Every tory intellect on
earth is pleased to discourse in that way of the labors of the only
men who greatly help their species,--the patient elaborators of truth.
A caterpillar, as we learn from this fable, had crawled slowly over a
fence, which a gallant horseman took at a single leap. "Stop," says
the caterpillar,
"you are too flighty; you want connection and continuity; it
took me an hour to get over; you can't be as sure as I am
that you have really overcome the difficulty, and are indeed
over the fence."
To which, of course, the gallant horseman makes the expected
contemptuous reply. This is precisely in the spirit of Carlyle's
sneers at the political economists,--the men who are not content to
sit down and howl in this wilderness of a modern world, but bestir
themselves to discover methods by which it can be made less a
wilderness.
There is so much truth in the doctrines of the original States' Rights
party,--the party of Jefferson, Madison, and Patrick Henry,--that a
very commonplace man, who learned his politics in that school, is able
to make a respectable figure in the public counsels.
Pages:
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394