John Marshall on the contamination of mind as one of the "multiplied evils generated by faction"

Sometimes people wonder why I'm so interested in John Marshall. The short answer is that I have learned a lot about American self-government from studying him and think I still have much to learn in that way. Here's Marshall in his Life of Washington, writing on party politics in the 1790s:

In popular governments, the resentments, the suspicions, and the disgusts, produced in the legislature by warm debate, and the chagrin of defeat; by the desire of gaining, or the fear of losing power; and which are created by personal views among the leaders of parties, will infallibly extend to the body of the nation. Not only will those causes of action be urged which really operate on the minds of intelligent men, but every instrument will be seized which can effect the purpose, and the passions will be inflamed by whatever may serve to irritate them. Among the multiplied evils generated by faction, it is perhaps not the least, that it has a tendency to abolish all distinction between virtue and vice, and to prostrate those barriers which the wise and good have erected for the protection of morals, and which are defended solely by opinion. The victory of the party becomes the great object, and, too often, every thing is deemed right or wrong as it tends to promote or impede it. The attainment of the end is considered as the supreme good, and the detestable doctrine is adopted that the end will justify the means. The mind, habituated to the extenuation of acts of moral turpitude, becomes gradually contaminated, and loses much of its horror for vice, and of its respect for virtue.