Jamaica. What then can Mr. Carlyle see in them deserving thus far of his reprobation, or undeserving thus far of his applause? For we all remember what largesse of full-mouthed obloquy, What wealth of free-handed disdain, was lavished from a quarter so fruitful of perennial insult on the 'small loud group or knot of rabid Nigger-Philanthropists, barking furiously in the gutter,' and headed by John Stuart Mill, who ventured to question the excellence of such new discredited methods of government as were applied not long since to his victims by a satrap of English birth. It cannot be tyranny, it cannot be torture, it cannot be massacre to which Mr. Carlyle now objects. His daring has always approved itself as great as even his genius, as unquestionable as even his honesty; but there is a point at which daring, like all other human qualities, loses its virtue and changes its likeness and foregoes its name. And the repudiation in any one case of a principle avowed as righteous and cherished as sacred in every case but one is usually and naturally considered as evidence of a quality which cannot accurately be defined as mere daring. We cannot therefore insult the great age and the great character of Mr. Carlyle by the supposition that he could now desire to come forward at the long last as a preacher of philanthropy or mercy, as a pleader for the laws of equity or the rights of man, as a champion of all things or of any one thing which it has been a main object of his lifelong energy to denounce alike in the rare moments of its triumph and through the
Page:Note of an English republican on the Muscovite crusade (IA noteofenglishrep00swiniala).pdf/7
ON THE MUSCOVITE CRUSADE.
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