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Untitled Article
To me / however , truth is of far greater consequence than popularity . My whole life is spent in study ; of the gaieties and the ambitions of other—and probably both wiser and happier—men , I have no share ; and I am infinitely more anxious to conduce to the well-being of my fellow-men than to obtain their applause .
Thus thinking and thus feeling—knowing also that the work for which I write this Paper is known to be impartial , and all the more highly esteemed on that very account—I do not hesitate to avow my belief that the pariy proceedings of my time and country have been , for the most part , unreasonable ,, unwise , and , as to the most important end , unprofitable .
Setting aside the question of Catholic Emancipation , and the guilt or innocence of Queen Caroline ; questions upon which my opinions would probably offend many without any good effect upon popular opinion ; I will proceed at once to the event of our time—Reform of Parliament .
It is fresh in the remembrance of all , that Reform of Parliament was demanded with the utmost earnestness , and that it was to be the commencement of a moral and political millennium . To say a word against it was to provoke the envenomed abuse of itinerant orators , and—if he who said that word held any high rank—even the personal attacks of precisely that portion of the people whose
reform would have been most usefully begun at home . Those , on the other hand , who advocated the desired change were flattered with a grossness which must have been even more disgusting to them than to the mere impartial auditor or reader of it . One nobleman ( , in the forty-third year of his age , was spoken of as
the youthful (!) scion of the house of ; alas ! at thirty-one / do not feel so very youthful ! To be sure I am not a noble ! Even known < placemen and pensioners , ' if they did but talk sonorously and long in favour of reform were exalted to the very pinnacle of popularity , their places duly forgotten , and their pensions entirely unmentioned .
All the abuse lavished upon the opponents of the Reform Bill , and all the gross flatteries heaped upon the advocates of that measure , were justified at the time by the alleged certainty that great and Immediate benefit to the f operative classes' would
result from the enactment of the Bill in question . What have been the results ? Calthorpe-street , Nepotism such as was never witnessed in the very heyday of r l oryism , trades unions , strikes , the transportation of unionists , the Irish Coercion Bill , general disappointment , general disgust , general discontent ! Do I infer from all this that all Reforms are useless , or that all Reformers are wicked ? Not go ; I only infer that the Reform has not been well managed , and the Reformers have lacked wisdom . FFe are too prone to bawl for general measures , to espouse the
Untitled Article
760 Hinh on the Errors of Party .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1834, page 766, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2639/page/20/
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