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Every instinct of her nature revolted, and underlying all her girlish unsophistication, a native shrewdness, inherited perhaps from her father, bade her distrust alike the worldly, self-interested pastor of the Church of St. James and the three so-called friends, who, although her father's associates, had been his rivals, and who had offered with such astounding magnanimity to stand by her.

No one who knew him intimately doubted his conscientious sincerity and earnestness, yet four fifths of the English upper classes were in his later years wont to regard him as a self-interested schemer who would sacrifice his country to his lust for power.

His upright, honest nature, though capable of great reserve, was utterly incapable of false pretense, deceit, or self-interested diplomacy. And what was impossible in himself he never suspected in other people. He thought his cousin shallow sometimes, but good-natured; a little worldly, perhaps, but always well-meaning.

How often have I reflected on the Happiness of my dear Country, in that Liberty there enjoy'd, where none are oppress'd by Force, or allured by Bribes, to give up their native Freedom; where a self-interested and designing Minister is sure to answer for his Administration to a Parliament freely chosen, consisting of Gentlemen of publick Spirits, Honour, known Probity and Wisdom; whose Fortunes put them above a servile Dependence; who have an Eye to nothing but the publick Good, and exact from the Ministers a just Account of the Publick Treasure!

And now, in a few score of short, sharp words, in a single brief document, peremptorily addressed to the fifty million people of these islands, a German soldier had brought an end to all our vapourings, all our smug, self-interested theories, and shattered the monstrous fabric of our complaisance, as it were, with a rattle of his sword-hilt.

I have not time, nor would it be of any utility to occupy your Excellency with a minute detail of the affairs of this province, whilst your Excellency has so much to do in that under your immediate superintendence: I am convinced that in all I have done, I have acted in conformity with the true interests of His Majesty and his people, and am in no degree under any apprehension that the malevolent aspersions of self-interested or disappointed individuals will have the least influence on any candid mind, when a real statement of facts shall be laid before the public.

Indeed, the break-up of all Spanish authority had been doubly fatal to the natives, by removing all protection, and leaving them to the self-interested violence of the petty republics, unrestrained by any loftier consideration. In the Republic of Buenos Ayres, under the dictatorship of General Rosas, the lot of these poor creatures was specially cruel.

We know that in making this assumption we are smoothing the way for attack to our professional opponents, uncritical and self-interested, who with one blast of the fanfare of world-revolution can scatter our further observations to the winds. Full Socialism is characterized, as we have seen, by the abolition of all incomes that are not worked for, and the fact that there are no more rich.

Let us beware of lending added strength to this current by any appearance of self-interested eagerness in our advances towards America. One thing we cannot too clearly realise, and that is that the true American clings above everything to his Americanism.

She believed in the sincerity of her friend's affection, though it sometimes showed itself in self-interested ways, and she shrank with peculiar reluctance from any risk of estranging it. But, aside from this, she was keenly conscious of the way in which such an estrangement would react on herself.