''Tis impossible for one who has the least knowledge and regard for his country's interest to look into a coffee-house without the greatest concern. Industry and application are the true and genuine honour of a trading city; where these are everywhere visible all is well. Whenever I see a false thirst for knowledge in my own countrymen, I am sorry they ever learnt to read. I would not be thought an enemy to literature (being, indeed, a very learned person myself), but when I observe a worthy trader, without any natural malice of his own, sucking in the poison of popularity, and boiling with indignation against an administration which the pamphleteer informs him is very corrupt, I am grieved that ever Machiavel, Hobbes, Sidney, Filmer, and the more illustrious moderns, including myself, appeared in human nature.
'Idleness is the parent of innumerable vices, and detraction is generally the first, though not immediately the most mischievous, that is born of it. The mind of man is of such an ill make that it relishes defamation much better than applause; so every writer who makes his court to the multitude must sacrifice his superiors to his patrons.
'That there is a very great and indefeasible authority in the people, or Commons of Great Britain, everyone allows. Power is ever naturally and rightfully founded in those who have anything to risk; and this power delegated into the hands of Parliament, it there becomes legally absolute, and the people are, by their very constitution, obliged to a passive obedience.
'Nothing is better known than this, nothing on all sides more generally allowed, and one would imagine nothing could sooner silence the clamour of little statesmen and politicians; that jargon of public-spiritedness, which wastes so much of the time of the busy part of our countrymen. The misfortune is that though everyone (who is not indeed crack-brained with the love of his country) will own that the populace, by having delegated the right of inspecting public affairs to others, have no authority to be troublesome about it themselves, yet everyone excepts himself from the multitude, and imagines that his own particular talent for public business ought to exempt him from so severe a restraint. Hence arises the great demand for newspapers and coffee. Happy is it for the nation and for the Government that the distemper and the medicine are found at the same place, and the blue-apron officer who presents you with a newspaper, to heat the brain and disturb the understanding, is ready the same moment to apply those composing specificks, a dish and a pipe. Otherwise, what revolutions and abdications might we not expect to see? I should not be surprised to hear that a general officer in the trained-bands had run stark staring mad out of a coffee-house at noon day, declared for a Free Parliament, and proclaimed my Lord Mayor King of England.'
CHAPTER XIV.
THACKERAY'S RESEARCHES AMONGST THE WRITINGS OF THE EARLY ESSAYISTS—Continued.
Characteristic Passages from the Works of The 'Humourists,' from Thackeray's Library, illustrated by the Author's hand, with Marginal Sketches suggested by the Text—The 'World,' 1753—Introduction—Its Difference from the Earlier Essays—Distinguished Authors who contributed to the 'World'—Paragraphs and Pencillings.