CHARACTERS. 



471 



Disdaining the honours and emo- 

 luments, which might have re- 

 warded his apostacy, he preferred 

 a state of poverty and exile, to the 

 countenance of a profligate and li- 

 centious court. For a time, he re- 

 tired from all interference in public 

 afiairs : till goaded by persecution, 

 and roused by indignation at his 

 country's spoilers, he strove to re- 

 animate the drooping spirits of his 

 party, to redress their wrongs. If 

 he sought the assistance of Louis, 

 he sought also the alliance of De 

 Witt; and it should never be for- 

 gotten, that the great object of his 

 solicitude, was to restore his native 

 land to freedom, when honour and 

 virtue were alike banished from 

 the precincts of the palace and the 

 throne. If pure and honourable 

 motives are, in any case, admitted 

 to justify doubtful or incautious 

 conduct, let the same be equally 

 allowed in others : and let not 

 Sydney be too hastily condemned 

 for attempting like Thrasybulus 

 and Conon, in a desperate crisis, 

 to assert the liberties of his coun- 

 try, by the aid of foreign powers. 

 Or if he be condemned by the au- 

 sterity of public virtue, let odi- 

 um indiscriminately fall on those, 

 who have pursued such measures 

 on any similar pretence; since the 

 morality of an action can in no 

 wise be affected by its failure or , 

 success. 



If, in his subsequent retirement 

 in the south of France, Sydney was 

 indebted to that country for sup- 

 port, as well as for protection, a 

 fact by no means clearly ascertain- 

 ed, he did not purchase it by any 

 base compliance with the interest 

 or caprices of the court ; accepting 

 merely that assistance, which few 



governments withhold from illus- 

 trious strangers in distress. His 

 supposed connection with Barillon, 

 at a later period, involves nothing 

 inconsistent with the public weal. 

 In a free country, no pensioner 

 can be more dangerous than a pen- 

 sioned king: and the arbitrary pro- 

 jects of an unworthy sovereign, 

 meanly dependent upon foreign 

 counsels, was, perhaps, most effec- 

 tually counteracted, by his main- 

 taining some intercourse with the 

 person, who so long conducted the 

 intrigue. The delicacy, and diffi- 

 culty, of such transactions, certain- 

 ly cannot be denied : but the im- 

 portance and necessity of the end 

 in view, with the purity and patrio- 

 tism of the motive, will, in most 

 cases, justify what is not actually 

 and fundamentally wrong. In 

 very similar circumstances, De- 

 mosthenes received money from 

 Persia, to maintain, against Mace- 

 don, the liberties of Greece. 



Sydney has been hastily accused, 

 by an historian* too lenient to the 

 crimes of princes, of ingratitude to 

 a sovereign who had pardoned 

 him. But in his case no particu- 

 lar pardon was necessary; the 

 Act of Indemnity/ absolving him 

 from all responsibility for his con- 

 duct in the civil wars. At first, 

 his exile was quite voluntary, from 

 his detestation of the vices of the 

 court ; and the assurance of safety 

 which was afterwards denied him 

 was no farther requisite, than as a 

 defence against unmerited persecu- 

 tion. When, therefore, he return- 

 ed in compliance with the wishes 

 of his dying father, a safe conduct 

 was all that he required ; — all that 



* See Hume's Hist. viii. 43, note. 



