In forming personal pretensions, they must be satisfied with that degree of
consideration they can procure by their abilities fairly measured with
those of an opponent; they must labour for the public without hope of
profit; they must reject every attempt to create a personal dependence.
Candour, force, and elevation of mind, in short, are the props of
democracy; and virtue is the principle of conduct required to its
preservation.
How beautiful a pre-eminence on the side of popular government! And how
ardently should mankind wish for the form, if it tended to establish the
principle, or were, in every instance, a sure indication of its presence!
But perhaps we must have possessed the principle, in order, with any hopes
of advantage, to receive the form; and where the first is entirely
extinguished, the other may be fraught with evil, if any additional evil
deserves to be shunned where men are already unhappy.
At Constantinople or Algiers, it is a miserable spectacle when men pretend
to act on a foot of equality: they only mean to shake off the restraints of
government, and to seize as much as they can of that spoil, which, in
ordinary times, is engrossed by the master they serve.
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