is another point of view in which this may be put. I might say
that Mr. Cobbett is a very honest man with a total want of principle,
and I might explain this paradox thus:--I mean that he is, I think, in
downright earnest in what he says, in the part he takes at the time;
but in taking that part, he is led entirely by headstrong obstinacy,
caprice, novelty 'pique, or personal motive of some sort, and not by
a steadfast regard for truth or habitual anxiety for what is right
uppermost in his mind. He is not a fee'd, time-serving, shuffling
advocate (no man could write as he does who did not believe himself
sincere); but his understanding is the dupe and slave of his
momentary, violent, and irritable humours. He does not adopt an opinion
'deliberately or for money,' yet his conscience is at the mercy of the
first provocation he receives, of the first whim he takes in his
head: he sees things through the medium of heat and passion, not with
reference to any general principles, and his whole system of thinking is
deranged by the first object that strikes his fancy or sours his temper
education. He is a self-taught man, and has the faults as well as
excellences of that class of persons in their most striking and glaring
excess. It must be acknowledged that the editor of the _Political
Register_ (the _twopenny trash_, as it was called, till a bill passed
the House to raise the price to sixpence) is not 'the gentleman and
scholar,' though he has qualities that, with a little better management,
would be worth (to the public) both those titles. For want of knowing
what has been discovered before him, he has not certain general
landmarks to refer to, or a general standard of thought to apply to
individual cases. He relies on his own acuteness and the immediate
evidence, without being acquainted with the comparative anatomy or
philosophical structure of opinion. He does not view things on a large
scale or at the horizon (dim and airy enough, perhaps)--but as they
affect himself, close, palpable, tangible. Whatever he finds out is his
own, and he only knows what he finds out. He is in the constant hurry
and fever of gestation; his brain teems incessantly with some fresh
project. Every new light is the birth of a new system, the dawn of a
new world outstripping and overreaching himself. The last opinion is the
only true one. He is wiser to-day than he was yesterday. Why should he
not be wiser to-morrow than he was to-day?--Men of a lea