When men of rank sacrifice all ideas of dignity to an ambition without a
distinct object, and work with low instruments and for low ends, the
whole composition becomes low and base. Does not something like this now
appear in France? Does it not produce something ignoble and inglorious?
a kind of meanness in all the prevalent policy? a tendency in all that
is done to lower along with individuals all the dignity and importance
of the state? Other revolutions have been conducted by persons, who,
whilst they attempted or affected changes in the commonwealth,
sanctified their ambition by advancing the dignity of the people whose
peace they troubled. They had long views. They aimed at the rule, not at
the destruction, of their country. They were men of great civil and
great military talents, and if the terror, the ornament of their age.
They were not like Jew brokers, contending with each other who could
best remedy with fraudulent circulation and depreciated paper the
wretchedness and ruin brought on their country by their degenerate
councils. The compliment made to one of the great bad men of the old
stamp (Cromwell) by his kinsman, a favourite poet of that time, shows
what it was he proposed, and what indeed to a great degree he
accomplished, in the success of his ambition:--
"Still as YOU rise, the STATE exalted too,
Finds no distemper whilst 'tis changed by YOU:
Changed like the world's great scene, when without noise
The rising sun night's VULGAR lights destroys.
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