It is rather
that they will not face the labour of saying in their own tongue what
they have to say, but cover it up and conceal it in commonplace, so
that we get, not what they themselves behold and what they think, but
a hieroglyphic or symbol invented as the representative of a certain
class of objects or emotions, and as inefficient to represent a
particular object or emotion as x or y to set forth the relation of
Hamlet to Ophelia. He would even exercise his children in this art
of the higher truthfulness, and would purposely make them give him an
account of something which he had seen and they had seen, checking
them the moment he saw a lapse from originality. Such was the Tory
correspondent of the Gazette.
I ought to say, by way of apology for him, that in his day it
signified little or nothing whether Tory or Whig was in power.
Politics had not become what they will one day become, a matter of
life or death, dividing men with really private love and hate. What
a mockery controversy was in the House! How often I have seen
members, who were furious at one another across the floor, quietly
shaking hands outside, and inviting one another to dinner! I have
heard them say that we ought to congratulate ourselves that
parliamentary differences do not in this country breed personal
animosities.
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