If these charges be true, their exclusion of such a person
from their body is a circumstance which does equal honor to their
justice and their prudence. If they express a degree of sensibility in
being obliged to execute this wise and just sentence, from a
consideration of some amiable or some pleasant qualities which in his
private life their former friend may happen to possess, they add to the
praise of their wisdom and firmness the merit of great tenderness of
heart and humanity of disposition.
On their ideas, the new Whig party have, in my opinion, acted as became
them. The author of the Reflections, however, on his part, cannot,
without great shame to himself, and without entailing everlasting
disgrace on his posterity, admit the truth or justice of the charges
which have been made upon him, or allow that he has in those Reflections
discovered any principles to which honest men are bound to declare, not
a shade or two of dissent, but a total, fundamental opposition. He must
believe, if he does not mean wilfully to abandon his cause and his
reputation, that principles fundamentally at variance with those of his
book are fundamentally false.
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