Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/319

 It is infected with the breath of flatterers, and the thoughts of Kings! Let us see how its influence descends:—from the King to the people, to his Ministers first, from the Ministers to both Houses of Parliament, from Lords to Ladies, from the Clergy to the Laity, from the high to the low, from the rich to the poor, and "pierces through the body of the city, country, court"—it is beauty, birth, wit, learning, riches, numbers: it is fear and favour; it has all the splendour that can seduce, all the power that can intimidate, all the interest that can corrupt, on its side; so that the opinion of the King is the opinion of the nation; and if that opinion is not a wise one, hangs like a millstone round its neck, oppresses it like a night-mare, weighs upon it like lead, makes truth a lie, right wrong, converts liberty into slavery, peace into war, plenty to famine, turns the heads of a whole people, and bows their bodies to the earth. "Whosoever shall stumble against this stone, it shall bruise him: but whomsoever it falls upon, it shall grind him to powder." The whisper of a King rounded in the ear of a favourite is re-echoed back in speeches and votes of Parliament, in addresses and resolutions from associations in town and country, drawls from the pulpit, brawls from the bar, resounds like the thunder of a people's voice, roars in the cannon's mouth, and disturbs the peace of nations. The frown of monarchs is like the speck seen in the distant horizon, which soon spreads and darkens the whole hemisphere. Who is there in his senses that can withstand the gathering storm, or oppose himself to this torrent of opinion setting in upon him from the throne and absorbing by degrees every thing in its vortex—undermining every principle of independence, confounding every distinction of the understanding, and obliterating every trace of liberty? To argue against it, is like arguing against the motion of the world with which we are carried along: its influence is as powerful and as imperceptible. To question it, is folly; to resist it, madness. To differ with the opinion of a whole nation, seems as presumptuous as it is unwise: and yet the very circumstance which makes it so uniform,