Winterslow: Essays and Characters Written ThereHazlitt, William
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Winterslow: Essays and Characters Written There
Hazlitt, William
English essays
Fox in his opinions was governed
by facts--Chatham was more influenced by the feelings of others
respecting those facts. Fox endeavoured to find out what the
consequences of any measure would be; Chatham attended more to what
people would think of it. Fox appealed to the practical reason of
mankind; Chatham to popular prejudice. The one repelled the
encroachments of power by supplying his hearers with arguments against
it; the other by rousing their passions and arming their resentment
against those who would rob them of their birthright. Their vehemence
and impetuosity arose also from very different feelings. In Chatham it
was pride, passion, self-will, impatience of control, a determination
to have his own way, to carry everything before him; in Fox it was
pure, good nature, a sincere love of truth, an ardent attachment to
what he conceived to be right; all anxious concern for the welfare and
liberties of mankind. Or if we suppose that ambition had taken a
strong hold of both their minds, yet their ambition was of a very
different kind: in the one it was the love of power, in the other it
was the love of fame. Nothing can be more opposite than these two
principles, both in their origin and tendency. The one originates in a
selfish, haughty, domineering spirit; the other in a social and
generous sensibility, desirous of the love and esteem of others, and
anxiously bent upon gaining merited applause. The one grasps at
immediate power by any means within its reach; the other, if it does
not square its actions by the rules of virtue, at least refers them to
a standard which comes the nearest to it--the disinterested applause
of our country, and the enlightened judgment of posterity. The love of
fame is consistent with the steadiest attachment to principle, and
indeed strengthens and supports it; whereas the love of power, where
this is the ruling passion, requires the sacrifice of principle, at
every turn, and is inconsistent even with the shadow of it. I do not
mean to say that Fox had no love of power, or Chatham no love of fame
(this would be reversing all we know of human nature), but that the
one principle predominated in the one, and the other in the other. My
reader will do me great injustice if he supposes that in attempting to
describe the characters of different speakers by contrasting their
general qualities, I mean anything beyond the _more_ or _less_: but it
is necessary to describe those qualities simply and in the abstract,
in order to make the distinction intelligible. Chatham resented any
attack made upon the cause of liberty, of which he was the avowed
champion, as an indignity offered to himself. Fox felt it as a stain
upon the honour of his country, and as an injury to the rights of his
fellow-citizens. The one was swayed by his own passions and purposes,
with very little regard to the consequences; the sensibility of the
other was roused, and his passions kindled into a generous flame, by a
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