Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/146

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concerning Political Justice," and we shall soon see how the tide will turn about. There will be a fine hue and cry raised by all the good and wise, by all "those acute minds" who, Mr. Owen tells us, have not been able to find a flaw in his reasonings, but who will soon discover a flaw in his reputation. Dr. Parr will preach a Spital sermon against him; lectures will be delivered in Lincoln's Inn Hall, to prove that a perfect man is such another chimera as a golden mountain; Mr. Malthus will set up his two checks of vice and misery as insuperable bars against him; Mr. Southey will put him into the "Quarterly Review;" his name will be up in the newspapers, The Times, The Courier, and The Morning Post; the three estates will set their faces against him; he will be marked as a Jacobin, a leveller, an incendiary, in all parts of the three kingdoms; he will be avoided by his friends, and become a bye-word to his enemies; his brother magistrates of the county of Lanark will refuse to sit on the bench with him; the spindles of his spinning-jennies will no longer turn on their soft axles; he will have gone out for wool, and will go home shorn; and he will find that it is not so easy or safe a task as he imagined to make fools wise, and knaves honest; in short, to make mankind understand their own interests, or those who govern them care for any interest but their own. Otherwise, all this matter would have been settled long ago. As it is, things will most probably go on as they have done, till some comet comes with its tail; and on the eve of some grand and radical reform, puts an end to the question.




The Speech of Charles C. Western, Esq. M. P. on the Distressed State of the Agriculture of the Country, delivered in the House of Commons, March 7, 1816.

The Speech of Henry Brougham, Esq. M. P. on the same subject, delivered in the same place, April 9, 1816.

This is a sore subject; and it is here handled with much tenderness and delicacy. It puts one in mind of the traveller's nose,