August 19, 2025 • 23 mins
In Spirit of the Age; Or, Contemporary Portraits, William Hazlitt masterfully captures the essence of his era through insightful monographs on a constellation of literary luminaries. Meet the likes of Jeremy Bentham, the architect of utilitarian philosophy, and William Godwin, who elevated morality beyond human reach. Delve into the minds of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edward Irving, and Sir Walter Scott, as Hazlitt reveals their distinct contributions to literature and society. From the eloquence of Thomas Campbell, known for Pleasures of Hope, to the impactful thoughts of William Wordsworth and Thomas Malthus, Hazlitt provides a vivid portrayal of his contemporaries. Engaging comparisons between the works of Charles Lamb and Washington Irving further enrich this collection, making it a fascinating exploration of the literary landscape of his time. Summary by Craig Campbell.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter fifteen of the Spirit of the Age or Contemporary
Portraits by William Haslett. This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by
Jesse Zuba, Chapter fifteen. John Scott, First Earl of Eldin,
(00:22):
and William Wilberforce, Lord Eldin, and mister Wilberforce, Lord Eldin
is an exceedingly good natured man, but this does not
prevent him, like other good natured people, from consulting his
own ease or interest. The character of good nature, as
it is called, has been a good deal mistaken, and
the present Chancellor is not a bad illustration of the
(00:44):
grounds of the prevailing error. When we happen to see
an individual whose countenance is all tranquility and smiles, who
is full of good humor and pleasantry, whose manners are
gentle and conciliating, who is uniformly temperate in his expressions,
and punktual and just in his everyday dealings, we are
apt to conclude from so fair an outside, that all
(01:06):
is conscience and tender heart within also, and that such
a one would not hurt a fly, and neither would
he without a motive, but mere good nature or what
passes in the world, for such is often no better
than indolent selfishness. A prison distinguished and praised for this
quality will not needlessly offend others, because they may retaliate,
(01:28):
and besides it ruffles his own temper. He likes to
enjoy a perfect calm and to live in an interchange
of kind offices. He suffers few things to irritate or
annoy him. He has a fine oiliness in his disposition,
which smooths the waves of passion as they rise. He
does not enter into the quarrels or enmities of others,
(01:49):
bears their calamities with patience. He listens to the din
and clang of war, the earthquake, and the hurricane of
the political and moral world with the temper and spirit
of a philosopher. No active injustice puts him beside himself.
The follies and absurdities of mankind never give him a
moment's uneasiness. He has none of the ordinary causes of
(02:10):
fretfulness or chagrin that torment others from the undue interest
they take in the conduct of their neighbors or in
the public good. None of these idle or frivolous sources
of discontent that make such havoc with the peace of
human life, ever discompose his features or alter the serenity
of his pulse. If a nation is robbed of its rights,
(02:30):
if wretches hang that ministers may dine, the laughing jest
still collects in his eye. The cordial squeeze of the
hand is still the same. But tread on the toe
of one of these amiable and imperturbable mortals, Or let
a lump of soot fall down the chimney and spoil
their dinners, and see how they will bear it. All
their patience is confined to the accidents that befall others.
(02:54):
All their good humor is to be resolved into giving
themselves no concern about anything but their own ease and
self and dul Elgians. Their charity begins and ends at home.
Their being free from the common infirmities of temper is
owing to their indifference to the common feelings of humanity.
And if you touch the sore place, they betray more
resentment and break out, like spoiled children into greater fractiousness
(03:18):
than others, partly from a degree of selfishness, and partly
because they are taken by surprise and mad to think
they have not guarded every point against annoyance or attack
by a habit of callous insensibility and pampered indolence. An
instance of what we mean occurred. But the other day
an allusion was made in the House of Commons to
something in the proceedings in the Court of Chancery, And
(03:40):
the Lord Chancellor comes to his place in the court
with the statement in his hand, fire in his eyes,
and a direct charge of falsehood in his mouth, without
knowing anything certain of the matter, without making any inquiry
into it, without using any precaution or putting the least
restraint upon himself, and all on no better authority than
a common news report. The thing was not that we
(04:02):
are in putting any strong blame in this case. We
merely bring it as an illustration. It touched himself, his office,
the inviolability of his jurisdiction, the unexceptionableness of his proceedings,
and the wet blanket of the Chancellor's temper instantly took
fire like tinder. All the fine balancing was at an end.
All the doubts, all the delicacy, all the candor real
(04:25):
or affected, all the chances that there might be a
mistake in the report, all the decencies to be observed
towards a member of the House are overlooked by the
blindness of passion, and the waried judge pounces upon the
paragraph without mercy, without a moment's delay or the smallest
attention to forms. This was indeed serious business. There was
to be no trifling here. Every instant was an age
(04:48):
till the Chancellor had discharged his sense of indignation on
the head of the indiscreet interloper on his authority. Had
it been another person's case, another person's dignity that had
been compromised, another person's conduct that had been called in question,
Who doubts but that the matter might have stood over
till the next term, That the noble Lord would have
(05:08):
taken the newspaper home in his pocket, that he would
have compared it carefully with other newspapers, that he would
have written in the most mild and gentlemanly terms to
the honorable Member to inquire into the truth of the statement.
