For the executive or legislative business of the country he cared
little. The one should be left in the hands of men who liked
work;--of the other there should be little, or, if possible, none.
But Parliament must be managed,--and his party. Of patriotism he
did not know the meaning;--few, perhaps, do, beyond the feeling
that they would like to lick the Russians, or to get the better of
the Americans in a matter of fisheries or frontiers. But he
invented a pseudo-patriotic conjuring phraseology which no one
understood but which many admired. He was ambitious that it should
be said of him that he was far-and-away the cleverest of his
party. He knew himself to be clever. But he could only be far-and-
away the cleverest by saying and doing that which no one could
understand. If he could become master of some great hocus-pocus
system which could be made to be graceful to the ears and eyes of
many, which might for awhile seem to have within it some semi-
divine attribute, which should have all but divine power of
mastering the loaves and fishes, then would they who followed him
believe in him more firmly than other followers who had believed
in their leaders.
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