n hurled down from the chair of
state without a struggle. They had seen a new representative system
devised, tried and abandoned. They had seen a new House of Lords
created and scattered. They had seen great masses of property violently
transferred from Cavaliers to Roundheads, and from Roundheads back to
Cavaliers. During these events no man could be a stirring and thriving
politician who was not prepared to change with every change of fortune.
It was only in retirement that any person could long keep the character
either of a steady Royalist or of a steady Republican. One who, in
such an age, is determined to attain civil greatness must renounce all
thoughts of consistency. Instead of affecting immutability in the midst
of endless mutation, he must be always on the watch for the indications
of a coming reaction. He must seize the exact moment for deserting
a falling cause. Having gone all lengths with a faction while it
was uppermost, he must suddenly extricate himself from it when its
difficulties begin, must assail it, must persecute it, must enter on a
new career of power and prosperity in company with new associates. His
situation naturally developes in him to the highest degree a peculiar
class of abilities and a peculiar class of vices. He becomes quick of
observation and fertile of resource. He catches without effort the tone
of any sect or party with which he chances to mingle. He discerns
the signs of the times with a sagacity which to the multitude appears
miraculous, with a sagacity resembling that with which a veteran police
officer pursues the faintest indications of crime, or with which a
Mohawk warrior follows a track through the woods. But we shell seldom
find, in a statesman so trained, integrity, constancy, any of the
virtues of the noble family of Truth. He has no faith in any doctrine,
no zeal for any cause. He has seen so many old institutions swept away,
that he has no reverence for prescription. He has seen so many
new institutions, from which much had been expected, produce mere
disappointment, that he has no hope of improvement. He sneers alike at
those who are anxious to preserve and at those who are eager to reform.
There is nothing in the state which he could not, without a scruple or
a blush, join in defending or in destroying. Fidelity to opinions and
to friends seems to him mere dulness and wrongheadedness. Politics
he regards, not as a science of which the object is the happiness of
mank