Ebook Memoirs of Sir Elijah Impey, Knt., First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Judicature, at Fort William, Bengal

The fortune and after-fame of public men, often depend rather upon the spirit of the times in which they live, and the state of political parties, to whose in?uence they are exposed, than upon their own intrinsic merits or defects. This is an axiom, approaching indeed to a truism, applicable to all times and countries, but more especially to our own; where, for so many generations, government has avowedly been carried on upon the principle of balancing party against party; and where, until quite recently, no public man seems to have thought that we could be governed in any other manner.