Chap. I.]

DUTIES OF PATRIOTISM.

103

may be treated under the same division. Nor is it within theauthor’s province to do more than advert to the personal qualifi-cations, physical, intellectual, or moral, which the various publicofficers may rightfully be expected to bring to the discharge ofthe duties of their respective offices. His concern is with theirspecial moral duties, arising from the stations which they fill.The public officers particlarly referred to, comprise the Presi-dent of the United States, and the chief executive officers bywhom he is aided in the discharge of his high duties, the mem-bers of both houses of Congress, the governors of the severalstates and territories, the members of the state and territoriallegislatures, the judges of the national and state courts, the offi-cers of the army and navy of the United States, and of themilitia of the several states. All these various officers make upa mighty host; and, however different may be the spheres of theirofficial duty, still they all occupy a common ground and sustaina common relation to their country, from which spring moralduties of the most important kind. Their power of influencingthe public happiness is great, in proportion as their stations areelevated; and their influence for good or for evil is felt throughall the ramifications of society.

The greatest evil by which a free government is beset andendangered is, the excessive prevalence and extreme virulenceof faction and party spirit. This source of public danger isgreat and threatening in proportion to the freedom of the govern-ment of a country and the consequent fewness of the restraintsof law. Faction and party spirit have, in truth, been the baneof all free governments. No one can read of the intrigues,machinations, and exterminating violence of faction in the repub-lics of ancient Greece, each party, as it gained the ascendency,alternately wreaking its vengeance on the other, without beingfilled with aversion and disgust. The history of the Romancommonwealth and of the Italian republics of the middle ages,are too well fraught with instruction of the same melancholy kind.

But we need not go back to ancient times, to be instructed inthe evils of faction and party violence. The sanguinary scenesof the French Revolution, originating in, and consummated by,the madness of party and faction, have furnished a lesson to all