That he would have watched a convenient opportunity, good humoredly
to ask other honorable members what all this was about,
That the greatest caution and fairness would have been observed,
(05:30):
and that to this hour the lawyer's clerks and the
Junior Council would have been in the greatest admiration of
the Chancellor's nicety of discrimination and the utter inefficacy of
the heats, importunities, haste and passions of others to influence
his judgment. This would have been true. Yet his readiness
to decide and to condemn where he himself is concerned,
(05:51):
shows that passion is not dead in him, nor subject
to the control of reason, but that self love is
the mainspring that moves it. Though on all beyond them
limit he looks with the most perfect calmness and philosophic indifference.
Resistless passion sways us to the mood of what it
likes or loaths. All people are passionate in what concerns
(06:12):
themselves and in what they take an interest in. The
range of this last is different in different persons, But
the want of passion is but another name for the
want of sympathy and imagination. The Lord Chancellor's impartiality and
conscientious exactness is proverbial and is we believe, as inflexible
as it is delicate. In all cases that occur in
(06:33):
the stated routine of legal practice. The impatience, the irritation,
the hopes, the fears, the confident tone of the applicants
move him not a jot from his intended course. He
looks at their claims with the lackluster eye of professional indifference, power,
and influence apart, his next strongest passion is to indulge
(06:53):
in the exercise of professional learning and skill, to amuse
himself with the dry details and intricate windings of the
life law of equity. He delights to balance a straw,
to see a feather, turn the scale, or make it
even again, and divides and subdivides a scruple to the
smallest fraction. He unravels the web of argument and pieces
it together again, folds it up, and lays it aside
(07:16):
that he may examine it more at his leisure. He
hugs indecision to his breast and takes home a modest
doubt or a nice point to solace himself with it.
In protracted, luxurious dalliance. Delay seems in his mind to
be of the very essence of justice. He no more
hurries through a question than if no one was waiting
for the result, and he was merely a dilettante, fanciful
(07:39):
judge who played at my lord Chancellor, and busied himself
with quibbles and punctilios as an idle hobby and harmless illusion.
The phlegm of the Chancellor's disposition gives one almost a
surfeit of impartiality and candor. We are sick of the
eternal poise of childish dilatoriness, and would wish law and
justice to be decided at once by a cat of
(08:00):
the dice, as they were in Rabelais, rather than be
kept in frivolous and tormenting suspense. But there is a
limit even to this extreme refinement and scrupulousness of the Chancellor.
The understanding acts only in the absence of the passions.
At the approach of the load stone, the needle trembles
and points to it. The air of a political question
(08:21):
has a wonderful tendency to brace and quicken the learned
lord's faculties. The breath of a court speedily oversets a
thousand objections and scatters the cobwebs of his brain. The
secret wish of power is a thumping make weight, where
all is so nicely balanced beforehand. In the case of
a celebrated beauty and heiress and the brother of a
(08:42):
noble lord, the Chancellor hesitated long and went through the
forms as usual. But whoever doubted where all this indecision
would end, no man in his senses for a single instant.
We shall not press this point, which is rather a
ticklish one. Some persons thought that from entertaining a fellow
feeling on the subject, the Chancellor would have been ready
to favor the poet Laureate's application to the Court of
(09:04):
Chancery for an injunction against watt Tyler. His Lordship's sentiments
on such points are not so variable. He has too
much at stake. He recollected the year seventeen ninety four,
though mister Southey had forgotten it. The personal always prevails
over the intellectual where the latter is not backed by
strong feeling and principle. Where remote and speculative objects do
(09:27):
not excite a predominant interest and passion, gross and immediate
ones are sure to carry the day. Even in ingenuous
and well disposed minds, the will yields necessarily to some
motive or other, and where the public good or distant
consequences excite no sympathy in the breast, either from short
sightedness or an easiness of temperament that shrinks from any
(09:48):
violent effort or painful emotion, self interest, indolence, the opinion
of others, a desire to please, the sense of personal
obligation come in and fill up the void of public spirit, patriotism,
and humanity. The best men in the world, in their
own natural dispositions or in private life, for this reason,
often become the most dangerous public characters, from their pliancy
(10:11):
to the unruly passions of others, and from their having
no set off in strong moral stamina to the temptations
that are held out to them, if, as is frequently
the case, they are men of versatile talent or patient industry.
Lord Eldon has one of the best natured faces in
the world. It is pleasant to meet him in the street,
plodding along with an umbrella under his arm, without one
(10:32):
trace of pride, of spleen or discontent in his whole demeanor,
void of offense, with almost rustic simplicity and honesty of appearance.
