You may have heard
of country-gentlemen, of Radical politics, who had seldom wandered
beyond their paternal acres, (by their paternal acres I mean the acres
they had recently bought,) and who had there grown into a fixed belief
that they were among the noblest and mightiest of the earth, who
thought their parish-clergyman an agreeable man, if he voted at the
county-election for the candidate they supported, though that
candidate's politics were directly opposed to those of the
parson. These individuals, of course, would hold their clergyman as a
disagreeable man, if he held by his own principles, and quite declined
to take their wishes into account in exercising the trust of the
franchise. Now, of course, a nobleman or gentleman of right feeling
would regard the parson as a turncoat and sneak, who should thus deny
his convictions. Yes, there is no doubt that you may make yourself
agreeable to unworthy folk by unworthy means. A late marquis declared
on his dying bed, that a two-legged animal, of human pretensions, who
had acted as his valet, and had aided that hoary reprobate in the
gratification of his peculiar tastes, was "an excellent man." And you
may remember how Burke said, that, as we learn that a certain
Mr.
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