Our Britain seems as of it, but not in it;
In a great pool a swan’s nest. Prithee think
There’s livers out of Britain.’
In all national disputes, it is common to appeal to the numbers on your side as decisive on the point. If every body in England thought the late war right, every body in France thought it wrong. There were ten millions on one side of the question, (or rather of the water), and thirty millions on the other side. That’s all. I remember some one arguing, in justification of our ministers interfering on that occasion, ‘That governments would not go to war for nothing;’ to which I answered, Then they could not go to war at all, for, at that rate, neither of them could be in the wrong, and yet both of them must be in the right, which was absurd. The only meaning of these vulgar nicknames and party-distinctions, where they are urged most violently and confidently, is, that others differ from you in some particular or other, (whether it be opinion, dress, clime, complexion), which you highly disapprove of, forgetting, that, by the same rule, they have the very same right to be offended at you because you differ from them. Those who have reason on their side do not make the most obstinate and furious appeals to prejudice and abusive language. I know but of one exception to this general rule, and that is, where the things that excite disgust are of such a kind that they cannot well be gone into without offence to decency and good manners; but it is equally certain in this case, that those who are most shocked at the things are not those who are most forward to apply the names. A person will not be fond of repeating a charge, or adverting to a subject, that inflicts a wound on his own feelings, even for the sake of wounding the feelings of another. A man should be very sure that he himself is not what he has always in his mouth. The greatest prudes have been often accounted the greatest hypocrites, and a satirist is at best but a suspicious character. The loudest and most unblushing invectives against vice and debauchery will as often proceed from a desire to inflame and pamper the passions of the writer, by raking into a nauseous subject, as from a wish to excite virtuous indignation against it in the public mind, or to reform the individual. To familiarise the mind to gross ideas is not the way to increase your own or the general repugnance to them. But, to return to the subject of nicknames.
The use of this figure of speech is, that it excites a strong idea without requiring any proof. It is a shorthand compendious mode of getting at a conclusion, and never troubling yourself or any body else with the formalities of reasoning or the dictates of common sense. It is superior to all evidence, for it does not rest upon any, and operates with the greatest force and certainty in proportion to the utter want of probability. Belief is only a strong impression, and the malignity or extravagance of the accusation passes for a proof of the crime. ‘Brevity is the soul of wit;’ and of all eloquence a nickname is the most concise, and of all arguments the most unanswerable. It gives carte blanche to the imagination, throws the reins on the neck of the passions, and suspends the use of the understanding altogether. It does not stand upon ceremony, on the nice distinctions of right and wrong. It does not wait the slow processes of reason, or stop to unravel the web of sophistry. It takes every thing for granted that serves for nourishment for the spleen. It is instantaneous in its operations. There is nothing to interpose between the effect and it. It is passion without proof, and action without thought,—‘the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations.’ It does not, as Mr. Burke expresses it, ‘leave the will puzzled, undecided, and sceptical in the moment of action.’ It is a word and a blow.
‘Bring but a Scotsman frae his hill,
Clap in his cheek a Highland gill,
Say such is royal George’s will,
And there’s the foe,
He has nae thought but how to kill