A man that makes friends at first sight, and could
hardly make enemies if he would, and whose only fault
is that he cannot say nay to power or subject
himself to an unkind word or look from a king
(10:52):
or a minister. He is a Thoroughbred Tory. Others boggle
or are at fault in their career, or give back
at a pinch. They split into different factions, have various
objects to distract them. Their private friendships or antipathies stand
in their way. But he has never flinched, never gone back,
never missed his way. He is an out and outer
(11:15):
in this respect. His allegiance has been without flaw, like
one entire and perfect chrysolite. His implicit understanding is a
kind of taffet aligning to the crown. His servility has
assumed an air of the most determined independence, and he
has read his history in a prince's eyes. There has
been no stretch of power attempted in his time that
(11:36):
he has not seconded, no existing abuse so odious or
so absurd that he has not sanctioned it. He has
gone the whole length of the most unpopular designs of ministers.
When the heavy artillery of interest, power and prejudice is
brought into the field. The paper pellets of the brain
go for nothing. His labyrinth of nice ladylike doubts explodes
(11:57):
like a mine of gunpowder. The Chancellor may way and palter.
The courtier is decided. The politician is firm and rivetted
to his place in the cabinet. On all the great
questions that have divided party opinion or agitated the public mind,
the Chancellor has been found uniformly and without a single exception,
on the side of prerogative and power, and against every
(12:18):
proposal for the advancement of freedom. He was a strenuous
supporter of the wars and coalitions against the principles of
liberty abroad. He has been equally zealous in urging or
defending every act and infringement of the Constitution for abridging it.
At home. He at the same time opposes every amelioration
of the penal laws on the alleged ground of his
(12:38):
abhorrence of even the shadow of innovation. He has studiously
set his face against Catholic emancipation. He labored hard in
his vocation to prevent the abolition of the slave trade.
He was Attorney General on the trials for high treason
in seventeen ninety four, and the other day, in giving
his opinion on the Queen's trial, shed tears and protested
his innocence before God. This was natural and to be expected.
(13:03):
But on all occasions he is to be found at
his post true to the call of prejudice, of power,
to the will of others, and to his own interest.
In the whole of his public career, and with all
the goodness of his disposition, he has not shown so
small a drop of pity as a wren's eye. He
seems to be on his guard against everything liberal and
humane as his weak side. Others relax in their obsequiousness,
(13:27):
either from satiety or disgust, or a hankering after popularity,
or a wish to be thought above narrow prejudices. The
Chancellor alone is fixed and immovable. Is it want of
understanding or of principle? No, it is want of imagination,
a phlegmatic habit, an excess of false complaisance, and good nature,
Common humanity, and justice are little better than vague terms.
(13:50):
To him. He acts upon his immediate feelings and least
irksome impulses the King's hand is velvet to the touch.
The woolsack is a seat of honor and prophet. That
is all he knows about the matter as to abstract
metaphysical calculations. The ox that stand staring at the corner
of the street troubles his head as much about them
as he does. Yet this last is a very good
(14:11):
sort of animal, with no harm or malice in him,
unless he is goaded on to mischief, and then it
is necessary to keep out of his way or warn
others against him. Mister Wilberforce is a less perfect character
in his way. He acts from mixed motives. He would
willingly serve two masters, God and Mammon. He is a
person of many excellent and admirable qualifications, but he has
(14:34):
made a mistake in wishing to reconcile those that are incompatible.
He has a most winning eloquence, specious, persuasive, familiar, silver tongued,
is amiable, charitable, conscientious, pious, loyal, humane, tractable to power,
accessible to popularity, honoring the king, and no less charmed
with the homage of his fellow citizens. What lacks he
(14:56):
then nothing but an economy of good parts. By aiming
at too much. He has spoiled all and neutralized what
might have been an estimable character distinguished by signal services
to mankind. A man must take his choice not only
between virtue and vice, but between different virtues. Otherwise he
will not gain his own approbation or secure the respect
(15:18):
of others. The graces and accomplishments of private life mar
the man of business and the statesman. There is a severity,
a sternness, a self denial, and a painful sense of
duty required in the one which ill befits the softness
and sweetness which should characterize the other. Loyalty, patriotism, friendship,
humanity are all virtues, but may they not sometimes clash.
(15:42):
By being unwilling to forego the praise due to any
we may forfeit the reputation of all, and instead of
uniting the suffrages of the whole world in our favor,
we may end in becoming a sort of byword for affectation,
cant hollow professions, trimming fickleness, and effeminate ima facility. It
is best to choose and act up to some one
(16:03):
leading character, as it is best to have some settled
profession or regular pursuit in life. We can readily believe
that mister Wilberforce's first object and principle of action is
to do what he thinks right. His next, and that
we fears of almost equal weight with the first, is
to do what will be thought so by other people.
He is always at a game of hawk and buzzard.
(16:25):
Between these two. His conscience will not budge unless the
world goes with it. He does not seem greatly to
dread the denunciation in scripture, but rather to court it.
Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you.
