66 PUBMC OPINION IN ENGLAND. 



renders him impregnable both to justice and moral fitness, and makes 

 him hold out to the last, although he has nothing to defend. On the 

 abstract right of things he is as dark as pitch, and sticks as fast to, and 

 defiles as much, every thing he laj's hold of. The political skulls of such 

 people are so thick as to be proof against any reason, and never crack 

 but on the wrong side, just opposite to that against which the impression 

 is made. The lighter and more inconsistent the opinions of this portion 

 of the public are, the faster he holds them ; otherwise they would fall 

 asunder of themselves, for opinions that are false must be held with 

 more strictness and assurance than those that are true ; otherwise they 

 betray their owners sooner than they are aware. To differ outrageously 

 on things indifferent is the first article of their political creed, and to 

 hold, with bull-dog tenacity, opinions once formed, is the second ; — to 

 make them a freehold, and to give up no right and title either to justice 

 or common sense, to understand no man's reason but their own, and, if 

 possible, to let no man reason but themselves. 



These characteristics apply particularly to that prodigious cormorant, 

 Toryism ; but, as we said before, the spirit has descended even among 

 those who have higher aims on the side of man and his rightful destinies. 

 A lesson so ably propounded, with all the pomp and circumstance of ex 

 caihera excellence and dignity, so eternally insisted upon by our betters, 

 so minutely interwoven with the minutest ramifications of the art of 

 government, and so shooting and shady the very aspect of public affairs 

 has been conned over, studied, learned, and applied. 



" They but teach 

 Bloody instruction, which being taught, 

 Returns to plague the inventor." 



Thus the same defiance of abstract right, the same setting at nought 

 of common sense, the same unblushing effrontery in making the worse 

 appear the better reason, and the same recklessness of the public opinion 

 of honest men, is beginning to taint our patriots, to defile our legislative 

 chieftians, and to sap the foundations of public principle, that glorious 

 superstructure, which a Hampden in the field, and a Russel on the scaf- 

 fold, cemented with their best blood. Nor is this all ; there is a species 

 of mean shifting, of low cunning, of despicable and meagre reprisal, of 

 paltry art, brought to bear upon the law-besotted ignorance of the peo- 

 ple, particularly of the benighted midland counties, where the squirear- 

 chy and high Church-of-Englandism would dye dark ignorance in " tre- 

 ble dun." Traps are laid from the common beer-shop to the very church 

 doors to catch the unwary voter, and clouds of dust are raised on every 

 side to mystify his mind, and to blind his eyes to his true interests. An 

 atmosphere that distorts and throws out of shape, truth, under all her 



