Such is the nature of a
contract. And the votes of a majority of the people, whatever their
infamous flatterers may teach in order to corrupt their minds, cannot
alter the moral any more than they can alter the physical essence of
things. The people are not to be taught to think lightly of their
engagements to their governors; else they teach governors to think
lightly of their engagements towards them. In that kind of game, in the
end, the people are sure to be losers. To flatter them into a contempt
of faith, truth, and justice is to ruin them; for in these virtues
consists their whole safety. To flatter any man, or any part of mankind,
in any description, by asserting that in engagements he or they are
free, whilst any other human creature is bound, is ultimately to vest
the rule of morality in the pleasure of those who ought to be rigidly
submitted to it,--to subject the sovereign reason of the world to the
caprices of weak and giddy men.
But, as no one of us men can dispense with public or private faith, or
with any other tie of moral obligation, so neither can any number of us.
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