We suspect he is not quite easy in his mind,
because West India planters and Guinea traders do not join
in his praise. His ears are not strongly enough tuned
(16:48):
to drink in the execrations of the spoiler and the
oppressor as the sweetest music. It is not enough that
one half of the human species, the images of God
carved in ebony, as Old fully calls them, shout his
name as a champion and a savior through vast burning zones,
and moisten their parched lips with the gush of gratitude
for deliverance from chains. He must have a prime minister
(17:11):
drink his health at a cabinet dinner for aiding to
rivet on those of his country and of Europe. He
goes hand in heart along with the government and all
their notions of legitimacy and political aggrandizement, in the hope
that they will leave him a sort of no man's
ground of humanity in the great desert, where his reputation
for benevolence and public spirit may spring up and flourish
(17:32):
till its head touches the clouds, and it stretches out
its branches to the farthest part of the earth. He
has no mercy on those who claim a property in
negro slaves, as so much live stock on their estates.
The country rings with the applause of his wit, his eloquence,
and his indignant appeals to common sense and humanity on
this subject. But not a word has he to say,
(17:53):
not a whisper does he breathe against the claim set
up by the despots of the earth over their continental subjects,
but does everything in his power to confirm and sanction it.
He must give no offense. Mister Wilberforce's humanity will go
all lengths that it can with safety and discretion, But
it is not to be supposed that it should lose
him his seat for Yorkshire, the smile of majesty or
(18:16):
the countenance of the loyal and pious. He is anxious
to do all the good he can without hurting himself
or his fair fame. His conscience and his character compound
matters very amicably. He rather patronizes honesty than is a
martyr to it. His patriotism his philanthropy are not so
ill bred as to quarrel with his loyalty or to
(18:37):
banish him from the first circles. He preaches vital Christianity
to untutored savages, and tolerates its worst abuses in civilized states.
He thus shows his respect for religion without offending the
clergy or circumscribing the sphere of his usefulness. There is
in all this an appearance of a good deal of
cant and tricking. His patriotism may be accused of being servile,
(19:01):
his humanity ostentatious, his loyalty conditional, his religion a mixture
of fashion and fanaticism. Out upon such half faced fellowship,
Mister Wilberforce, as the pride of being familiar with the great,
the vanity of being popular the conceit of an approving conscience.
He is coy in his approaches to power. His public
(19:23):
spirit is in a manner under the rose. He thus
reaps the credit of independence without the obloquy, and secures
the advantages of servility without incurring any obligations. He has
two strings to his bow. He by no means neglects
his worldly interests while he expects a bright reversion in
the skies. Mister Wilberforce is far from being a hypocrite,
(19:44):
but he is, we think, as fine a specimen of
moral equivocation as can well be conceived. A hypocrite is
one who is the very reverse of, or who despises
the character he pretends to be. Mister Wilberforce would be
all that he pretends to be, and he is it
in fact, as far as words, plausible theories, good inclinations,
(20:05):
and easy services go, but not in heart and soul,
or so as to give up the appearance of any
one of his pretensions to preserve the reality of any other.
He carefully chooses his ground to fight the battles of loyalty, religion,
and humanity. And it is such as is always safe
and advantageous to himself. This is perhaps hardly fair, and
(20:26):
it is of dangerous or doubtful tendency. Lord Elden, for instance,
is known to be a thorough paced ministerialist. His opinion
is only that of his party. But mister Wilberforce is
not a party man. He is the more looked up
to on this account, but not with sufficient reason. By
tampering with different temptations and personal projects. He has all
(20:48):
the air of the most perfect independence, and gains a
character for impartiality and candor when he is only striking
a balance in his mind between the a claw of
differing from a minister on some vantage ground and the
risk or odium that may attend it. He carries all
the weight of his artificial popularity over to the government
on vital points and hard run questions, while they in
(21:11):
return lend him a little of the gilding of court
favor to set off his disinterested philanthropy and tremontane enthusiasm.
As a leader or a follower, he makes an odd
jumble of interests. By virtue of religious sympathy, he has
brought the Saints over to the side of the abolition
of Negro slavery. This his adversaries think hard and stealing
a march upon them. What have these saints to do
(21:33):
with freedom or reform of any kind. Mister Wilberforce's style
of speaking is not quite parliamentary. It is half way
between that and evangelical. He is altogether a due bllantine.
The very tone of his voice is a duebillantine. It
winds and undulates and glides up and down on texts
of scripture and scraps from Paley and trite sophistry and
(21:57):
pathetic appeals to his hearers in a faltering, in progressive,
sidelong way, like those birds of weak wing that are
borne from their straightforward course by every little breath that
under heaven is blown. Something of this fluctuating, time serving
principle was visible even in the great question of the
abolition of the slave trade. He was at one time
(22:17):
half inclined to surrender it into mister Pitt's dilatory hands,
and seemed to think the gloss of novelty was gone
from it, and the gaudy coloring of popularity sunk into
the sable ground from which it rose. It was, however,
persisted in and carried to a triumphant conclusion mister Wilberforce
said too little on this occasion of one compared with
(22:38):
whom he was. But the frontispiece to that great chapter
in the history of the world, the mask, the varnishing
and painting. The man that affected it, by herculean labors
of body and equally gigantic labors of mind was Clarkson,
the true apostle of human redemption on that occasion, and who,
it is remarkable, resembles in his person and linium more
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than one of the apostles and the cartoons of Raphael.
