Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.
Faction
Where statesmen are ruled by faction and interest, they can have no passion for the glory of their country, nor any concern for the figure it will make.
Joseph Addison.
All rising to great place is by a winding stair; and if there be factions it is good to side a man’s self whilst he is in the rising, and to balance himself when he is placed.
When factions are carried too high and too violently, it is a sign of weakness in princes, and much to the prejudice both of their authority and business. The motions of factions under kings ought to be like the motions (as the astronomers speak) of the inferior orbs, which may have their proper motions, but yet still are quietly carried by the higher motion of “primum mobile.”
Kings had need beware how they side themselves, and make themselves as of a faction or party; for leagues within the state are ever pernicious to monarchies; for they raise an obligation paramount to obligation of sovereignty, and make the king “tanquam unus ex nobis,” as was to be seen in the league of France.
Faction is the excess and the abuse of party: it begins when the first idea of private interest, preferred to public good, gets footing in the heart. It is always dangerous, yet always contemptible; and in vain would the men who engage in it hide their designs—their secret prayer is, “Havoc, do thy worst.”Richard Chenevix.
Few or no instances occur in history of an equal, peaceful, and durable accommodation that has been concluded between two factions which had been inflamed into civil war.David Hume:
History of England, chap. lvii.,
Reign of Charles I.
It is no wonder that faction is so productive of vices of all kinds: for, besides that it inflames all the passions, it tends much to remove those great restraints, honour and shame,—when men find that no iniquity can lose them the applause of their own party, and no innocence secure them against the calumnies of the opposite.
A weak unequal faction may animate a government; but when it grows equal in strength, and irreconcilable by animosity, it cannot end without some crisis.Sir William Temple.
