Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/38

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xxxii
PREFACE.

these questions are practically decided, do their business in another-guess manner; they do not stand on the same ceremony. Soft words and hard blows are a losing game to play at: and this, one would think, the Opposition, if they were sincere, must have found out long ago. But they rather wish to screen the Ministry, as their locum tenens in the receipt of the perquisites of office and the abuse of power, of which they themselves expect the reversion.

"Strange that such difference should be
Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee."

The distinction between a great Whig and Tory Lord is laughable. For Whigs to Tories "nearly are allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide." So I cannot find out the different drift (as far as politics are concerned) of the ********* and ********* Reviews, which remind one of Opposition coaches, that raise a great dust or spatter one another with mud, but both travel the same road and arrive at the same destination. When the Editor of a respectable Morning Paper reproached me with having called Mr. Gifford a cat's-paw, I did not tell him that he was a glove upon that cat's-paw. I might have done so. There is a difference between a sword and a foil. The Whigs do not at all relish that ugly thing, a knock-down blow; which is so different from their endless see-saw way of going about a question. They are alarmed, "lest the courtiers offended should be:" for they are so afraid of their adversaries,