He deserves to be added to the twelve. After all.
The best, as well as most amusing comment on the
character just described, was that made by Sheridan, who, being
picked up in no very creditable plight by the watch
and asked rather roughly who he was, made answer, I
am mister Wilberforce. The Guardians of the night conducted him
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home with all the honors due to grace and nature.
End of Chapter fifteen.
Chapter fifteen of the Spirit of the Age or Contemporary
Portraits by William Haslett. This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by
Jesse Zuba, Chapter fifteen. John Scott, First Earl of Eldin,
(00:22):
and William Wilberforce, Lord Eldin, and mister Wilberforce, Lord Eldin
is an exceedingly good natured man, but this does not
prevent him, like other good natured people, from consulting his
own ease or interest. The character of good nature, as
it is called, has been a good deal mistaken, and
the present Chancellor is not a bad illustration of the
(00:44):
grounds of the prevailing error. When we happen to see
an individual whose countenance is all tranquility and smiles, who
is full of good humor and pleasantry, whose manners are
gentle and conciliating, who is uniformly temperate in his expressions,
and punktual and just in his everyday dealings, we are
apt to conclude from so fair an outside, that all
(01:06):
is conscience and tender heart within also, and that such
a one would not hurt a fly, and neither would
he without a motive, but mere good nature or what
passes in the world, for such is often no better
than indolent selfishness. A prison distinguished and praised for this
quality will not needlessly offend others, because they may retaliate,
(01:28):
and besides it ruffles his own temper. He likes to
enjoy a perfect calm and to live in an interchange
of kind offices. He suffers few things to irritate or
annoy him. He has a fine oiliness in his disposition,
which smooths the waves of passion as they rise. He
does not enter into the quarrels or enmities of others,
(01:49):
bears their calamities with patience. He listens to the din
and clang of war, the earthquake, and the hurricane of
the political and moral world with the temper and spirit
of a philosopher. No active injustice puts him beside himself.
The follies and absurdities of mankind never give him a
moment's uneasiness. He has none of the ordinary causes of
(02:10):
fretfulness or chagrin that torment others from the undue interest
they take in the conduct of their neighbors or in
the public good. None of these idle or frivolous sources
of discontent that make such havoc with the peace of
human life, ever discompose his features or alter the serenity
of his pulse. If a nation is robbed of its rights,
(02:30):
if wretches hang that ministers may dine, the laughing jest
still collects in his eye. The cordial squeeze of the
hand is still the same. But tread on the toe
of one of these amiable and imperturbable mortals, Or let
a lump of soot fall down the chimney and spoil
their dinners, and see how they will bear it. All
their patience is confined to the accidents that befall others.
(02:54):
All their good humor is to be resolved into giving
themselves no concern about anything but their own ease and
self and dul Elgians. Their charity begins and ends at home.
Their being free from the common infirmities of temper is
owing to their indifference to the common feelings of humanity.
And if you touch the sore place, they betray more
resentment and break out, like spoiled children into greater fractiousness
(03:18):
than others, partly from a degree of selfishness, and partly
because they are taken by surprise and mad to think
they have not guarded every point against annoyance or attack
by a habit of callous insensibility and pampered indolence. An
instance of what we mean occurred. But the other day
an allusion was made in the House of Commons to
something in the proceedings in the Court of Chancery, And
(03:40):
the Lord Chancellor comes to his place in the court
with the statement in his hand, fire in his eyes,
and a direct charge of falsehood in his mouth, without
knowing anything certain of the matter, without making any inquiry
into it, without using any precaution or putting the least
restraint upon himself, and all on no better authority than
a common news report. The thing was not that we
(04:02):
are in putting any strong blame in this case. We
merely bring it as an illustration. It touched himself, his office,
the inviolability of his jurisdiction, the unexceptionableness of his proceedings,
and the wet blanket of the Chancellor's temper instantly took
fire like tinder. All the fine balancing was at an end.
All the doubts, all the delicacy, all the candor real
(04:25):
or affected, all the chances that there might be a
mistake in the report, all the decencies to be observed
towards a member of the House are overlooked by the
blindness of passion, and the waried judge pounces upon the
paragraph without mercy, without a moment's delay or the smallest
attention to forms. This was indeed serious business. There was
to be no trifling here. Every instant was an age
(04:48):
till the Chancellor had discharged his sense of indignation on
the head of the indiscreet interloper on his authority. Had
it been another person's case, another person's dignity that had
been compromised, another person's conduct that had been called in question,
Who doubts but that the matter might have stood over
till the next term, That the noble Lord would have
(05:08):
taken the newspaper home in his pocket, that he would
have compared it carefully with other newspapers, that he would
have written in the most mild and gentlemanly terms to
the honorable Member to inquire into the truth of the statement.
