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By Albany Fonblanque , Esq . ( Second Notice . ) . I To write continuously on political subjects in a style , which shall at once be instructive and entertaining , original , appropriate , and permanent , is the most difficult or all literary labours . The constant requisitions , day after day , and week after weekjmade by clamorous subjects—frequently similar , often mere
repetitions , and generall y common-place and dry—» are sufficient to wear out any mind that does not possess the utmost degree of energy , and the most ample store of resources within itself . We intended to have entered into some analysis of the peculiar qualities of this brilliant writer , and to h ^ ve given an account of his political labours , but we have since found our purpose superceded by a masterly article in the London and Westminster Review , to which we refer our readers . We transfer the
following extract from that periodical to our pages , as it contains a very luminous and discriminating view of the different sections into which the radicals are unfortunately divided : — " Mr Fonblanque ' s opinions , it need scarcely be said , are those of the philosophic radicals . That it may be more clear what we mean , we will state whom we term the philosophic radicals , and why we so denominate them . There are divers schools of radicals . There are the historical
radicals , who demand popular institutions as the inheritance of Englishmen , transmitted to us from the Saxons or the barons of Runnymede . There are the metaphysical radicajs , who hold the principles of democracy , not as means to good government , but as corollaries from some unreal abstraction—from " natural liberty , or " natural rights . ? There are the radicals of occasion and circumstance , who are radicals because they disapprove the measures of the government for the time being . There are , lastly , the radicals of position , who are radicals , as somejbocty said , because they are not lords . Those whom , in contradistinction to all these , we call philosophic radicals , are those who in politics observe the common practice of philosophers—that is , who , when they are dis ? cussing means , begin by considering the end , and wh § n they desire to produce effects , think of causes . These persons became radicals , because they-saw immense practical evils existing in the government and social
condition of this country ; and because the same examination which showed them the evils , showed also that the cause of those evils was the aristocratic principle in our government—the subjection of the many to the . control of a comparatively few , who had an interest , or wfyo fancied they had an interest , in perpetuating those evils . These inquirers looke ^ still farther , and saw , that in the present imperfect condition of human nature , nothing better than this self-preference was ever to be expected from a dominant few ; that the interests of the many were sure to be in their eyes a secondary consideration to their own ease or emolument .
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• England tJnder Seven Administrations . 301
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ENGLAND UNDER SEVEN ADMINISTRATIONS .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 1, 1837, page 301, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1831/page/46/
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