But
even in cases where rather levity than fraud was to be suspected in
these ranting speculations, the issue has been much the same. These
professors, finding their extreme principles not applicable to cases
which call only for a qualified or, as I may say, civil and legal
resistance, in such cases employ no resistance at all. It is with them
a war or a revolution, or it is nothing. Finding their schemes of
politics not adapted to the state of the world in which they live,
they often come to think lightly of all public principle, and are
ready, on their part, to abandon for a very trivial interest what they
find of very trivial value. Some, indeed, are of more steady and
persevering natures, but these are eager politicians out of parliament
who have little to tempt them to abandon their favorite projects. They
have some change in the church or state, or both, constantly in
their view. When that is the case, they are always bad citizens and
perfectly unsure connections. For, considering their speculative
designs as of infinite value, and the actual arrangement of the
state as of no estimation, they are at best indifferent about it. They
see no merit in the good, and no fault in the vicious, management of
public affairs; they rather rejoice in the latter, as more
propitious to revolution. They see no merit or demerit in any man,
or any action, or any political principle any further than as they may
forward or retard their design of change; they therefore take up,
one day, the most violent and stretched prerogative, and another
time the wildest democratic ideas of freedom, and pass from one to the
other without any sort of regard to cause, to person, or to party.
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