in the
young Scipios, the ornament of the Roman nobility, in the flower of
their life.
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