in the ready application of a
general system to particular questions, but in the facility of arguing
for or against any question by specious generalities, without reference
to any system. In these debates, he combined what is most dangerous in
democracy, with all that is most degrading in the old superstitions of
monarchy; and taught an inherency of the office in the person, in order
to make the office itself a nullity, and the Premiership, with its
accompanying majority, the sole and permanent power of the State. And
now came the French Revolution. This was a new event; the old routine of
reasoning, the common trade of politics were to become obsolete. He
appeared wholly unprepared for it: half favoring, half condemning,
ignorant of what he favored, and why he condemned, he neither displayed
the honest enthusiasm and fixed principle of Mr. Fox, nor the intimate
acquaintance with the general nature of man, and the consequent.
_prescience_ of Mr. Burke.

After the declaration of war, long did he continue in the common cant of
office, in declamation about the Scheldt and Holland, and all the vulgar
causes of common contests! and when at last the immense genius of his
new supporter had beat him out of these _words_ (words signifying
_places_ and _dead objects_, and signifying nothing more), he adopted
other words in their places, other generalities--Atheism and
Jacobinism--phrases, which he learned from Mr. Burke, but without
learning the philosophical definitions and involved consequences, with
which that great man accompanied those words. Since the death of Mr.
Burke, the forms and the sentiments, and the tone of the French have
undergone many and important changes: how, indeed, is it possible that
it should be otherwise, while man is the creature of experience! But
still Mr. Pitt proceeds in an endless repetition of the same _general
phrases_. This is his element; deprive him of general and abstract
phrases, and you reduce him to silence. But you can not deprive him of
them. Press him to specify an _individual_ fact of advantage to be
derived from a war, and he answers, Security! Call upon him to
particularize a crime, and he exclaims, Jacobinism! Abstractions defined
by abstractions! Generalities defined by generalities! As a minister of
finance, he is still, as ever, the man of words and abstractions!
Figures, custom-house reports, imports and exports, commerce and
revenue--all flourishing, all splendid! Never was suc