bills; he must be devoted to the wishes and objects of
the society, its creature, its jackal, its busybody, its mouthpiece,
its prompter; he must deal in law cases, in demurrers, in charters, in
traditions, in common-places, in logic and rhetoric--in everything but
common sense and honesty. He must (in Mr. Burke's phrase) 'disembowel
himself of his natural entrails, and be stuffed with paltry, blurred
sheets of parchment about the rights' of the privileged few. He must
be a concentrated essence, a varnished, powdered representative of the
vices, absurdities, hypocrisy, jealousy, pride, and pragmaticalness of
his party. Such a one, by bustle and self-importance and puffing, by
flattering one to his face and abusing another behind his back, by
lending himself to the weaknesses of some, and pampering the mischievous
propensities of others, will pass for a great man in a little society.

Age does not improve the morality of public bodies. They grow more and
more tenacious of their idle privileges and senseless self-consequence.
They get weak and obstinate at the same time. Those who belong to them
have all the upstart pride and pettifogging spirit of their present
character ingrafted on the venerableness and superstitious sanctity
of ancient institutions. They are naturally at issue, first with their
neighbours, and next with their contemporaries, on all matters of common
propriety and judgment. They become more attached to forms, the more
obsolete they are; and the defence of every absurd and invidious
distinction is a debt which (by implication) they owe to the dead as
well as the living. What might once have been of serious practical
utility they turn to farce, by retaining the letter when the spirit is
gone: and they do this the more, the more glaring the inconsistency and
want of sound reasoning; for they think they thus give proof of
their zeal and attachment to the abstract principle on which old
establishments exist, the ground of prescription and authority. _The
greater the wrong, the greater the right,_ in all such cases. The
_esprit de corps_ does not take much merit to itself for upholding what
is justifiable in any system, or the proceedings of any party, but for
adhering to what is palpably injurious. You may exact the first from an
enemy: the last is the province of a friend. It has been made a subject
of complaint, that the champions of the Church, for example, who are
advanced to dignities and honours, are h