class, instead of consolidating useful and
acknowledged truths, and thus advancing the cause of science and virtue,
are never easy but in raising doubtful and disagreeable questions, which
bring the former into disgrace and discredit. They are not contented to
lead the minds of men to an eminence overlooking the prospect of social
amelioration, unless, by forcing them up slippery paths and to the
utmost verge of possibility, they can dash them down the precipice the
instant they reach the promised Pisgah. They think it nothing to hang up
a beacon to guide or warn, if they do not at the same time frighten the
community like a comet. They do not mind making their principles odious,
provided they can make themselves notorious. To win over the public
opinion by fair means is to them an insipid, common-place mode of
popularity: they would either force it by harsh methods, or seduce it
by intoxicating potions. Egotism, petulance, licentiousness, levity of
principle (whatever be the source) is a bad thing in any one, and most
of all in a philosophical reformer. Their humanity, their wisdom,
is always 'at the horizon.' Anything new, anything remote, anything
questionable, comes to them in a shape that is sure of a cordial
welcome--a welcome cordial in proportion as the object is new, as it
is apparently impracticable, as it is a doubt whether it is at all
desirable. Just after the final failure, the completion of the last act
of the French Revolution, when the legitimate wits were crying out, 'The
farce is over, now let us go to supper,' these provoking reasoners got
up a lively hypothesis about introducing the domestic government of the
Nayrs into this country as a feasible set-off against the success of the
Borough-mongers. The practical is with them always the antipodes of the
ideal; and like other visionaries of a different stamp, they date the
Millennium or New Order of Things from the Restoration of the Bourbons.
'Fine words butter no parsnips,' says the proverb. 'While you are
talking of marrying, I am thinking of hanging,' says Captain Macheath.
Of all people the most tormenting are those who bid you hope in the
midst of despair, who, by never caring about anything but their own
sanguine, hair-brained Utopian schemes, have at no time any particular
cause for embarrassment and despondency because they have never the
least chance of success, and who by including whatever does not hit
their idle fancy, kings, priests, relig