ULTRA RADICALISM. 41 



Parliament to judge a little for itself, on adequate remuneration for 

 bona fide public service ! 



It is owing to our high opinion of Mr. Hume that we cannot for- 

 bear hazarding what may be deemed hypercriticism on him. We 

 will not run the chance of losing any of this gentleman's good service, 

 from delicacy in finding fault with him ; we would feign correct him 

 into the absolutely perfect man, the Tslpaywvo? avyp of Aristotle. 

 In this spirit we respectfully hint our suspicion of his being a little 

 too prone to treat the masses as he would a deliberative body* We 

 are convinced of the great use of debating with men of the lower 

 orders, upon the most unreserved footing : but we strenuously oppose 

 the admission to debate of large bodies of them at once. In our 

 opinion it is a monstrous absurdity to confer with the working classes 

 on matters of politics, except in the persons of a select few, deputed 

 by themselves, through whom the results of conference might trans- 

 pire in publication to the main body. We deem an educated man's 

 proper dignity degraded, when he condescends to address so large a 

 number of uneducated men as may be tempted to receive his counter- 

 arguments in a partizan spirit. Multitude and debate are philoso- 

 phical contradictions. Even in the Houses of Parliament they are 

 scarcely reconcilable with reason. We hope to see the day when 

 hustings shall be abolished, and deputations from the electoral body 

 alone conferred with, while the more general debate may be carried 

 on by publication. Viva voce addresses to multitudes we think should 

 be reserved for exhortation to arms against tyranny, foreign or do- 

 mestic, when all other means of ensuring justice are despaired of. 

 We hope Mr. Hume would not, in cool moments, dissent from these 

 our views ; and, if so, we would implore him to adopt a line of con- 

 duct in direct and consistent maintenance of them. 



The Ultra- Radicals are the party who run into all those excesses 

 which the Radicals stop short of. They are for razing every thing, 

 but a few political abstractions, to the ground, and then building 

 again, after their own fashion, such institutions as they and the 

 workies may deem fit for all the rest of their countrymen. They are, 

 doubtless, well intentioned, most of them, and mean nothing more 

 by their asperitas agrestis et inconcinna gravisque, than the mainte- 

 nance of Isibertas mera Veraque Virtus. But they are men in no wise 

 to be approved of by a sound politician ; nor should a man who would 

 serve his country, and humanity at large, hesitate to lend his voice, 

 and, if needful, his arm, to support any other party in the State in 

 keeping this party in the back-ground. 



These are the men who, like Madame Roland, as stated in Dumont's 

 Recollections of Mirabeau, ie overlook every fault in those who declaim 

 against courtiers, and believe that virtue is coiifined to hovels, and will 

 exalt very mediocre personages, merely because they possess the same 

 opinion" Nay, these are the men, who, in the teeth of their admis- 

 sions of present popular incompetency, to be gradually gained upon 

 by education, will go the length of telling the people what the good 

 and noble, but exaggerated French heroine only thought about them. 

 These are the men who love to get a few hundreds of uneducated 

 persons together in a rotunda, or a few thousands in the open air, and 



