Adams felt no moral obligation to defend Judges, who, as far as
he knew, were the only class of society specially adapted to
defend themselves; but he was curious -- even anxious -- as a
point of education, to decide for himself whether Bright's
language was violent for its purpose. He thought not. Perhaps
Cobden did better by persuasion, but that was another matter. Of
course, even Englishmen sometimes complained of being so
constantly told that they were brutes and hypocrites, although
they were told little else by their censors, and bore it, on the
whole, meekly; but the fact that it was true in the main troubled
the ten-pound voter much less than it troubled Newman, Gladstone,
Ruskin, Carlyle, and Matthew Arnold. Bright was personally
disliked by his victims, but not distrusted. They never doubted
what he would do next, as they did with John Russell, Gladstone,
and Disraeli. He betrayed no one, and he never advanced an
opinion in practical matters which did not prove to be practical.
The class of Englishmen who set out to be the intellectual
opposites of Bright, seemed to an American bystander the weakest
and most eccentric of all. These were the trimmers, the political
economists, the anti-slavery and doctrinaire class, the followers
of de Tocqueville, and of John Stuart Mill. As a class, they were
timid -- with good reason -- and timidity, which is high wisdom
in philosophy, sicklies the whole cast of thought in action.
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