it was a mere speculative argument; a flock of fancies now roaming
unregarded in some cloudy limbo. Let them fly into oblivion--"black,
white, and gray, with all their trumpery."
* * * * *
Notwithstanding these present hostile argumentations, politics are to me
what they doubtless are to many others, subjects and disquisitions
little short of hateful; perpetual mulligatawney; curried capsicums; a
very heating, unsatisfactory, unwholesome sort of food. How many
pleasant dinner-parties have been abruptly broken up by the introduction
of this dish! How many white waistcoats unblanched by projectile
wine-glasses on account of this impetuous theme! How many little-civil
wars produced from the pips of this apple of contention! Yes, I hate it;
and for this cause, good readers, (who may chance to have been used
scurvily, some six pages back, in respect of your opinions, honest as
my own, though fixed in full hostility--and so, courteously be entreated
for your pardons,) for this cause of hate, I beseech you to regard me as
sacrificing my present inclination to my future quiet. We have heard of
women marrying men they may detest, in order to get rid of them: even
with such an object is here indited the last I ever intend to say about
politics. The shadows of notions fixed upon this page will cease to
haunt my brain; and let no one doubt but that after relief from these
pent-up humours, I shall walk forth less intolerant, less unamiable,
less indignant than as heretofore. But, meanwhile, suffer with all
brevity that I say out this small say, and deliver my patriotic
conscience; for many a head-ache has obfuscated your author's mind in
consequence of other abortive bits of political common-place. Every
successive measure of small triumphant Whiggery, every piece of what my
view of the case would designate non-government or mis-government, has
pinched, vexed, bruised, and stung my fervent country's love day by day,
session after session. Like thousands of others, I have been a greyhound
in the leash, a bolt in the bow, longing to take my turn on the arena:
eager as any Shrovetide 'prentice for a fling at negligence, peculation
and injustice, and other the long black catalogue of British injuries.
Socialism, Chartism, Ribandism; Spain, Canada, China; freed criminals,
and imprisoned poverty; penny wisdom, and pound folly; the universal
centralizing system, corrupting all generous individualities: patriotism
ridiculed, and questionable loyalty patted on the back; vice in full
patronage, and virtue out of countenance; Protestantism discouraged,
Popery taken by the hand; Dissent of _any_ kind preferred to sober
Orthodoxy; and, fitting climax, all this done under pretences of perfect
wisdom, and most exquisite devotion to the crown and the
constitution:--these things have made me too often sympathize in Colonel
Crockett's humour, tiger-like, with a dash of the alligator. Accordingly
let me not deny having once attempted a bitter diatribe, in petto,
surnamed