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Untitled Article
* We will yield nothing to reason / say the Whig" ministry , f hut every thing to clamour . ' These are the men who call Radicalism dangerous . It is Radicalism to demand that the people may be ruled by men of their choice ; men , therefore ,, in whom
they can confide ; in whose hands they may place their affairs , and feel at liberty to be quiet . Whig policy , on the contrary , relies on a perennial conflict between opposite principles of evil on the one hand , a Government , which , never attempting to ori ginate any good , neither has nor claims public confidence ; and on the other , perpetual agitation .
It is policy like this which alone can render the prospects of our country and of the world seriously alarming . The people are always eager to follow good guidance , and the sole danger is of their not finding it . Intelligence abounds among the English democracy ; but it is not cultivated intelligence . It is mostly of the self-educated sort ; and this is commonly more microscopic than comprehensive : it sees one or a few things strongly , and others not at all ; it is the parent of narrowness and fanaticism .
The coming changes , for come they must and will , are fraught with hope in any case , but also with peril , unless there be found to lead the van of opinion , to place themselves in the front rank of the popular party , a section of the wisest and most energetic of the instructed classes ; men whose education and pursuits have given them a wider range of ideas , and whose leisure has admitted of more systematic study , than will , for a long time to come , be possible , save in occasional rare instances , to those who labour with their hands .
It cannot be but that there are such men in England ; but we know not where to look for them in public life . The present Ministers not only are incapable of beiny , but do not even attempt to seem such men . They have neither the intellect , the knowledge , the energy , the courage , nor even the wish . They are wanting in the very first of the necessary conditions , —faith in improvement ; without which it is impossible to take the lead
in a nation which not only believes in , but demands improvement . They have no belief that the very measures which they are instrumental in carrying , will have any beneficial consequences . To their minds the Reform Bill itself was but a prudent and necessary concession to popular opinion . What can he expected from such men , but what we find / that they will never do any thing till they are forced , always do as little as they arc permitted , and endeavour that even that little should lead 1 o nothing .
There is a question which a short time must solve , and on its solution the fate of this nation entirel y depends ;—Can the hig her classes , before it is too late , furnish the country with ministers , who , together with strong popular sympathies , have the capacity and the energy to lead , and not wait to be driven ?
Untitled Article
164 Notes on the Newspapers .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1834, page 164, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2631/page/4/
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