[The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper by Martin Farquhar Tupper]@TWC D-Link book
The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper

CHAPTER XIX
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For other matters, the higher born, the better bred, the more classically educated, and the more extensively possessed of moneys and lands our honest-spoken Tory may be, ten to one the more is he afflicted with this rabbies: and his mad propensities become positively criminal, when, as a magistrate or a captain of dragoons, he thinks himself bound in honourable duty to quell the enthusiasm of some disinterested patriots, whose innocent wishes rise no higher than to subvert the existing order of things, to secure for themselves a reasonable share of parks, palaces, and pocket-money, and (as the very justifiable means for so happy an end) manfully to sacrifice in the temple of Freedom the rogues who would object to being robbed, and the tyrants who would be bloody enough to fight for life and liberty.
A rabid Tory--you see it is a pet name of mine--feels no little contempt for a squeezable character; and he is well assured, from history as well as on his own conviction, that the noble army of martyrs lived and died upon his principles: whereas the retrograde regiment of cowards, whom the wisdom of providing for personal safety has in battle induced to run away, _relictis non bene parmulis_--the clamorous cohort of bullies, whom the necessities of impending castigation have sensibly induced to eat their words--the volunteer company of light-heeled swindlers, whom nature instructs that they must live, and honesty has neglected to inform how--every one, in short, whose grand maxim (_quocunque modo rem_) is temporizing expediency, and with whom the cogent argument "you shall" has more force than the silly conscience-whisper of "you ought,"-- contributes to swell the band which the professor of Toryism, the abstracted follower of principles and not of men, has the honour of beholding in the angle of his diagram, inscribed "contradictory." Not that your true Tory believes so ill of _all_ his adversaries; there are some few geese among the cranes; an Abdiel here and there, who has long felt irksome in the host, but for false shame is there still; sundry men, having ambitious or illuminated wives, and too amiable, or too prudent, to attempt a breach of peace at home; some thronging the opposite benches, because their fathers and grandfathers topographically occupied those same seats--a decent reason, supposing similarity of places and names, to insure similarity of principles and practice; and some--I dislike them not for honesty--confessing and upholding the republican extremes, upon a belief that all short of these are but an unsatisfactory part of a great and glorious experiment.

Now, the rabid Tory prefers an open foe to a false friend; but your go-between, your midway sneak, your shuttlecock, your perjured miser who will swear to any thing for an extra per centage--all these are his detestation: and although he will readily acknowledge some good and some wise in the adversary's ranks, still he recognises that tri-coloured banner as the one under which all naturally fight, who are poor in both worlds--with neither money nor religion.

Thus much of my reasonable rabies.
One may hate principles without hating men; and for this sentiment we have the Highest Example.

Things are either right or wrong; if right, do; if wrong, forbear: nothing can be absolutely indifferent, and to do a little actual evil in order to compass great hypothetical good, is false morality, and, therefore bad government.

Why should not honesty and plain-dealing be as inviolable publicly as privately?
Why be guilty of such mean self-stultification as to say one thing and do another?
It is criminal in rulers to give a helping hand to the evil which they deem unavoidable; let them, in preference, cease to rule, and imitate the noble threat of that king for half a century whose conscience bade him abdicate rather than do wrong.
But to come abruptly on a title-page: often-times, in reading deleterious leading articles in wrong-sided newspapers, have I longed to set before the world of faction A MANUAL OF GOOD POLITICS, which indeed has already been half-done, if decently begun be synonymous.


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