e more importance to
ask--What use it is likely to be put to? In government, if we can keep
clear of mischief, good will come of itself. Fitness is the thing to be
sought; and unfitness is much less frequently caused by general
incapacity than by absence of that kind of capacity which the charge
demands. Talent is apt to generate presumption and self-confidence; and
no qualities are so necessary, in a Legislator, as the opposites of
these--which, if they do not imply the existence of sagacity, are the
best substitutes for it--whether they produce, in the general
disposition of the mind, an humble reliance on the wisdom of our
Forefathers, and a sedate yielding to the pressure of existing things;
or carry the thoughts still higher, to religious trust in a
superintending Providence, by whose permission laws are ordered and
customs established, for other purposes than to be perpetually found
fault with.

These suggestions are recommended to the consideration of our new
Aspirant, and of all those public men whose judgments are perverted, and
tempers soured, by long struggling in the ranks of opposition, and
incessant bustling among the professors of Reform. I shall not recall to
notice further particulars, because time, by softening asperities or
removing them out of sight, is a friend to benevolence. Although a
rigorous investigation has been invited, it is well that there is no
need to run through the rash assertions, the groundless accusations, and
the virulent invectives that disfigure the speeches of this never-silent
Member. All these things, offensive to moderate men, are too much to the
taste of many of Mr. Brougham's partizans in Westmoreland. But I call
upon those who relish these deviations from fair and honourable
dealing--upon those also of his adherents who are inwardly ashamed of
their Champion, on this account--and upon all the Freeholders concerned
in the general question, to review what has been laid before them.
Having done this, they cannot but admit that Mr. Brougham's
_independence_ is a dark _dependence_, which no one understands--and,
that if a jewel _has_ been lost in Westmoreland, his are not the eyes by
which it is to be found again. If the dignity of Knight of the Shire is
to be conferred, _he_ cannot be pronounced a fit person to receive it.
For whether, my Brother Freeholders, you look at the humbleness of his
situation amongst Country Gentlemen; or at his amphibious habits, in the
two element