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
see the same gloomy prospect of abject wretchedness and hopeless
desolation spread out for himself and his species. They who bow to
thrones and hate mankind may here feast their eyes with blight, mildew,
the blue pestilence and glittering poison of slavery, ‘bogs, dens, and
shades of death—a universe of death.’ This is that true moral atheism,
the equal blasphemy against God and man, the sin against the Holy Ghost,
that lowest deep of debasement and despair to which there is no lower
deep. He who saves me from this conclusion, who makes a mock of this
doctrine, and sets at nought its power, is to me not less than the God
of my idolatry, for he has left one drop of comfort in my soul. The
plague-spot has not tainted me quite; I am not leprous all over, the lie
of Legitimacy does not fix its mortal sting in my inmost soul, nor, like
an ugly spider, entangle me in its slimy folds; but is kept off from me,
and broods on its own poison. He who did this for me, and for the rest
of the world, and who alone could do it, was Buonaparte. He withstood
the inroads of this new Jaggernaut, this foul Blatant Beast, as it
strode forward to its prey over the bodies and minds of a whole people,
and put a ring in its nostrils, breathing flame and blood, and led it in
triumph, and played with its crowns and sceptres, and wore them in its
stead, and tamed its crested pride, and made it a laughing-stock and a
mockery to the nations. He, one man, did this, and as long as he did
this, (how, or for what end, is nothing to the magnitude of this mighty
question) he saved the human race from the last ignominy, and that foul
stain that had so long been intended, and was at last, in an evil hour
and by evil hands, inflicted on it. He put his foot upon the neck of
kings, who would have put their yoke upon the necks of the people: he
scattered before him with fiery execution, millions of hired slaves, who
came at the bidding of their masters to deny the right of others to be
free. The monument of greatness and of glory he erected, was raised on
ground forfeited again and again to humanity—it reared its majestic
front on the ruins of the shattered hopes and broken faith of the common
enemies of mankind. If he could not secure the freedom, peace, and
happiness of his country, he made her a terror to those who by sowing
civil dissension and exciting foreign wars, would not let her enjoy
those blessings. They who had trampled upon Liberty could not at least
triumph in her shame and her despair, but themselves became objects of
pity and derision. Their determination to persist in extremity of wrong
only brought on themselves repeated defeat, disaster, and dismay: the
accumulated aggressions their infuriated pride and disappointed malice
meditated against others, returned in just and aggravated punishment
upon themselves: they heaped coals of fire upon their own heads; they
drank deep and long, in gall and bitterness, of the poisoned chalice
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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