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endeavour to keep up the same injurious delusion in effect , as to what are the real objects of respect , and the reverse . " High and low , " we repeat , applied to the different classes of rich
and poor , or educated and uneducated , or few and many , is a metaphor of assumption , and nothing else ; and a very per-- nicious metaphor , for literally it means nothing ; a footman
in a garret , or a peasant on a mountain , being as high in point of geometrical height as any man in the land ; and spiritually it means nothing , or ought to mean nothing , except the moral elevation conferred
by wisdom and virtue ; and the perniciousness of it consists in tending to confound riches with merit , and power with the inalienable right of holding it ; as though a nobleman were a sort of man-mountain in actual
dimensions , or the star on his breast as much above us as a star in the firmament . Therefore we maintain ( and we would have all our brother Reformers maintain it , and jealously watch the use of the words ) that the
phrase " high and low" ought finally to give place to that of " rich and poor , " or " educated and uneducated , " or ( according as these phrases are treated )
the " few and the many ; " these truer words keeping before the public mind the real state of the fact . and the question , and unceasingly tending , not to dullen an < J beat down the thoughts of men ^ o f ^ 9 ie ^ pf un ^ toaWe relative position , like those of mountains and vallies , or gods
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and their worshippers , but , to remind them , that , by the progress of knowledge , uneducated men may become educated , poor men richer , and the Many not be so preposterously looked down upon by the assuming and tip-toe Few .
In short , with much gratification at finding that Lord Durham has the same popular views of politics , as far as they go , —with much respect for his talents , and more for some handsome and generous circumstances of conduct that
have lately come to our know-pledge of his Lordship in private life , we fear we discern , even in the speech now before the public , evidences of that confidence in the final nature
of his knowledge , and that tendency to spiritual pride , and a segregation of himself from others and their sympathies , which argues not the widest political wisdom , nor a
following out of principles into their most generous results . His Lordship , as we apprehended ^ he would , has shown himself a touchy and scornful member of the " Hospital of Incurables . " He has taken occasion to treat
the question of an elective Upper House with little more than a contemptuous begging of it ; as though twenty syllables from his mouth were to
settle it for ever . He mentions Russia and his embassy merely to intimate that we do not think well enough of the Emperor , and to ojnit all , Elusion to the Poles . Andthougdi he honours Lord Melbotiriie
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298 Lord Durham ' s Vindication of Himself .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 1, 1837, page 298, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1837/page/2/
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