OPPOSITION. 



625 



would it not be regarded in the light of a sage counsellor,, instead of a 

 factious adversary. 



But if it should come to pass that there should arise an opposition, 

 which carried away by its political biases and passions, engendered 

 through years of successful domination, which listening only to the 

 voice of its own interests, and possessing few sympathies in common 

 with the people, would affect a false zeal for the constitution in order to 

 monopolize the power of government and religion, and force the national 

 majority to yield to the will of a privileged class, what would be the 

 fate of such an opposition? It would become a miserable faction 

 repelled by public opinion ; it would stand alone, nerveless and power- 

 less, and would only strengthen in their opinion, the government which 

 it had attacked and attempted to overthrow ; each of its efforts to raise 

 itself, would be attended by a fall more ignominious and disastrous than 

 the last. Even in this last melancholy condition, it would still answer 

 the purpose of being a strong confirmation to government of the justice 

 and propriety of the course it had adopted, and thus serve to strengthen 

 and consolidate its power. Opposition, in fine, is a light which guides 

 a government or the cement which binds it together. It has been 

 appropriately compared to the bile in the human body, a moderate 

 quantity is essential for the preservation of health, too much is ruinous 

 and destructive. We have seen the workings, and the consequent dis- 

 comfiture of an opposition repelled by public opinion. We have beheld 

 a king listening to the whispers and misrepresentations of such an 

 interested faction, who would deny that light existed, if that light 

 caused them inconvenience by a single act convert a nation of affection 

 into a nation of remonstrance. Giving ear to their senseless flatteries, 

 he stood like Canute on the shore of public opinion and commanded the 

 angry waters to recede, and like his prototype, he awoke to the mortify- 

 ing conviction that his power extended not over the element, and that to 

 oppose it, was to be swept away in its onward and undeviating course. 

 Happy was it for him that he too became convinced of the utter vanity 

 and deceitfulness of such flatteries, of the hollowness of such counsel, 

 and had the courage to discard those from whom it had proceeded. 



It is to this conviction that we owe the imposing spectacle which we 

 now behold, of the union of all the property of the country in support 

 of the laws, and of all the talent of the country in support of the pro- 

 perty, with measures to unite, to redress, to consolidate j we have a 

 government whose primary object is the national prosperity, whose 

 secondary object, the national love a government looking in its arrange- 

 ments, to measures for consolidating a lasting power, by a national 

 communication of privileges, and for itself an honest power, by admi- 

 nistering the country according to its confidence, in pursuit of- its 

 advantages, with a spirit too high for resentment, alike superior to 

 plunder and proscription. 



ZKTA. 



M. M. No. 84. 2 T 



