604 Political Education. [JUNE, 



seem to suppose, in neglecting" one's trade or family to attend to the 

 affairs of the state ; that is, to play Quidnunc in the farce, and to be an 

 idler and busy-body, not a politician. It does not consist in making the 

 club, or the coffee-room, or the ale-house, ring with our attacks on this 

 measure, or our eulogies on that ; nor in neglecting the Bible for the Exa- 

 miner ; nor in talking of nothing but protocols and plenipotentiaries, and 

 questions affecting the fate of empires ; nor in seizing every one we meet 

 by the button, and detaining him in captivity until we have made him privy 

 to all our crude or fanciful opinions on the subject of the American con- 

 stitution or the East India charter; this were an excellent claim to the 

 title of bore, none whatever to that of politician. By a politician, we mean 

 a very different sort of character ; we mean a man who possesses as cor- 

 rect information as he can get respecting the laws he is bound to obey, 

 and the constitution by which he lives and moves and has his social or 

 political being; a man who is aware that, as a citizen, he has certain 

 rights to exercise (for instance, the rights of voting and petitioning,) and 

 certain obligations to fulfil (for instance, the obligation to obey the laws,) 

 and who takes pains to acquaint himself with their nature, their value, 

 and their extent, in order to use his power rationally and discharge his 

 duty faithfully. The politician, in our acceptation of the term, is one who, 

 whether he speaks on the question of free trade, or church reform, or any 

 other question of vital moment, if he does not discover depth, or display 

 erudition, at least avoids absurdity, and shews that his understanding has 

 hot been unexercised upon subjects in which the whole community, and 

 perhaps the whole human race, is interested : he thinks it better to have 

 some little insight into these matters than to be utterly in the dark j and he 

 therefore dedicates some portion of the day (rescued from frivolous occupa- 

 tions or vicious pleasures) to the acquiring of some information, however 

 elementary, upon topics which, if they do not concern him as a citizen, 

 most probably affect him as a man. When political questions are under 

 discussion, he feels an honourable intellectual pride ib evincing a know- 

 ledge of things that are level to his capacity ; while, at the same time, his 

 mind is too well principled, he has too much good sense, and too much 

 honesty, to deliver peremptory opinions without the previous enquiries 

 necessary to the formation of a correct judgment to lend himself to pro- 

 pagate error, and consequently (to some extent or other) prejudice the 

 general welfare, speeding on in his ignorance, like hundreds about him, 

 retailing the stupidities of others, or originating nonsense of their own. 



We are too apt to forget or undervalue the importance, or what Lord 

 Bacon calls " the edge and weight of words ;" we are too apt to forget 

 that falsehood may be propagated as well as truth, and that the gift of 

 speech may be made the instrument of circulating the drivellings of a 

 Londonderry as well as the solid reasoning of a Plunket. We do not suffi- 

 ciently reflect that every uttered sentiment, whether it fall from the tongue 

 of philosopher or fool, goes to the mass of public opinion, which, if it be 

 composed of ignorance more than knowledge, descends with fatal gravita- 

 tation upon society, crushing public prosperity under the weight of popular 

 infatuation. Political ignorance is national calamity. A country has as 

 many domestic enemies as there are minds in the community unenlightened 

 upon their social interests and duties : and this is the more particularly 

 true when there is a free constitution and an unenslaved press ; for then 

 is a public opinion ; and what is public opinion but the sum of the 