That he would have watched a convenient opportunity, good humoredly
to ask other honorable members what all this was about,
That the greatest caution and fairness would have been observed,
(05:30):
and that to this hour the lawyer's clerks and the
Junior Council would have been in the greatest admiration of
the Chancellor's nicety of discrimination and the utter inefficacy of
the heats, importunities, haste and passions of others to influence
his judgment. This would have been true. Yet his readiness
to decide and to condemn where he himself is concerned,
(05:51):
shows that passion is not dead in him, nor subject
to the control of reason, but that self love is
the mainspring that moves it. Though on all beyond them
limit he looks with the most perfect calmness and philosophic indifference.
Resistless passion sways us to the mood of what it
likes or loaths. All people are passionate in what concerns
(06:12):
themselves and in what they take an interest in. The
range of this last is different in different persons, But
the want of passion is but another name for the
want of sympathy and imagination. The Lord Chancellor's impartiality and
conscientious exactness is proverbial and is we believe, as inflexible
as it is delicate. In all cases that occur in
(06:33):
the stated routine of legal practice. The impatience, the irritation,
the hopes, the fears, the confident tone of the applicants
move him not a jot from his intended course. He
looks at their claims with the lackluster eye of professional indifference, power,
and influence apart, his next strongest passion is to indulge
(06:53):
in the exercise of professional learning and skill, to amuse
himself with the dry details and intricate windings of the
life law of equity. He delights to balance a straw,
to see a feather, turn the scale, or make it
even again, and divides and subdivides a scruple to the
smallest fraction. He unravels the web of argument and pieces
it together again, folds it up, and lays it aside
(07:16):
that he may examine it more at his leisure. He
hugs indecision to his breast and takes home a modest
doubt or a nice point to solace himself with it.
In protracted, luxurious dalliance. Delay seems in his mind to
be of the very essence of justice. He no more
hurries through a question than if no one was waiting
for the result, and he was merely a dilettante, fanciful
(07:39):
judge who played at my lord Chancellor, and busied himself
with quibbles and punctilios as an idle hobby and harmless illusion.
The phlegm of the Chancellor's disposition gives one almost a
surfeit of impartiality and candor. We are sick of the
eternal poise of childish dilatoriness, and would wish law and
justice to be decided at once by a cat of
(08:00):
the dice, as they were in Rabelais, rather than be
kept in frivolous and tormenting suspense. But there is a
limit even to this extreme refinement and scrupulousness of the Chancellor.
The understanding acts only in the absence of the passions.
At the approach of the load stone, the needle trembles
and points to it. The air of a political question
(08:21):
has a wonderful tendency to brace and quicken the learned
lord's faculties. The breath of a court speedily oversets a
thousand objections and scatters the cobwebs of his brain. The
secret wish of power is a thumping make weight, where
all is so nicely balanced beforehand. In the case of
a celebrated beauty and heiress and the brother of a
(08:42):
noble lord, the Chancellor hesitated long and went through the
forms as usual. But whoever doubted where all this indecision
would end, no man in his senses for a single instant.
We shall not press this point, which is rather a
ticklish one. Some persons thought that from entertaining a fellow
feeling on the subject, the Chancellor would have been ready
to favor the poet Laureate's application to the Court of
(09:04):
Chancery for an injunction against watt Tyler. His Lordship's sentiments
on such points are not so variable. He has too
much at stake. He recollected the year seventeen ninety four,
though mister Southey had forgotten it. The personal always prevails
over the intellectual where the latter is not backed by
strong feeling and principle. Where remote and speculative objects do
(09:27):
not excite a predominant interest and passion, gross and immediate
ones are sure to carry the day. Even in ingenuous
and well disposed minds, the will yields necessarily to some
motive or other, and where the public good or distant
consequences excite no sympathy in the breast, either from short
sightedness or an easiness of temperament that shrinks from any
(09:48):
violent effort or painful emotion, self interest, indolence, the opinion
of others, a desire to please, the sense of personal
obligation come in and fill up the void of public spirit, patriotism,
and humanity. The best men in the world, in their
own natural dispositions or in private life, for this reason,
often become the most dangerous public characters, from their pliancy
(10:11):
to the unruly passions of others, and from their having
no set off in strong moral stamina to the temptations
that are held out to them, if, as is frequently
the case, they are men of versatile talent or patient industry.
Lord Eldon has one of the best natured faces in
the world. It is pleasant to meet him in the street,
plodding along with an umbrella under his arm, without one
(10:32):
trace of pride, of spleen or discontent in his whole demeanor,
void of offense, with almost rustic simplicity and honesty of appearance.
A man that makes friends at first sight, and could
hardly make enemies if he would, and whose only fault
is that he cannot say nay to power or subject
himself to an unkind word or look from a king
(10:52):
or a minister. He is a Thoroughbred Tory. Others boggle
or are at fault in their career, or give back
at a pinch. They split into different factions, have various
objects to distract them. Their private friendships or antipathies stand
in their way. But he has never flinched, never gone back,
never missed his way. He is an out and outer
(11:15):
in this respect. His allegiance has been without flaw, like
one entire and perfect chrysolite. His implicit understanding is a
kind of taffet aligning to the crown. His servility has
assumed an air of the most determined independence, and he
has read his history in a prince's eyes. There has
been no stretch of power attempted in his time that
(11:36):
he has not seconded, no existing abuse so odious or
so absurd that he has not sanctioned it. He has
gone the whole length of the most unpopular designs of ministers.
