Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/102

 is a painted sepulchre, fair without, but full of ravening and all uncleanness within. "It leaves our passions afloat, and ends with abusing them to crime and misery." It is the watchword of faction, the base pander of avarice and pride, the ready tool in the hands of those who, having no sense of public duty, and disclaiming all pretensions to common humanity, sacrifice the lives of millions to the madness of one, and are eager to offer up their country a devoted victim at the shrine of power, as the miserable slave is yoked to the foul Eastern idol, and crushed beneath its chariot wheels! Thus the hired scribbler of a profligate newspaper sits secure and self-satisfied at his desk—with a venomed word, or a lie that looks like truth, sends thousands of his countrymen to death,—receives his pay, and scribbles on, regardless of the dying and the dead!—And this is patriotism.

The tempora mollia fandi do not belong to Vetus any more than to ourselves. He is, like us, but an uncouth courtier, a rough, sturdy, independent politician, who thinks and speaks for himself. He complains of "the soft nonsense whispered in the higher circles," and gossipped in The Morning Post, in favour of peace. Be it so, for once, that these soft whispers are fraught with ruin, dishonour, and slavery to this country. Yet, if the effeminate and dastard sound once floats through the air, borne on the downy wing of fashion—if it is whispered from the prince to the peer, and from lords to ladies, from ministers to their clerks, from their clerks to the treasury-prints, and from the knaves who write to the dupes who read—even the warning voice of Vetus will not be able to prevent the Syren sound from spreading in gentle murmurs, and "smoothing the raven down of