492 The Political State of [No\'. 



nality, and suffer him to make his escape under cover of a blunderer. 

 But the work of his blunder remains ; like the incendiary of the 

 temple of Ephesus, he may rest secure of his fame ; he has rescued 

 himself from oblivion in the only way permitted to the understanding 

 of a political economist. 



The question must irresistibly be asked, by what fatality were those expe<- 

 riments suffered among us? The principles of trade were already known 

 more thorou_;:;hly here than in all the earth besides ; no nation had traded 

 so prosperously ; to no nation was commercial prosperity so important ; 

 in no nation was the wisdom of ancestry more instinctively reverenced. 

 America scoffed at the Free Trade System ; France instantly redoubled 

 her predilections ; Austria, the Italian States, all nations set theu* teeth 

 against the swallowing of this inauspicious luxury. The lips of England 

 alone swallowed it down. How is this accountable ? 



But the punishment was still only progressive, and there was a large 

 reserve awaitincj the more dii'ect defiance. The Duke of Wellington's 

 appointment to the premiership had been welcomed by the nation. The 

 manly character of the English mind had so long been offended by the 

 miserable chicanery of the successive struggles for power ; duplicity and 

 poverty of principle, the lie to the right and the left, the arts of the 

 most petty chicane into the instruments of jmblic ambition, had been 

 so grossly familiar to the national eye, that the name of official dignity 

 was equivalent to the successes of a swindler. But in the Duke of Wel- 

 lington, the nation took it for granted that a better temperaiaent of 

 the state was at hand. A soldier's habits seemed to be alien from the 

 paltry compromises and underhr.nd traffic that had disgusted every man 

 of common decency and common sense. Gratitude to the people which 

 had so munificently rewarded his services, was idly reckoned among 

 the impidses that might determine the new minister to a career of 

 imblemished honour ; and even the consciousness that he had now 

 nothing more to desire for fulness of- fame pledged liim to the good of 

 his country. 



There was rashness in all tliis ; but it was at least a generous raalmess, 

 it was the effusion of that spirit which a man would love in liis fi'iend, 

 or honour in his country ; a desire 1o get rid of all distrust in the man 

 to whom all must be trusted or nottiing, and a determination to stand 

 by their choice as long as it could be sustained by the most confiding 

 reliance on human integrity and wisdom. It was eagerly overlooked 

 that the qualities of soldiership might be the most hazardous to a free 

 country ; that the ambition, and imhesitating habits of command, essen- 

 tial to military success were, of all ingredients, the most perilous in 

 the compound of civil authority ; that even the reckless dealing with the 

 life of man, which must belong to the field, darkened the promise of a 

 government, whose first principle must be the preservation of the 

 people. 



It was equally overlooked, that even the bold front of this soldiership 

 had condescended to wear the mask when it suited a purpose ; that the 

 Duke of Wellington had stooped to a poor intrigue to supplant his pre- 

 decessor; and that when detected, he took refuge under cover of a 

 WTetched disclaimer, a public declaration of his utter unconsciousness of 

 any idea of being minister, ft-om a knowledge of his utter incompe- 

 tence : " / should he mad to think of being minister .'" were his words, in 

 the presence of the Legislature Words answered by his attainment. 



