What such men think it for their
advantage to acquire ought not, _prima facie_, to be considered as rash
or heady or incompatible with the public safety or welfare.
I admit, that men of the best fortunes and reputations, and of the best
talents and education too, may by accident show themselves furious and
intemperate in their desires. This is a great misfortune, when it
happens; for the first presumptions are undoubtedly in their favor. We
have two standards of judging, in this case, of the sanity and sobriety
of any proceedings,--of unequal certainty, indeed, but neither of them
to be neglected: the first is by the value of the object sought; the
next is by the means through which it is pursued.
The object pursued by the Catholics is, I understand, and have all along
reasoned as if it were so, in some degree or measure to be again
admitted to the franchises of the Constitution. Men are considered as
under some derangement of their intellects, when they see good and evil
in a different light from other men,--when they choose nauseous and
unwholesome food, and reject such as to the rest of the world seems
pleasant and is known to be nutritive.
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