Such schemes
are not like propositions coming from a man of fifty years' wear and
tear amongst mankind. They seem rather such as ought to be expected
from those grand compounders in politics who shorten the road to their
degrees in the state and have a certain inward fanatical assurance and
illumination upon all subjects, upon the credit of which one of
their doctors has thought fit, with great applause, and greater
success, to caution the Assembly not to attend to old men or to any
persons who valued themselves upon their experience. I suppose all the
ministers of state must qualify and take this test- wholly abjuring
the errors and heresies of experience and observation. Every man has
his own relish. But I think if I could not attain to the wisdom, I
would at least preserve something of the stiff and peremptory
dignity of age. These gentlemen deal in regeneration; but at any price
I should hardly yield my rigid fibers to be regenerated by them, nor
begin, in my grand climacteric, to squall in their new accents or to
stammer, in my second cradle, the elemental sounds of their
barbarous metaphysics.* Si isti mihi largiantur ut repuerascam, et
in eorum cunis vagiam, valde recusem!
* This war minister has since quitted the school and resigned
his office.
The imbecility of any part of the puerile and pedantic system,
which they call a constitution, cannot be laid open without
discovering the utter insufficiency and mischief of every other part
with which it comes in contact, or that bears any the remotest
relation to it.
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