is at home in the crooked mazes of rotten boroughs, is not baffled
by Scotch law, and can follow the meaning of one of Mr. Canning's
speeches. With so many resources, with such variety and solidity of
information, Mr. Brougham is rather a powerful and alarming, than an
effectual debater. In so many details (which he himself goes through
with unwearied and unshrinking resolution) the spirit of the question
is lost to others who have not the same voluntary power of attention
or the same interest in hearing that he has in speaking; the original
impulse that urged him forward is forgotten in so wide a field, in so
interminable a career. If he can, others _cannot_ carry all he knows
in their heads at the same time; a rope of circumstantial evidence
does not hold well together, nor drag the unwilling mind along with
it (the willing mind hurries on before it, and grows impatient and
absent)--he moves in an unmanageable procession of facts and proofs,
instead of coming to the point at once--and his premises (so anxious
is he to proceed on sure and ample grounds) overlay and block up his
conclusion, so that you cannot arrive at it, or not till the first
fury and shock of the onset is over. The ball, from the too great
width of the _calibre_ from which it is sent, and from striking
against such a number of hard, projecting points, is almost
spent before it reaches its destination. He keeps a ledger or a
debtor-and-creditor account between the government and the country,
posts so much actual crime, corruption, and injustice against so much
contingent advantage or sluggish prejudice, and at the bottom of the
page brings in the balance of indignation and contempt, where it
is due. But people are not to be _calculated into_ contempt or
indignation on abstract grounds; for however they may submit to this
process where their own interests are concerned, in what regards the
public good we believe they must see and feel instinctively, or not
at all. There is (it is to be lamented) a good deal of froth as well