And there was nothing in the character or in the acquirements
of his mind to counteract that influence. Mr. Calhoun was not a
student; he probed nothing to the bottom; his information on all
subjects was small in quantity, and second-hand in quality. Nor was he
a patient thinker. Any stray fact or notion that he met with in his
hasty desultory reading, which chanced to give apparent support to a
favorite theory or paradox of his own, he seized upon eagerly, paraded
it in triumph, but pondered it little; while the weightiest facts
which controverted his opinion he brushed aside without the slightest
consideration. His mind was as arrogant as his manners were courteous.
Every one who ever conversed with him must remember his positive,
peremptory, unanswerable "_Not at all, not at all_" whenever one of
his favorite positions was assailed. He was wholly a special pleader;
he never summed up the testimony. We find in his works no evidence
that he had read the masters in political economy; not even Adam
Smith, whose reputation was at its height during the' first half of
his public life.
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