The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 03 (of 12)Hazlitt, William
General
The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 03 (of 12)
Hazlitt, William
English essays -- 19th century
We formerly gave the Editor of _The Times_ a definition of a true
Jacobin, as one ‘who had seen the evening star set over a poor man’s
cottage, and connected it with the hope of human happiness.’ The
city-politician laughed this pastoral definition to scorn, and nicknamed
the person who had very innocently laid it down, ‘the true Jacobin who
writes in the Chronicle,’—a nickname by which we profited as little as
he has by our Illustrations. Since that time our imagination has grown a
little less romantic: so we will give him another, which he may chew the
cud upon at his leisure. A true Jacobin, then, is one who does not
believe in the divine right of kings, or in any other _alias_ for it,
which implies that they reign ‘in contempt of the will of the people’;
and he holds all such kings to be tyrants, and their subjects slaves. To
be a true Jacobin, a man must be a good hater; but this is the most
difficult and the least amiable of all the virtues: the most trying and
the most thankless of all tasks. The love of liberty consists in the
hatred of tyrants. The true Jacobin hates the enemies of liberty as they
hate liberty, with all his strength and with all his might, and with all
his heart and with all his soul. His memory is as long, and his will as
strong as theirs, though his hands are shorter. He never forgets or
forgives an injury done to the people, for tyrants never forget or
forgive one done to themselves. There is no love lost between them. He
does not leave them the sole benefit of their old motto, _Odia in longum
jaciens quæ conderet auctaque promeret_. He makes neither peace nor
truce with them. His hatred of wrong only ceases with the wrong. The
sense of it, and of the barefaced assumption of the right to inflict it,
deprives him of his rest. It stagnates in his blood. It loads his heart
with aspics’ tongues, deadly to venal pens. It settles in his brain—it
puts him beside himself. Who will not feel all this for a girl, a toy, a
turn of the dice, a word, a blow, for any thing relating to himself; and
will not the friend of liberty feel as much for mankind? The love of
truth is a passion in his mind, as the love of power is a passion in the
minds of others. Abstract reason, unassisted by passion, is no match for
power and prejudice, armed with force and cunning. The love of liberty
is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves. The
one is real; the other often but an empty dream. Hence the defection of
modern apostates. While they are looking about, wavering and distracted,
in pursuit of universal good or universal fame, the eye of power is upon
them, like the eye of Providence, that neither slumbers nor sleeps, and
that watches but for one object, its own good. They take no notice of it
at first, but it is still upon them, and never off them. It at length
catches theirs, and they bow to its sacred light; and like the poor
fluttering bird, quail beneath it, are seized with a vertigo, and drop
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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