going through the
process of law, the firm and manly tone of principle is exchanged for
the wavering and pitiful cant of policy, the living bursts of passion
are reduced to a defunct _common-place_, and all true imagination
is buried under the dust and rubbish of learned models and imposing
authorities. If the one is a bodiless phantom, the other is a lifeless
skeleton: if the one in its feverish and hectic extravagance resembles a
sick man's dream, the other is akin to the sleep of death--cold, stiff,
unfeeling, monumental! Upon the whole, we despair less of the first than
of the last, for the principle of life and motion is, after all, the
primary condition of all genius. The luxuriant wildness of the one may
be disciplined, and its excesses sobered down into reason; but the dry
and rigid formality of the other can never burst the shell or husk of
oratory. It is true that the one is disfigured by the puerilities and
affectation of a Phillips; but then it is redeemed by the manly sense
and fervour of a Plunket, the impassioned appeals and flashes of wit of
a Curran, and by the golden tide of wisdom, eloquence, and fancy, that
flowed from the lips of a Burke. In the other, we do not sink so low in
the negative series; but we get no higher in the ascending scale than
a Mackintosh or a Brougham.[A] It may be suggested that the late Lord
Erskine enjoyed a higher reputation as an orator than either of these:
but he owed it to a dashing and graceful manner, to presence of mind,
and to great animation in delivering his sentiments. Stripped of these
outward and personal advantages, the matter of his speeches, like that
of his writings, is nothing, or perfectly inert and dead. Mr. Brougham
is from the North of England, but he was educated in Edinburgh, and
represents that school of politics and political economy in the House.
He differs from Sir James Mackintosh in this, that he deals less in
abstract principles, and more in individual details. He makes less use
of general topics, and more of immediate facts. Sir James is better
acquainted with the balance of an argument in old authors; Mr. Brougham
with the balance of power in Europe. If the first is better versed in
the progress of history, no man excels the last in a knowledge of the
course of exchange. He is apprised of the exact state of our exports and
imports, and scarce a ship clears out its cargo at Liverpool or
Hull, but he has notice of the bill of lading. Our colonia