If in Spain too disappointment has nipped our too forward expectations,
yet all is not destroyed that is checked. The crop was perhaps springing
up too rank in the stalk to kern well; and there were, doubtless,
symptoms of the Gallican blight on it. If superstition and despotism
have been suffered to let in their wolvish sheep to trample and eat it
down even to the surface, yet the roots remain alive, and the
second growth may prove the stronger and healthier for the temporary
interruption. At all events, to us heaven has been just and gracious.
The people of England did their best, and have received their rewards.
Long may we continue to deserve it! Causes, which it had been too
generally the habit of former statesmen to regard as belonging to
another world, are now admitted by all ranks to have been the main
agents of our success. “We fought from heaven; the stars in their
courses fought against Sisera.” If then unanimity grounded on moral
feelings has been among the least equivocal sources of our national
glory, that man deserves the esteem of his countrymen, even as patriots,
who devotes his life and the utmost efforts of his intellect to the
preservation and continuance of that unanimity by the disclosure
and establishment of principles. For by these all opinions must be
ultimately tried; and, (as the feelings of men are worthy of regard only
as far as they are the representatives of their fixed opinions,) on the
knowledge of these all unanimity, not accidental and fleeting, must be
grounded. Let the scholar, who doubts this assertion, refer only to
the speeches and writings of Edmund Burke at the commencement of the
American war and compare them with his speeches and writings at the
commencement of the French revolution. He will find the principles
exactly the same and the deductions the same; but the practical
inferences almost opposite in the one case from those drawn in the
other; yet in both equally legitimate and in both equally confirmed by
the results. Whence gained he the superiority of foresight? Whence arose
the striking difference, and in most instances even, the discrepancy
between the grounds assigned by him and by those who voted with him, on
the same questions? How are we to explain the notorious fact, that
the speeches and writings of Edmund Burke are more interesting at the
present day than they were found at the time of their first publication;
while those of his illustrious confederates are either forgotten, or
exist only to furnish proofs, that the same conclusion, which one man
had deduced scientifically, may be brought out by another in consequence
of errors that luckily chanced to neutralize each other. It would be
unhandsome as a conjecture, even were it not, as it actually is, false
in point of fact to attribute this difference to the deficiency
of talent on the part of Burke’s friends, or of experience, or of
historical knowledge. The satisfactory solution is, that Edmund Burke
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