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The experiment has , unless I am much deceived in the result , been made successfully , of rendering a periodical interesting without sacrificing to mere amusement , to personal calumny , or to party or private objects . On every great question , however brief
the space allowed for its discussion , it has been attempted to penetrate to the true and ultimate principles of solution . Caring comparatively little about particular men or temporary measures , constant regard has been had to those pervading evils of the social condition , and those redeeming and progressive tendencies of the human constitution , which must be understood before the one can
be effectually redressed , or the other can have their free and full operation in the production of the happiness which man was created to enjoy . Using words which have been egregiously misapplied , it may be justly said , that on whatever point reform or change has been advocated , we were destructive only that we might be conservative . And that , for the conservation of which ,
free from all impediment , we are most solicitous , is the principle of progression in humanity ; a principle which is ever growing in strength with the growth of knowledge ; which must and will burst all the bonds , an < J demolish all the barriers of antiquated institutions ; and on which Governments must learn to act , unless they are content to be regarded as the present enemies of nations and the speedy victims of revolutions . The great imperfection of the Reform Act , and which , in our
view , demands instant rectification , is , that it rather provides for a retrograde movement towards aristocratic domination in the legislature , than for a continued advance towards free and universal representation . The Ballot , an extension of the franchise , and the shortening of the duration of Parliaments , embody the progressive principle as applied to the machinery of government . Why will the Whigs , by opposition to these improvements , occupy the very position from which they drove the Tories , and which no party now can long occupy without disgraceful discomfiture ? Their popular orator and oracle ( if authorship be rightly guessed ) has said in the ' Edinburgh Review , ' that * a public life , to be useful , must be a life of compromises . ' This is the fatal error of
the best men of the party . It ruined that noble creature , Charles Fox , both in character and influence . It has ruined one who might have been the foremost man of this age ; whose uncoroneted brow might have been the frontispiece to a volume of the world ' s history ; but who , compromising with the tactics of a laggard faction ; compromising with the enemies of popular education ; compromising with the weak-eyed dreaders of too much light , and of really useful knowledge ; compromising with the ignorant insolence that can still dream of ruling by coercion ; compromising with those who prey on the perversion of justice , and on the desecration of religion , has compromised his own glory to all futurity . We had hojj < \\ something from the enluj ' htened ambition of that
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Postscript . $ 69
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No . 84 . 3 q
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1833, page 869, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2628/page/65/
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