LXXV. When Effie Deans becomes a fine lady, do we not look back with regret to the time when she was the poor faded lily of St. Leonards, the outcast and condemned prisoner? So, should the cause of liberty and mankind ever become triumphant, instead of militant, may we not heave a sigh of regret over the past, and think that poor suffering human nature, with all its wrongs and insults, trodden into the earth like a vile weed, was a more interesting topic for reflection? We need not be much alarmed for the event, even if this should be so; for the way to Utopia is not ‘the primrose path of dalliance;’ and at the rate we have hitherto gone on, it must be many thousand years off!
LXXVI. Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols—it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.
LXXVII. The Devil was a great loss in the preternatural world. He was always something to fear and to hate. He supplied the antagonist powers of the imagination, and the arch of true religion hardly stands firm without him. Mr. Irving may perhaps bring him into fashion again.
LXXVIII. Perhaps the evils arising from excessive inequality in a state would be sufficiently obviated if property were divided equally among the surviving children. But it is said it would be impossible to make a law for this purpose, under any circumstances or with any qualifications, because the least interference with the disposal of property would be striking at its existence and at the very root of all property. And yet this objection is urged in those very countries, where the law of primogeniture (intended to keep it in disproportionate masses, and setting aside the will of the testator altogether) is established as an essential part of the law of the land. So blind is reason, where passion or prejudice intervenes!
LXXIX. Kings, who set up for Gods upon earth, should be treated as madmen, which one half of them, or as idiots, which the other half, really are.
LXXX. Tyrants are at all times mad with the lust of power.
LXXXI. Reformers are naturally speculative people; and speculative people are effeminate and inactive. They brood over ideas, till realities become almost indifferent to them. They talk when they should act, and are distracted with nice doubts and distinctions, while the enemy is thundering at the gates, and the bomb-shells are bursting at their feet. They hold up a paper Constitution as their shield, which the sword pierces through, and drinks their heart’s blood! They are cowards, too, at bottom; and dare not strike a decisive blow, lest it should be retaliated. While they merely prate of moderation and the public good, they think, if the worst comes to the worst, there may still be a chance of retreat for them, hoping to screen themselves behind their imbecility. They are not like their opponents, whose all is at stake, and who are urged on by instinctive fury and habitual cunning to defend it: the common good is too remote a speculation to call forth any violent passions or personal sacrifices; and if it should be lost, it is as fine a topic as ever to harangue and lament about. Patriots are, by the constitution of their minds, poets; and an Elegy on the fall of Liberty is as interesting to hear or to recite as an Ode on its most triumphant success. They who let off Ferdinand the other day, confiding in the promises of a traitor and in the liberality of a despot, were greater hypocrites to themselves than he was.
LXXXII. In the late quarrel about Liberty, upwards of five millions of men have been killed, and one king.
LXXXIII. The people (properly speaking) are not a herd of slaves just let loose, or else goaded on, like blind drudges, to execute the behests of their besotted taskmasters; but the band of free citizens, taught to know their rights, and prepared to exercise them.
LXXXIV. The people are the slaves of ignorance and custom; the friends of the people are the dupes of reason and humanity. Power stops at nothing but its own purposes.