When the heavy artillery of interest, power and prejudice is
brought into the field. The paper pellets of the brain
go for nothing. His labyrinth of nice ladylike doubts explodes
(11:57):
like a mine of gunpowder. The Chancellor may way and palter.
The courtier is decided. The politician is firm and rivetted
to his place in the cabinet. On all the great
questions that have divided party opinion or agitated the public mind,
the Chancellor has been found uniformly and without a single exception,
on the side of prerogative and power, and against every
(12:18):
proposal for the advancement of freedom. He was a strenuous
supporter of the wars and coalitions against the principles of
liberty abroad. He has been equally zealous in urging or
defending every act and infringement of the Constitution for abridging it.
At home. He at the same time opposes every amelioration
of the penal laws on the alleged ground of his
(12:38):
abhorrence of even the shadow of innovation. He has studiously
set his face against Catholic emancipation. He labored hard in
his vocation to prevent the abolition of the slave trade.
He was Attorney General on the trials for high treason
in seventeen ninety four, and the other day, in giving
his opinion on the Queen's trial, shed tears and protested
his innocence before God. This was natural and to be expected.
(13:03):
But on all occasions he is to be found at
his post true to the call of prejudice, of power,
to the will of others, and to his own interest.
In the whole of his public career, and with all
the goodness of his disposition, he has not shown so
small a drop of pity as a wren's eye. He
seems to be on his guard against everything liberal and
humane as his weak side. Others relax in their obsequiousness,
(13:27):
either from satiety or disgust, or a hankering after popularity,
or a wish to be thought above narrow prejudices. The
Chancellor alone is fixed and immovable. Is it want of
understanding or of principle? No, it is want of imagination,
a phlegmatic habit, an excess of false complaisance, and good nature,
Common humanity, and justice are little better than vague terms.
(13:50):
To him. He acts upon his immediate feelings and least
irksome impulses the King's hand is velvet to the touch.
The woolsack is a seat of honor and prophet. That
is all he knows about the matter as to abstract
metaphysical calculations. The ox that stand staring at the corner
of the street troubles his head as much about them
as he does. Yet this last is a very good
(14:11):
sort of animal, with no harm or malice in him,
unless he is goaded on to mischief, and then it
is necessary to keep out of his way or warn
others against him. Mister Wilberforce is a less perfect character
in his way. He acts from mixed motives. He would
willingly serve two masters, God and Mammon. He is a
person of many excellent and admirable qualifications, but he has
(14:34):
made a mistake in wishing to reconcile those that are incompatible.
He has a most winning eloquence, specious, persuasive, familiar, silver tongued,
is amiable, charitable, conscientious, pious, loyal, humane, tractable to power,
accessible to popularity, honoring the king, and no less charmed
with the homage of his fellow citizens. What lacks he
(14:56):
then nothing but an economy of good parts. By aiming
at too much. He has spoiled all and neutralized what
might have been an estimable character distinguished by signal services
to mankind. A man must take his choice not only
between virtue and vice, but between different virtues. Otherwise he
will not gain his own approbation or secure the respect
(15:18):
of others. The graces and accomplishments of private life mar
the man of business and the statesman. There is a severity,
a sternness, a self denial, and a painful sense of
duty required in the one which ill befits the softness
and sweetness which should characterize the other. Loyalty, patriotism, friendship,
humanity are all virtues, but may they not sometimes clash.
(15:42):
By being unwilling to forego the praise due to any
we may forfeit the reputation of all, and instead of
uniting the suffrages of the whole world in our favor,
we may end in becoming a sort of byword for affectation,
cant hollow professions, trimming fickleness, and effeminate ima facility. It
is best to choose and act up to some one
(16:03):
leading character, as it is best to have some settled
profession or regular pursuit in life. We can readily believe
that mister Wilberforce's first object and principle of action is
to do what he thinks right. His next, and that
we fears of almost equal weight with the first, is
to do what will be thought so by other people.
He is always at a game of hawk and buzzard.
(16:25):
Between these two. His conscience will not budge unless the
world goes with it. He does not seem greatly to
dread the denunciation in scripture, but rather to court it.
Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you.
We suspect he is not quite easy in his mind,
because West India planters and Guinea traders do not join
in his praise. His ears are not strongly enough tuned
(16:48):
to drink in the execrations of the spoiler and the
oppressor as the sweetest music. It is not enough that
one half of the human species, the images of God
carved in ebony, as Old fully calls them, shout his
name as a champion and a savior through vast burning zones,
and moisten their parched lips with the gush of gratitude
for deliverance from chains. He must have a prime minister
(17:11):
drink his health at a cabinet dinner for aiding to
rivet on those of his country and of Europe. He
goes hand in heart along with the government and all
their notions of legitimacy and political aggrandizement, in the hope
that they will leave him a sort of no man's
ground of humanity in the great desert, where his reputation
for benevolence and public spirit may spring up and flourish
(17:32):
till its head touches the clouds, and it stretches out
its branches to the farthest part of the earth. He
has no mercy on those who claim a property in
negro slaves, as so much live stock on their estates.
