nd
desultory studies, no genuine science, nothing that constitutes
individuality in intellect, nothing that teaches brotherhood in
affection! Such was the man--such, and so denaturalized the spirit--on
whose wisdom and philanthropy the lives and living enjoyments of so many
millions of human beings were made unavoidably dependent. From this time
a real enlargement of mind became almost impossible. Pre-occupations,
intrigue, the undue passion and anxiety with which all facts must be
surveyed; the crowd and confusion of those facts, none of them seen, but
all communicated, and by that very circumstance, and by the necessity of
perpetually classifying them, transmuted into words and generalities;
pride, flattery, irritation, artificial power; these, and circumstances
resembling these, necessarily render the heights of office barren
heights, which command, indeed, a vast and extensive prospect, but
attract so many clouds and vapors, that most often all prospect is
precluded. Still, however, Mr. Pitt's situation, however inauspicious
for his real being, was favorable to his fame. He heaped period on
period; persuaded himself and the nation, that extemporaneous
arrangement of sentences was eloquence; and that eloquence implied
wisdom. His father's struggles for freedom, and his own attempts, gave
him an almost unexampled popularity; and his office necessarily
associated with his name all the great events, that happened during his
administration. There were not, however, wanting men, who saw through
this delusion; and refusing to attribute the industry, integrity, and
enterprising spirit of our merchants, the agricultural improvements of
our land-holders, the great inventions of our manufacturers, or the
valor and skillfulness of our sailors to the merits of a minister, they
have continued to decide on his character from those acts and those
merits, which belong to him and to him alone. Judging him by this
standard, they have been able to discover in him no one proof or symptom
of a commanding genius. They have discovered him never controlling,
never creating events, but always yielding to them with rapid change,
and sheltering himself from inconsistency by perpetual indefiniteness.
In the Russian war, they saw him abandoning meanly what he had planned
weakly, and threatened insolently. In the debates on the Regency, they
detected the laxity of his constitutional principles, and received
proofs that his eloquence consisted not