l policy,
prison-discipline, the state of the Hulks, agricultural distress,
commerce and manufactures, the Bullion question, the Catholic question,
the Bourbons or the Inquisition, "domestic treason, foreign levy,"
nothing can come amiss to him--he is at home in the crooked mazes of
rotten boroughs, is not baffled by Scotch law, and can follow the
meaning of one of Mr. Canning's speeches. With so many resources, with
such variety and solidity of information, Mr. Brougham is rather a
powerful and alarming, than an effectual debater. In so many details
(which he himself goes through with unwearied and unshrinking
resolution) the spirit of the question is lost to others who have not
the same voluntary power of attention or the same interest in hearing
that he has in speaking; the original impulse that urged him forward is
forgotten in so wide a field, in so interminable a career. If he can,
others _cannot_ carry all he knows in their heads at the same time; a
rope of circumstantial evidence does not hold well together, nor drag
the unwilling mind along with it (the willing mind hurries on before it,
and grows impatient and absent)--he moves in an unmanageable procession
of facts and proofs, instead of coming to the point at once--and his
premises (so anxious is he to proceed on sure and ample grounds) overlay
and block up his conclusion, so that you cannot arrive at it, or not
till the first fury and shock of the onset is over. The ball, from
the too great width of the _calibre_ from which it is sent, and from
striking against such a number of hard, projecting points, is almost
spent before it reaches its destination. He keeps a ledger or a
debtor-and-creditor account between the Government and the Country,
posts so much actual crime, corruption, and injustice against so much
contingent advantage or sluggish prejudice, and at the bottom of the
page brings in the balance of indignation and contempt, where it is due.
But people are not to be _calculated into_ contempt or indignation on
abstract grounds; for however they may submit to this process where
their own interests are concerned, in what regards the public good we
believe they must see and feel instinctively, or not at all. There is
(it is to be lamented) a good deal of froth as well as strength in the
popular spirit, which will not admit of being _decanted_ or served out
in formal driblets; nor will spleen (the soul of Opposition) bear to be
corked up in square patent