though they were called abusive, allowance should be made where the provocation was so great. They are witty, rather than abusive, for wit sanctifies harsh terms, whatever puny critics may say. That which would be merely vulgar in a vapid writing, becomes wit when genius puts the point to it. Pope, Dryden, and Swift, have used hard words, and in their day were called abusive, too, but their very epithets are admired in ours. Wit can take liberties that dulness must not.
To say that there was no error in the writings of a man beginning his career at 33 years of age, having been born under a roof where knowledge was not to be gained, educated in a barrack, and always without a guide, would be impertinence; but he who says that a man thus qualified, and with a mind made by nature of the most vehement kind, is to answer rigidly for every error in giving his thoughts to the public once during every week for the space of nearly 40 years, demands that perfection of mind, that abundance of knowledge, and that foresight into events, which no man has hitherto shown. In “Porcupine’s” writings then, he always assumes that the English Government, both in its form and in its practices, is the most perfect of governments; but he did it while living at three thousand miles from that Government, and in a country where casual travellers now find it extremely difficult to preserve the republican notions with which they start from home. In the early stages of his political life, he was both scholar and teacher, and therefore, to forbid any change of opinion, would have been to forbid him to make progress. He always owns his changes of opinion, and gives the reason, following the rule laid down by Lord Chatham, who was himself accused of inconsistency:—“The extent and complication of political questions is such, that no man can justly be ashamed of having been sometimes mistaken in his determinations; and the propensity of the human mind to confidence and friendship is so great, that every man, however cautious, however sagacious, or however experienced, is exposed sometimes to the artifices of interest, and the delusions of hypocrisy; but it is the duty, and ought to be the honour, of every man to own his mistake, whenever he discovers it, and to warn others against those frauds which have been too successfully practised upon himself.” [Life, &c., vol. 1., p. 42.] And if the politicians of our day were to be tried upon this point, what havoc might be made! Indeed one has but to read the debates of the Parliament for examples.
A man who changes his opinion because he now knows more than he did, is not only not to blame for the change, but is dishonest if he does not avow it. Indeed, it can scarcely be called a change of the mind; it is becoming possessed of more information. The mind is not active, shifting of itself; it is passive, and receives impressions. It is the conduct which changes; and unless it can be shown that change of conduct arises from corrupt or other unworthy motives, a change of it is no crime. Something may, indeed, be said of the temerity of the man who speaks with great confidence on any topic before his knowledge and experience warrant it; but who is to decide when a man is to begin? Lord Grey, in abandoning his own famous Petition of 1793, said that a difference had arisen between his “present sentiments and his former impressions,” and he excused it by saying that “he, indeed, must have either been prematurely wise, or must have learned little by experience, who, after a lapse of twenty years, can look upon a subject of this nature” (Reform) “in all respects in precisely the same light” (Speech on the State of the Nation, 1810). Mr. Hobhouse accused Lord Grey of “apostacy” in thus abandoning short Parliaments, and “electors as numerous as possible.” [Defence of the People, pp. 62, 183], but even he has since joined Lord Grey’s Government, which not only refused to give us that radical reform for which both had so ably contended, but denied even the pittance of triennial Parliaments! Now these changes of conduct take place in men who have the least possible excuse for any change at all. They are bred, for the most part, under the roofs of statesmen; they are carefully educated for statesmen; they have every chance which association with clever and experienced men can give them; they have all the means afforded to them of gaining the best information; and God knows they have due leisure to imbibe precepts, digest their reading, and to reflect on what they hear and read; and yet we find them change! Lord John Russell, in 1823, wrote a solemn book upon the Constitution, and, of course, weighed every principle, and almost every word that it contains, before he put it forth. His Lordship, in that book, admits the venality and mischiefs of rotten boroughs, but concludes that it would be unwise to make a change; questions whether the remedy would not be worse than the disease; and yet, in seven years after, he applied the famous “Russell purge,” which cleared the body-politic of the baneful obstruction. In another part of the same book, Lord John emphatically inveighs against the unconstitutional practices of the Tory Government, in proportioning our standing army to those of foreign powers; and yet, in 1833, he sat quietly by, while Sir John Hobhouse, the Secretary at War, brought in his Army Estimates, and told the House of Commons, that “when gentlemen were called upon to vote how many troops we should keep up, it was most necessary and proper that they should be put in possession of the exact amount of the forces maintained by other powers;” and he made no remark even, much less did he give any opposition, when Sir John Hobhouse had finished reading his Tables of the relative numbers kept up in each of the continental states, as compared with our own.
Do we mean to apply this, then, and say, “because these statesmen have done these things, another has a right to do so?” Not at all. It would be mere recrimination, which is a bad defence; but the fact is, that more is made of it in one case than in the other, which is unjust. The able writing of Mr. Cobbett caused this, no doubt. He produced effect, and that caused hostility. Unable to answer him, his opponents always tried to lessen his effect, by showing that he once thought with them. Indeed, before he had had time to change his opinions at all, they made use of his name, to push into notice their own absurdities, and published as his what he had never written. He complains of this in Porcupine (vol. 4, p. 19). And when his views and conduct had changed, then they had nothing so formidable for him as his former self. The same might be done by every other man who has lived long, and written or spoken much, provided always he have been of sufficient importance to make it worth the trouble. In short, great changes of views and conduct must always happen in times of change; and he who would hold, as an unqualified proposition, that a man’s views are never to change, is not above contending that a doctor shall not change his medicines to suit the changed condition of his patient. There are men whose pride and boast it is, that they have never changed in their lives; that they have always adhered to one notion. A finger-post can say as much; for, with equal merit and more modesty, it always stands in the same place where it was first planted, and “most consistently” says the same thing; but, not unfrequently, in these improving times, when roads are turned and shortened, we see its awkward arm flying off in the wrong direction, promulgating a mischievous delusion, though still and for ever the very type of “consistency” in gesture and in language.
Porcupine’s forcible writings were soon known to the Government in England. He received invitations from some of its ablest writers and partizans to return home, and he left America for England in 1800. But, here we must remark, that even the English agents of the Government in America found him too self-willed and independent, to venture to give him decided and open approbation. He mentions (Porcupine, vol. 4, p. 63) that, being in a shop, unknown or unobserved, he heard himself characterized by the English consul as “a wild fellow;” and upon this he remarks, in the same page (published in 1796), “I shall only observe, that when the King bestows on me about five hundred pounds sterling a year, perhaps I may become a tame fellow, and hear my master, my friends, and my parents, belied and execrated, without saying a single word in their defence.” Ref 002 It was the same when he came home. Though the Government had discernment enough to see in him a man of great power, and a strong acquisition to any government that could have him for an advocate, it never had him in fact, and never thought it had. He came home at the time above stated, full of that confidence which the success of his writings had naturally given him; he was immediately sought for by the late Mr. Windham, was by him introduced to Mr. Pitt, at a dinner-party, invited to Mr. Windham’s house, was offered a share in the “True Briton” newspaper, with printing-machines and type ready furnished; but refusing this offer, he set up a newspaper called “Porcupine’s Gazette,” which, as it did not suit his fancy, he gave up shortly, and opened a bookseller’s shop in Pall-mall, in partnership with his friend, Mr. John Morgan, an Englishman, with whom he was acquainted in Philadelphia. In this shop he might have made
