d the motive
to resistance is gone. He then requires some other grievance to set his
face against. His principle is repulsion, his nature contradiction: he
is made up of mere antipathies, an Ishmaelite indeed without a fellow.
He is always playing at hunt-the-slipper in politics. He turns round
upon whoever is next him. The way to wean him from any opinion, and
make him conceive an intolerable hatred against it, would be to place
somebody near him who was perpetually dinning it in his ears. When he is
in England he does nothing but abuse the Boroughmongers and laugh at the
whole system; when he is in America he grows impatient of freedom and a
republic. If he had stayed there a little longer he would have become a
loyal and a loving subject of His Majesty King George IV. He lampooned
the French Revolution when it was hailed as the dawn of liberty by
millions: by the time it was brought into almost universal ill-odour by
some means or other (partly no doubt by himself), he had turned, with
one or two or three others, staunch Buonapartist. He is always of the
militant, not of the triumphant party: so far he bears a gallant show
of magnanimity. But his gallantry is hardly of the right stamp. It wants
principle; for though he is not servile or mercenary, he is the victim
of self-will. He must pull down and pull in pieces: it is not in his
disposition to do otherwise. It is a pity; for with his great talents
he might do great things, if he would go right forward to any useful
object, make thorough stitch-work of any question, or join hand and
heart with any principle. He changes his opinions as he does his
friends, and much on the same account. He has no comfort in fixed
principles; as soon as anything is settled in his own mind, he quarrels
with it. He has no satisfaction but the chase after truth, runs a
question down, worries and kills it, then quits it like a vermin, and
starts some new game, to lead him a new dance, and give him a fresh
breathing through bog and brake, with the rabble yelping at his heels
and the leaders perpetually at fault. This he calls sport-royal. He
thinks it as good as cudgel-playing or single-stick, or anything else
that has life in it. He likes the cut and thrust, the falls, bruises,
and dry blows of an argument: as to any good or useful results that may
come of the amicable settling of it, any one is welcome to them for him.
The amusement is over when the matter is once fairly decided.

There