kept out of them himself. Provided he could
say a clever or a spiteful thing, he did not care whether it served or
injured the cause. Spleen or the exercise of intellectual power was the
motive of his patriotism, rather than principle. He would talk treason
with a saving clause; and instil sedition into the public mind, through
the medium of a third (who was to be the responsible) party. He made Sir
Francis Burdett his spokesman in the House and to the country, often
venting his chagrin or singularity of sentiment at the expense of his
friend; but what in the first was trick or reckless vanity, was in the
last plain downright English honesty and singleness of heart. In the
case of the State Trials, in 1794, Mr. Tooke rather compromised his
friends to screen himself. He kept repeating that "others might have
gone on to Windsor, but he had stopped at Hounslow," as if to go farther
might have been dangerous and unwarrantable. It was not the question how
far he or others had actually gone, but how far they had a right to go,
according to the law. His conduct was not the limit of the law, nor did
treasonable excess begin where prudence or principle taught him to stop
short, though this was the oblique inference liable to be drawn from his
line of defence. Mr. Tooke was uneasy and apprehensive for the issue of
the Government-prosecution while in confinement, and said, in speaking
of it to a friend, with a morbid feeling and an emphasis quite unusual
with him--"They want our blood--blood--blood!" It was somewhat
ridiculous to implicate Mr. Tooke in a charge of High Treason (and
indeed the whole charge was built on the mistaken purport of
an intercepted letter relating to an engagement for a private
dinnerparty)--his politics were not at all revolutionary. In this
respect he was a mere pettifogger, full of chicane, and captious
objections, and unmeaning discontent; but he had none of the grand
whirling movements of the French Revolution, nor of the tumultuous glow
of rebellion in his head or in his heart. His politics were cast in
a different mould, or confined to the party distinctions and court-
intrigues and pittances of popular right, that made a noise in the time
of Junius and Wilkes--and even if his understanding had gone along with
more modern and unqualified principles, his cautious temper would have
prevented his risking them in practice. Horne Tooke (though not of the
same side in politics) had much of the tone of mind