Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/583

 correct principles. The explanation of all this rancour is, perhaps, to be sought for in the interested motives with which political opinions of every cast are usually taken up and maintained. Dr. Darwall was uninfluenced by any such motives; he was a warm and disinterested patriot; but, at the same time, as may be supposed from what has already been said, a zealous Tory; and such being the party he espoused, it was in his character to become one of the most open and fearless assertors of sentiments which, to persons of a different way of thinking, appeared to betray some indifference to the happiness of mankind. His benevolence, I doubt not, would have prevented him, if he had possessed the power, from acting entirely up to the opinions he avowed: but his benevolence was more dependent on the uprightness of his mind, and his sense of duty, than on warmth of feeling. The frequent spectacle of popular processions in such a town as Birmingham; perhaps an unpleasant personal experience of such assemblies; a strong distrust of many popular leaders; a constitutional apprehension of whatever threatened to interrupt the order of society; gradually ripened what had at first been little more than an attachment to the principles of a party in which he had many friends, into a zeal for every form of power, wherever exercised against the people, and a want of sympathy with any nations in which the people strove to throw off a tyranny, however intolerable. It was not that he took any delight in the sufferings of mankind, but he doubted their being emancipated from them by the struggles which others viewed with enthusiasm. In such