"[48] It is strange that Sir Walter did not see that
this kind of criticism, so far as it applied at all to such an
experiment as the Reform Bill, was even more in point as a rebuke to
the rashness of the Scotch reformer who hung the first successful
chain-bridge, than to the rashness of the French reformer of reform
who devised an unsuccessful variation on it. The audacity of the first
experiment was much the greater, though the competence of the person
who made it was the greater also. And as a matter of fact, the
political structure against the supposed insecurity of which Sir
Walter was protesting, with all the courage of that dauntless though
dying nature, was made by one who understood his work at least as well
as the Scotch architect. The tramp of the many multitudes who have
passed over it has never yet made it to "swing dangerously," and Lord
Russell in the fulness of his age was but yesterday rejoicing in what
he had achieved, and even in what those have achieved who have altered
his work in the same spirit in which he designed it.
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