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their minds with only that of the major fewy—the plurality , —not the most ;—with men of a certain kind of substance ; not with those whom they
employ ; in short , with landlords and masters . Talk with any section of the Reformers , and they all sneer at the leaders of the other sections . Talk with a
Birmingham manufacturer , and in spite of his occasional summoning out of his forces of workmen in the cause , he has no idea of what you mean by a
comfort in the many , superior to a certain amount of wages ; or what possible good there can be in society , apart from his own power to rule and be rich .
When we say that the Reformers have no leaders , we do not mean that they have not many , up to a certain point , and of various grades of ability .
They have an admirable economist in Hume ; they have an admirable ally ( for his own country ) in O'Connell ; they have excellent officers in the
Bulwers , Bullers , Wakleys , &c . ; they had the other day , a strenuous fighter in Roebuck ( a man of larger mark than most , but deficient in qualities that attract ); and they have
wit , philosophy , and sympathy in their leading papers , but rarely in unison , and in no instance accompanied with a spirit of martyrdom . The favourite phrase " practical
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man" is a mighty neutralizer of soul in a cause . It generally means hands without heart , and such as will be very cautious of burning their fingers . That it does not always do so , grateful memory knows from the Pyms and the Hampdens ; and it is the want of such men
as these that we speak of , when we say that the cause of Reform has no leaders . What man has it , for example , who like Pym is equally practical and theoretical ; strong of body to act , and of soul to think ; with an
eloquence , or out-speaking , proportionate to the vigour of both ; and the prose of reason , or that which suffices for the man himself , made effective upon all by the poetry of enthusiasm , or that which moves
others ?* Pym was one of the most imaginative of speakers ; and Hampden ( as his new biographer has triumphantly shewn , to the disgrace of disingenuous Clarendon ) one of the most amiable of men ; and
yet neither did the imaginativeness of the one , nor tne loveability of the other , hinder either from being the most effective of all practical men ;—and why ? Because they were in earnest beyond themselves : because they believed that man did i ( not live
by bread alone : " because they had a noble and awful sense of the nature of the human being ,
• See the eloquent and most interesting Lives of Pym and Hampden , lately givtn us by Mr Forster , in one of the volumes of the Cabinet Cyclopaedia ; a biography full of matter new to the majority , and to ourselves , of which we have read almost every syllable with the greatest pleasure , and which far surpasses even bis interesting Memoir of Lord Strafford , in a previous volume .
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Result of the Elections , and Defects of the Reformers . 149
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 1, 1837, page 149, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1835/page/5/
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