Page:Letters of Junius, volume 2 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/273

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
JUNIUS.
263

foments the disorder, sees the fruit of his dishonest industry ripen beyond his hopes, and rejoices in the promise of a banquet, only delicious to such an appetite as his own. It is time for those who really mean well to the Cause and the People, who have no view to private advantage, and who have virtue enough to prefer the general good of the community to the gratifications of personal animosities,—it is time for such men to interpose. Let us try whether these fatal dissensions may not yet be reconciled; or, if that be impracticable, let us guard at least against the worst effects of division, and endeavour to persuade these furious partizans, if they will not consent to draw together, to be separately useful to that cause which they all pretend to be attached to.—Honour and honesty must not be renounced, although a thousand modes of right and wrong were to occupy the degrees of morality between Zeno and Epicurus. The fundamental principles of Christianity may still be preserved, though every zealous sectary adheres to his own exclusive doctrine, and pious ecclesiastics make it a part of their religion to persecute one another.—The civil constitution, too, that legal liberty, that