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A LETTER TO LORD STANLEY ON CONSERVATIVE AND REFORM ASSOCIATIONS.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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My Lord—As might have been expected , your lordship ' s letter to Sir T . D . Hesketh , on the formation of the North Lancashire Conservative Association , has gone the round of the newspapers . It has fulfilled its coarse like a comet , drawing after it a long but varying and differently coloured tail of commentary . Had your legislative ' Tail' been proportionately long , we should never have heard of the ' Derby Dilly with its six insides . ' But , as occasionally happens to comets , —those interlopers of the heavens , which , instead of belonging to one system , are believed sometimes to revolve into and connect themselves with two very remote systems , —
your ^ lordship lacks that appendage , and is only surrounded by a thin nebulous coronal . Your lordship ' s magnanimity is therefore the more illustrious in declining that popular , or rather party strength , which might have accrued to you by fraternizing with the North Lancashire Conservatives , and their clubbing associates . You are so satisfied that you are a Hercules , that you determine to be Hercules without a club , even when it is presented to your grasp . You will be independent and original even in your mode of abandoning the weapon . It was thrown aside by him of old that he might handle the distaff of Omphale ; you do not forego it to spin with the jennies of Peel . How your threads may
eventually intertwist remains to be seen . At present you keep to your own line , deeming it sufficient to support you as a statesman . Whether you be right or not , I have no occasion to discuss . But as credit has been claimed for your letter , and seems to be assumed by yourself , on the ground of your being a middleman
in politics , I deem it not amiss to investigate that claim , which I take to be an exceedingly fallacious one . The ancient rule was to hang the neutrals : those who are most addicted to extremes will scarcel y raise them into oracles , merely out of opposition to this portion of the wisdom of our ancestors .
There are rarely more than two sides to a great question . All the complications and cross lights of society still leave only the true and the false , the just and the unjust , the useful and the pernicious . Those who are in either of these extremes niay be wrong ; those who are in neither of them cannot be rig ht . The inducement to compromise is generally an indistinct perception of the abstract merits of the case , combined with an equally indistinct notion of practical results . It is the refuge of arbitrators in a perplexity , who ' split the difference , ' with the certainty of thereby doing injustice . The inconsistency which commonly characterizes middle courses in politics , shows their adoption to be the result either of an unsound political philosophy , or of unsoundness , logical or moral , in the application of that philosophy . For instance , your
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A Letter To Lord Stanley On Conservative And Reform Associations.
A LETTER TO LORD STANLEY ON CONSERVATIVE AND REFORM ASSOCIATIONS .
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No . 103 . 2 K
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 1, 1835, page 437, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2647/page/1/
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