Page:The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.djvu/121

Rh actually is. If party be not necessary to this government as a good, it is, perhaps, unnvoidable as an evil. But no elector should ever submit himself so implicitly to party as to support a man whose private acts prove him to be unfit for a public trust. The basis of the representative system is character, and without character, no man should be confided in. In discriminating between candidates, however, it should be remembered that there are "wolves in sheep's clothing," in character, as well as in other things. Personal vanity induces ordinary men to confide most in those who most flatter their frailties, but, it is a tolerably safe rule that he who is not afraid to speak the truth, is not afraid to act the truth; and truths, moral, political and social, are peculiarly the aim of this government.

ON CANDOR.

Candor is a proof of both a just frame of mind, and of a good tone of breeding. It is a quality that belongs, equally to the honest man and to the gentleman: to the first, as doing to others as we would ourselves be done by; to the last, as indispensable to the liberality of the character.

By candor we are not to understand trifling and uncalled for expositions of truth; but a sentiment that proves a conviction of the necessity of speaking truth, when speaking at all; a contempt for all designing evasions of our real opinions; and a deep conviction that he who deceives by necesary implication, deceives wilfully.