The country rings with the applause of his wit, his eloquence,
and his indignant appeals to common sense and humanity on
this subject. But not a word has he to say,
(17:53):
not a whisper does he breathe against the claim set
up by the despots of the earth over their continental subjects,
but does everything in his power to confirm and sanction it.
He must give no offense. Mister Wilberforce's humanity will go
all lengths that it can with safety and discretion, But
it is not to be supposed that it should lose
him his seat for Yorkshire, the smile of majesty or
(18:16):
the countenance of the loyal and pious. He is anxious
to do all the good he can without hurting himself
or his fair fame. His conscience and his character compound
matters very amicably. He rather patronizes honesty than is a
martyr to it. His patriotism his philanthropy are not so
ill bred as to quarrel with his loyalty or to
(18:37):
banish him from the first circles. He preaches vital Christianity
to untutored savages, and tolerates its worst abuses in civilized states.
He thus shows his respect for religion without offending the
clergy or circumscribing the sphere of his usefulness. There is
in all this an appearance of a good deal of
cant and tricking. His patriotism may be accused of being servile,
(19:01):
his humanity ostentatious, his loyalty conditional, his religion a mixture
of fashion and fanaticism. Out upon such half faced fellowship,
Mister Wilberforce, as the pride of being familiar with the great,
the vanity of being popular the conceit of an approving conscience.
He is coy in his approaches to power. His public
(19:23):
spirit is in a manner under the rose. He thus
reaps the credit of independence without the obloquy, and secures
the advantages of servility without incurring any obligations. He has
two strings to his bow. He by no means neglects
his worldly interests while he expects a bright reversion in
the skies. Mister Wilberforce is far from being a hypocrite,
(19:44):
but he is, we think, as fine a specimen of
moral equivocation as can well be conceived. A hypocrite is
one who is the very reverse of, or who despises
the character he pretends to be. Mister Wilberforce would be
all that he pretends to be, and he is it
in fact, as far as words, plausible theories, good inclinations,
(20:05):
and easy services go, but not in heart and soul,
or so as to give up the appearance of any
one of his pretensions to preserve the reality of any other.
He carefully chooses his ground to fight the battles of loyalty, religion,
and humanity. And it is such as is always safe
and advantageous to himself. This is perhaps hardly fair, and
(20:26):
it is of dangerous or doubtful tendency. Lord Elden, for instance,
is known to be a thorough paced ministerialist. His opinion
is only that of his party. But mister Wilberforce is
not a party man. He is the more looked up
to on this account, but not with sufficient reason. By
tampering with different temptations and personal projects. He has all
(20:48):
the air of the most perfect independence, and gains a
character for impartiality and candor when he is only striking
a balance in his mind between the a claw of
differing from a minister on some vantage ground and the
risk or odium that may attend it. He carries all
the weight of his artificial popularity over to the government
on vital points and hard run questions, while they in
(21:11):
return lend him a little of the gilding of court
favor to set off his disinterested philanthropy and tremontane enthusiasm.
As a leader or a follower, he makes an odd
jumble of interests. By virtue of religious sympathy, he has
brought the Saints over to the side of the abolition
of Negro slavery. This his adversaries think hard and stealing
a march upon them. What have these saints to do
(21:33):
with freedom or reform of any kind. Mister Wilberforce's style
of speaking is not quite parliamentary. It is half way
between that and evangelical. He is altogether a due bllantine.
The very tone of his voice is a duebillantine. It
winds and undulates and glides up and down on texts
of scripture and scraps from Paley and trite sophistry and
(21:57):
pathetic appeals to his hearers in a faltering, in progressive,
sidelong way, like those birds of weak wing that are
borne from their straightforward course by every little breath that
under heaven is blown. Something of this fluctuating, time serving
principle was visible even in the great question of the
abolition of the slave trade. He was at one time
(22:17):
half inclined to surrender it into mister Pitt's dilatory hands,
and seemed to think the gloss of novelty was gone
from it, and the gaudy coloring of popularity sunk into
the sable ground from which it rose. It was, however,
persisted in and carried to a triumphant conclusion mister Wilberforce
said too little on this occasion of one compared with
(22:38):
whom he was. But the frontispiece to that great chapter
in the history of the world, the mask, the varnishing
and painting. The man that affected it, by herculean labors
of body and equally gigantic labors of mind was Clarkson,
the true apostle of human redemption on that occasion, and who,
it is remarkable, resembles in his person and linium more
(23:00):
than one of the apostles and the cartoons of Raphael.
He deserves to be added to the twelve. After all.
The best, as well as most amusing comment on the
character just described, was that made by Sheridan, who, being
picked up in no very creditable plight by the watch
and asked rather roughly who he was, made answer, I
am mister Wilberforce. The Guardians of the night conducted him
(23:23):
home with all the honors due to grace and nature.
End of Chapter fifteen.
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