Culture; Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century
himself ensnared by his own smooth words. And so, too, when a
Philistine wants to represent his brother Philistines, and [123]
extols the earnest good sense which characterises Manchester, and
supplies the mind, the will, and the power, as the Daily News
eloquently says, requisite for all the great and good things that
have to be done, he intoxicates and deludes himself as well as his
brother Philistines who hear him. But it is true that a Barbarian
often wants the political support of the Philistines; and he
unquestionably, when he flatters the self-love of Philistinism, and
extols, in the approved fashion, its energy, enterprise, and self-
reliance, knows that he is talking clap-trap, and, so to say, puts
his tongue in his cheek. On all matters where Nonconformity and its
catchwords are concerned, this insincerity of Barbarians needing
Nonconformist support, and, therefore, flattering the self-love of
Nonconformity and repeating its catchwords without the least real
belief in them, is very noticeable. When the Nonconformists, in a
transport of blind zeal, threw out Sir James Graham's useful
Education Clauses in 1843, one-half of their parliamentary
representatives, no doubt, who cried aloud against "trampling on the
religious liberty of the Dissenters by taking the money of Dissenters
to teach the tenets of the [124] Church of England," put their tongue
in their cheek while they so cried out. And perhaps there is even a
sort of motion of Mr. Frederic Harrison's tongue towards his cheek
when he talks of the "shriek of superstition," and tells the working-
class that theirs are the brightest powers of sympathy and the
readiest powers of action. But the point on which I would insist is,
that this involuntary tribute to truth and soberness on the part of
certain of our governors and guides never reaches at all the mass of
us governed, to serve as a lesson to us, to abate our self-love, and
to awaken in us a suspicion that our favourite prejudices may be, to
a higher reason, all nonsense. Whatever by-play goes on among the
more intelligent of our leaders, we do not see it; and we are left to
believe that, not only in our own eyes, but in the eyes of our
representative and ruling men, there is nothing more admirable than
our ordinary self, whatever our ordinary self happens to be,--
Barbarian, Philistine, or Populace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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