not very unwarrantable, that their successors, would be equally at the disposal of the treasury. I cannot persuade myself that the nation will have profited so little by experience. But, if that opinion were well founded, you might then gratify our wishes at an easy rate, and appease the present clamour against your government, without offering any material injury to the favourite cause of corruption.
You have still an honourable part to act. The affections of your subjects may still be recovered. But, before you subdue their hearts, you must gain a noble victory over your own. Discard those little, personal resentments, which have too long directed your public conduct. Pardon this man the remainder of his punishment, and if resentment still prevails, make it, what it should have been long since, an act, not of mercy, but of contempt. He will soon fall back into his natural station,—a silent senator, and hardly supporting the weekly eloquence of a news paper. The gentle breath of peace would leave him on the surface, neglected and unremoved. It is only the tempest, that lifts him from his place.
