The Ayrshire Legatees; Or, The Pringle FamilyGalt, John
General
The Ayrshire Legatees; Or, The Pringle Family
Galt, John
Scotland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
I do not mean necessary, as evolved from those
morals and interests, but necessary to the management of political
trusts. I am afraid, however, to insist on this, as the natural
integrity of your own heart, and the dignity of your vocation, will alike
induce you to condemn it as Machiavellian. It is, however, an
observation forced on me by what I have seen here.
It would be invidious, perhaps, to criticise the different candidates for
the representation of London and Westminster very severely. I think it
must be granted, that they are as sincere in their professions as their
opponents, which at least bleaches away much of that turpitude of which
their political conduct is accused by those who are of a different way of
thinking. But it is quite evident, at least to me, that no government
could exist a week, managed with that subjection to public opinion to
which Sir Francis Burdett and Mr. Hobhouse apparently submit; and it is
no less certain, that no government ought to exist a single day that
would act in complete defiance of public opinion.
I was surprised to find Sir Francis Burdett an uncommonly mild and
gentlemanly-looking man. I had pictured somehow to my imagination a dark
and morose character; but, on the contrary, in his appearance,
deportment, and manner of speaking, he is eminently qualified to attract
popular applause. His style of speaking is not particularly oratorical,
but he has the art of saying bitter things in a sweet way. In his
language, however, although pungent, and sometimes even eloquent, he is
singularly incorrect. He cannot utter a sequence of three sentences
without violating common grammar in the most atrocious way; and his
tropes and figures are so distorted, hashed, and broken--such a patchwork
of different patterns, that you are bewildered if you attempt to make
them out; but the earnestness of his manner, and a certain fitness of
character, in his observations a kind of Shaksperian pithiness, redeem
all this. Besides, his manifold blunders of syntax do not offend the
taste of those audiences where he is heard with the most approbation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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