plaints, have
raised among the people a universal spirit of rebellion
and disaffection to everything and everybody whom
Nature has ordained to rule over them. We are all
waiting in some alarm and much indignation for the
result, and in the meantime (_entre nous_) I have written
a small pamphlet, addressed to the higher classes on the
present state of public feeling among the lower, urging
them to moderate and direct it if they can. But sooner
than the present state of things should continue, I would
adopt any principles, conceiving it to be the duty of all
men, as Burke says, 'so to be patriots as not to forget
that we are gentlemen, to mould our principles to our
duties and our situations, and to be convinced that all
(public) virtue which is impracticable is spurious.' I
write to induce the people to leave politics to wiser
heads, to consent to learn and not endeavour to direct
or teach.

We here see that before he was one-and-twenty years old, Greg was
possessed by the conception that haunted him to the very end. When the
people complain, their complaint savours of rebellion. Those who make
themselves the mouthpieces of popular complaint must be wicked
incendiaries. The privileged classes must be ordained by Nature to rule
over the non-privileged. The few ought to direct and teach, the many to
learn. That was Greg's theory of government from first to last. It was
derived at this time, I suppose, from Burke, without the powerful
correctives and indispensable supplements that are to be found in
Burke's earlier writings. Some one said of De Tocqueville, who
afterwards became Mr. Greg's friend, and who showed in a milder form the
same fear of democracy, 'Il a commence a penser avant d'avoir rien
appris; ce qui fait qu'il a quelquefois pense creux.' What is to be said
for Mr. Greg, now and always, is that he most honourably accepted the
obligations of his doctrine, and did his best to discharge his own
duties as a member of the directing class.

He did not escape moods of reaction. The truth seems to be, that though
his life was always well filled, he inherited rather the easy and
buoyant disposition of his father than the energy and strenuousness of
his mother, though he too could be energetic and strenuous enough upon
occasion. Both William Greg and his favourite brother were of what is
called, with doubtful fitness, the feminine temperament. It was much
less true of William than o