When human nature appears in
the utmost state of corruption, it has actually begun to reform.
In this manner, the scenes of human life have been frequently shifted.
Security and presumption forfeit the advantages of prosperity; resolution
and conduct retrieve the ills of adversity; and mankind while they have
nothing on which to rely but their virtue, are prepared to gain every
advantage; and while they confide most in their good fortune, are most
exposed to feel its reverse. We are apt to draw these observations into
rule; and when we are no longer willing to act for our country, we plead,
in excuse of our own weakness or folly, a supposed fatality in human
affairs.
The institutions of men, if not calculated for the preservation of virtue,
are, indeed, likely to have an end as well as a beginning: but so long as
they are effectual to this purpose, they have at all times an equal
principle of life, which nothing but an external force can suppress; no
nation ever suffered internal decay but from the vice of its members. We
are sometimes willing to acknowledge this vice in our countrymen; but who
was ever willing to acknowledge it in himself? It may be suspected,
however, that we do more than acknowledge it, when we cease to oppose its
effects, and when we plead a fatality, which, at least, in the breast of
every individual, is dependent on himself.
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