I do not mean to propose him to your lordship for a model. I never
imagined that your talents qualified you for the most distant
resemblance of him; and I wished to convince you how inferior they were.
Beside, my lord, he did not act upon the Machiavelian plan. His system
was that of integrity, frankness, and confidence. He desired to meet his
enemies; and the more extensive the ground upon which he could meet
them, the better. I was never idle enough to think of such a line of
conduct for your lordship. Go on then in those crooked paths, and that
invisible direction, for which nature has so eminently fitted you.
Intrench yourself behind the letter of the law. Avoid, carefully avoid,
the possibility of any sinister evidence. And having uniformly taken
these precautions, defy all the malice of your enemies. They may
threaten, but they shall never hurt you. They may make you tremble and
shrink with fancied terrors, but they shall never be able to man so much
as a straw against you. Immortality, my lord, is suspended over your
head. Do not shudder at the sound. It shall not be an immortality of
infamy. It shall only be an immortality of contempt.
THE END.
AN ACCOUNT OF THE SEMINARY
That will be opened
On MONDAY the Fourth Day of AUGUST,
At EPSOM in SURREY,
For the INSTRUCTION of
TWELVE PUPILS
IN
The GREEK, LATIN, FRENCH, and ENGLISH Languages.
M.DCC.LXXXIII.
AN
ACCOUNT
OF THE
SEMINARY, &C.
The two principal objects of human power are government and education.
They have accordingly engrossed a very large share in the disquisitions
of the speculative in all ages. The subject of the former indeed is man,
already endowed with his greatest force of body, and arrived at the
exercise of his intellectual powers: the subject of the latter is man,
as yet shut up in the feebleness of childhood, and the imbecility of
inexperience. Civil society is great and unlimited in its extent; the
time has been, when the whole known world was in a manner united in one
community: but the sphere of education has always been limited. It is
for nations to produce the events, that enchant the imagination, and
ennoble the page of history: infancy must always pass away in the
unimportance of mirth, and the privacy of retreat. That government
however is a theme so much superior to education, is not perhaps so
evident, as we may at first imagine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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