ally sealed under the smooth,
cold, glittering varnish of pretended refinement and conventional
politeness. The one may be corrected by being better informed; the other
is incorrigible, wilful, heartless depravity. I cannot describe the
contempt and disgust I have felt at the tone of what would be thought
good company, when I have witnessed the sleek, smiling, glossy,
gratuitous assumption of superiority to every feeling of humanity,
honesty, or principle, as a part of the etiquette, the mental and moral
_costume_ of the table, and every profession of toleration or favour for
the lower orders, that is, for the great mass of our fellow-creatures,
treated as an indecorum and breach of the harmony of well-regulated
society. In short, I prefer a bear-garden to the adder's den; or, to put
this case in its extremest point of view, I have more patience with men
in a rude state of nature outraging the human form than I have with apes
'making mops and mows' at the extravagances they have first provoked.
I can endure the brutality (as it is termed) of mobs better than the
inhumanity of courts. The violence of the one rages like a fire; the
insidious policy of the other strikes like a pestilence, and is more
fatal and inevitable. The slow poison of despotism is worse than the
convulsive struggles of anarchy. 'Of all evils,' says Hume, 'anarchy is
the shortest lived.' The one may 'break out like a wild overthrow'; but
the other from its secret, sacred stand, operates unseen, and undermines
the happiness of kingdoms for ages, lurks in the hollow cheek, and
stares you in the face in the ghastly eye of want and agony and woe.
It is dreadful to hear the noise and uproar of an infuriated multitude
stung by the sense of wrong and maddened by sympathy; it is more
appalling to think of the smile answered by other gracious smiles, of
the whisper echoed by other assenting whispers, which doom them first to
despair and then to destruction. Popular fury finds its counterpart in
courtly servility. If every outrage is to be apprehended from the one,
every iniquity is deliberately sanctioned by the other, without regard
to justice or decency. The word of a king, 'Go thou and do likewise,'
makes the stoutest heart dumb: truth and honesty shrink before it.(3) If
there are watchwords for the rabble, have not the polite and fashionable
their hackneyed phrases, their fulsome, unmeaning jargon as well? Both
are to me anathema!

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