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TEXAS STATE LIBRARY
When we have our true situation distinctly presented to us, if then we resolve with a headlong violence to resist the admonitions of our officers and friends; and cast ourselves imo the h,111ds of our relentless foes, then, and not till then, the public officer stands acquitted before God and man for whatever may come. It is no excuse at all, for a public officer, who at our desire, takes a measure contrary to our safety, that it is our own act. He who does not stay the hand of suicide is guilty of murder. He that is bound to act in the dark as we are, cannot be said to act freely. When it appears evident to our leaders that our desires and our interests are at variance, they ought not to gratify the former at the expense of the latter. 8tatesman are placed on an eminence, that they may have a larger horizon than we can pos- sibly command. They have a whole before them which we can con- template only in the parts, and often without the necessary relations Officers of state are not only our political rulers, but our political guides Reason manfully delivered, has in itself a mighty force; but reason from the mouth of legal authority is, I may fairly say, irrcsistable A rash recourse to force is not to be justified in a state of real weakness. Such attempts bring on disgrace; and in their failure discountenance and discourage more rational endeavors. But reason is to be hazarded, though it may be perverted by craft and sophistry; for reason can suffer no loss nor shame, nor can it impede any useful plan of future policy In the unavoidable uncertainty, as to the effect, which attends on every measure of human prudence, nothing seems a surer antidote to the poison of fraud than its detection It is true the fraud may be swallowed after this discovery; and perhaps even swallowed the more greedily for being a detected fraud. Men sometimes make it a point of honor not to be disabused; and they had rather fall into a hundred errors than confess one - But after all, when neither our principles, nor our dispositions nor perhaps our talents, enable us to encounter delusion with delusion, we must use our best reason with those that ought to be reasonable creatures, and to take our chance for the event. We cannot act on these anomalies in the minds of men. As the pro- fessions of men either in a moral or political point of view, are fre- quently as unsound and hollow as the man who utters them, or the quill which writes them;- the only true touch stone then, is their actions And by making fair deductions, we can arrive _pretty cer~ tainly at the true incentives which prompted those actions In point- ing out this as the only fair and rational course to pursue I will here remark, that I can only draw conclusions from such acts as have be- come public, and by fair deductions, arrive at the true motives which are kept as it were under seal In as much as our Constitution regards the legislative and Executive departments of the government to act as checks or guards on each other; it will not be amiss to make a few remarks on the legislature department as introductory to the general inquiry. In making these remarks however, I wish it distinctly understood, that they are not designed as invidious, and aimed only at those whose conscience secretly whisper him, thou art the man; let such receive it in a proper spirit and proffit by the rebuke I have allready observed, in my first chapter, that a majority of our Congress has, generally, been composed of quack lawyers - the black-legs of the noble profession which they so much disgrace These men are entirely devoid of principle - all aspirants
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