Page:Conciones ad populum. Or, Addresses to the people (IA concionesadpopul00cole).pdf/24

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14

a necessary Task, in order that we may enlighten, or at least beware of, the misguided Men who have enlisted under the banners of Liberty, from no principles or with bad ones: whether they be those, who

admire they know not what,
And know not whom, but as one leads the other:

or whether those,

Whole end is private Hate, not help to Freedom,
Adverse and turbulent when she would lead
To Virtue.

The majority of Democrats appear to me to have attained that portion of knowledge in politics, which Infidels possess in religion. I would by no means be supposed to imply, that the objections of both are equally unfounded, but that they both attribute to the system which they reject, all the evils existing under it; and that both contemplating truth and justice "in the nakedness of abstraction," condemn constitutions and dispensations without having sufficiently examined the natures, circumstances, and capacities of their recipients.

The first Class among the professed Friends of Liberty is composed of Men, who unaccustomedto