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 to be asking simply, What is the true philosophy of the political creeds at issue? He was unconsciously asking. On what side are my really deepest sympathies? The last question might be put thus: A Cumberland 'statesman' could develop into a Girondin (or what he took to be a Girondin) by simply widening his sympathies. That might be a case of natural development, involving no shock or laceration of old ties; but, could he continue the process and grow into a Jacobin? That involved a strain upon his patriotism, painful but not absolutely coercive. He could manage to desire the defeat of British armies, and all the more readily when the British Government was alienating him by trying to suppress freedom of thought and language at home. Still, this position required an effort; and another trial was behind it. Could the 'statesman' sympathise with men who used such weapons as massacre and the guillotine? To that, of course, there could be only one answer—Wordsworth had been wayward and independent, but never a rebel against society or morality. He was thoroughly in harmony with the simple, homely society from which he sprang. Violence and confiscation were abhorrent to him. 'I recoil,'