473
PAPERS OF ~iIR.ABE.\U BUONAPARTE LAMAR
of truth and reason, bv identifying h.is fortun~s with some popular commotion, or by yoking himself to the car of some political ''lfon'· of the day; and ever and anon crying to the multitude--'~ Gre;a.t is Diana of Ephestls". Surely no member of our national legislature can ever willingly sink himself so low in morals as a man, and profligacy a a public functionary. I hold up the character to detesta- tion for the two-fold purpose of exciting acrainst it a general repug- nance and dis(J'ust; and of warnin"' the incautious and unwary of the o-reat danger o.f insensibly sliding into it under the delusion that they are travelling in the path of duty and safety. Party spirit is more to be shunned than any other vice, not only for it dfaasterous consequences, but because of the proneness of.nature to run into it. We are all more or le s at times ecretly tinctured . with the feeling, and have to rise superior to it by the force of reason and virtnc-he will not be able to ao it, who parleys for a single moment with his duty. The vice is a deceitful one. It often wear the mask of patriotism; and under this flattering disguise, it wins the undiseernin"' like a harlot--0 array. The vicious woo it, enamoured of its prostitutions, whil t many worthy citizens and public men are educed to its embraces from its outward imilitude to virtue. But no matter in what bo om it finds it way· or in what assembly 1t may prevail, wherever it trikes its poisonous roots, it never fails sooner or later, to extirpate ever virtuous sentiment and generous impulse. It is a banefnl Upas that permits no moral flower to :flourish in its shade.-Tbe individual who bows to its dominion can never generate a noble pur:pose-the politician who consults its authority is recreant to liberty-and the nation that shall become drunk with its infernal fires will most assureJly forfeit the favor of heaven, and become the self-infiictor of a righteou punishment. Its march is from folly to madnes - from madness to crime-from crime to death. Its votaries may change their livery.....:....but to be a violent partizan once, is to be a partizan for life; he is a spell bound being, whose infatuations may driYe him as oecasio11s require from turpitude t,o turpitude, until the very blood of infancy become the Faternian of his revels. It is use- less to confirm these truths by historical example-,for what is all history but a record of the bloody march of faction ! Every page is burthened with wars, not for the sacred liberties of man, but for the unhallowed exaltation of contending aspirants. Do you turn to the ancient mistress of the world? - ·where is the patriot that doth not sigh at the ei vil strifes that seated Sylla upon bleeding Rome, and his rival on the r:nins of Carthage l Do you look at that sea-encircled nation· whose re entful Roses would not bloom together?-who doth not mark in the broils of York and Lancaster a melancholy monument of the folly and madness of party Y Or will you turn for a moment to that lovely region of the olive and the vine where the valleys are all miling and the people all cheerful f-who that hath a spark of nature in bis soul doth not weep at the horrid atrocitie perpetrated under the name of liberty by Robespierre and his bloody co-adjutors during the reign of the Jacobin faction in revolutionary France. These example , by way of melancholy warning, may serve to how the un- natural lengths into which deluded and infatuated man will hurry when once enlisted under the proscriptive banner of party.
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