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
[Well, this is the very thing which, in the next sentence, he shews has
actually taken place.] ‘And _from whom_ are we to infer this ultimate
submission to its rival? Has the tyrant loosed his chains?—has he
relaxed his hold, or flung aside the whip of scorpions? No! it is
_France herself which has given way_. It is the French nation who
gradually recede from the rest of the civilized world.’ That is, it is
France who, contrary to Vetus’s argument, in receding gradually from the
rest of the civilized world, has been identified with the government,
and become that whip of scorpions in the hands of Bonaparte, which has
been the scourge and dread of all Europe. It is thus that our author
always defeats himself. He is fond of abstruse reasoning and deep
investigation in exact proportion to his incapacity for them—as eunuchs
are amorous through impotence!
But though he fails in his argument, the moral is not less instructive.
He teaches us on what grounds a genuine English patriot goes to war, and
on what terms he will make peace. A patriot of this exclusive stamp, who
is troubled with none of the symptoms of a ‘spurious and mawkish
beneficence,’ threatens France with the restoration of the Bourbons,
only to throw her into the convulsions of anarchy, and withdraws that
kindly interference, only that she may sink into the more fatal lethargy
of despotism. It is the same consistent patriot who kindles the fires of
La Vendée, and whenever it suits his purpose, is no longer borne away by
the ‘torrent of royal, flaming, unreflecting sympathies!’ It is the same
tried friend of his country, who carries on a twenty years’ war for the
preservation of our trade and manufactures, and when they are mentioned
as inducements for peace, disdains ‘all gross, commercial calculations.’
It is the same conscientious politician, who at one time makes war for
the support of social order, and the defence of our holy religion;—who,
at another, hails the disappearance of ‘the last glimmering of education
among a people grown old in arts and letters,’ and who rejoices ‘to see
the Christian religion made studiously contemptible by the poverty and
debasement of its professors!’ It is the same true patriot, the same
Vetus, who ‘beholds with unmingled joy, the growth and accumulation of a
savage despotism, which is to crush and bow down France under our
feet;’—who holds ‘the whip of scorpions over her head;’—who ‘arms a
scorching tyranny with sweeping scimitar and consuming fire’ against
her;—who pushes her headlong down ‘the yawning gulf of irretrievable
destruction;’ it is the same Vetus, who, suddenly recovering all the
severity of justice, and all the tenderness of humanity, makes a piteous
outcry about ‘the dreadful sufferings we have endured,’ in attempting to
heap coals of fire on our adversary, demands the payment of ‘two hundred
millions of debt, in which her government have wantonly involved us,’
complains of our being ‘driven to beggary and want’ in this unnatural
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