There are many able and patriotic members in the House of Commons--Sir
Robert Inglis, Sir Robert Peel, and some others. But I grieve that they
never have the courage or the wisdom--I know not in which the failure is--
to take their stand upon duty, and to appeal to all men as men,--to the
Good and the True, which exist for _all_, and of which _all_ have an
apprehension. They always set to work--especially, his great eminence
considered, Sir Robert Peel--by addressing themselves to individual
interests; the measure will be injurious to the linen-drapers, or to the
bricklayers; or this clause will bear hard on bobbin-net or poplins, and
so forth. Whereas their adversaries--the demagogues--always work on the
opposite principle: they always appeal to men as men; and, as you know,
the most terrible convulsions in society have been wrought by such phrases
as _Rights of Man_, _Sovereignty of the People_, _&c_., which no one
understands, which apply to no one in particular, but to all in
general.[1]
The devil works precisely in the same way. He is a very clever fellow; I
have no acquaintance with him, but I respect his evident talents.
Consistent truth and goodness will assuredly in the end overcome every
thing; but inconsistent good can never be a match for consistent evil.
Alas! I look in vain for some wise and vigorous man to sound the word Duty
in the ears of this generation.
[Footnote 1:
"It is with nations as with individuals. In tranquil moods and peaceable
times we are quite _practical_; facts only, and cool common sense, are then
in fashion. But let the winds of passion swell, and straightway men begin
to generalize, to connect by remotest analogies, to express the most
universal positions of reason in the most glowing figures of fancy; in
short, to feel particular truths and mere facts as poor, cold, narrow, and
incommensurate with their feelings."--_Statesman's Manual_, p. 18.
"It seems a paradox only to the unthinking, and it is a fact that none but
the unread in history will deny, that, in periods of popular tumult and
innovation, the more abstract a notion is, the more readily has it been
found to combine, the closer has appeared its affinity, with the feelings
of a people, and with all their immediate impulses to action. At the
commencement of the French Revolution, in the remotest villages every
tongue was employed in echoing and enforcing the almost geometrical
abstractions of the physiocratic politicians and economists. The public
roads were crowded with armed enthusiasts, disputing on the inalienable
sovereignty of the people, the imprescriptible laws of the pure reason, and
the universal constitution, which, as rising out of the nature and rights
of man as man, all nations alike were under the obligation of adopting."--
_Statesman's Manual_.]
_August_ 24. 1831.