Whatever the politician or preacher of September or of October may think
of the matter, it is a most comfortless, disheartening, desolating
example. Dreadful is the example of ruined innocence and virtue, and
the completest triumph of the completest villany that ever vexed and
disgraced mankind! The example is ruinous in every point of view,
religious, moral, civil, political. It establishes that dreadful maxim
of Machiavel, that in great affairs men are not to be wicked by halves.
This maxim is not made for a middle sort of beings, who, because they
cannot be angels, ought to thwart their ambition, and not endeavor to
become infernal spirits. It is too well exemplified in the present time,
where the faults and errors of humanity, checked by the imperfect,
timorous virtues, have been overpowered by those who have stopped at no
crime. It is a dreadful part of the example, that infernal malevolence
has had pious apologists, who read their lectures on frailties in favor
of crimes,--who abandon the weak, and court the friendship of the
wicked. To root out these maxims, and the examples that support them, is
a wise object of years of war.
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