"There is a certain kind and degree of intellect in which words take root, but into which things have no power to penetrate. A mediocrity of talent, with a certain slenderness of moral constitution, is the soil that produces the most brilliant specimens of successful prize-essayists and Greek epigrammatists. It should not be forgotten that the least respectable character among modern politicians was the cleverest boy at Eton."
William Hazlitt.
Heaven forbid than anybody remotely like Canning could ever again be PM of this country.
4 comments:
For five years England had been guided by the genius of Canning, and seldom have so much brilliancy in so much wisdom combined to produce such happy results. The constitutional medium through which that genius worked was the loyal friendship of the prime minister, Lord Liverpool.
Trevelyan, British History in the 19th Century: 1782–1901 (1922) p. 214
Nothing good could come of the spiritual descendants of those who put Billy The Dutchman on the throne. They, like their ideological forebears, suffer from endemic moral corruption.
AvB.
It is fervently to be hoped that he is the worst of this parcel of rogues. To contemplate his inevitable replacement being less suitable is disheartening.
Father,
I am not British, but I understood and appreciate the comment.
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