Whatever subject he undertook,
he worked at with all his might. He was not a good speaker, but
what he said was believed to proceed from the lips of an honest,
single-minded, accurate man. If ridicule, as Shaftesbury says, be
the test of truth, Joseph Hume stood the test well. No man was
more laughed at, but there he stood perpetually, and literally, "at
his post." He was usually beaten on a division, but the influence
which he exercised was nevertheless felt, and many important
financial improvements were effected by him even with the vote
directly against him. The amount of hard work which he contrived
to get through was something extraordinary. He rose at six, wrote
letters and arranged his papers for parliament; then, after
breakfast, he received persons on business, sometimes as many as
twenty in a morning. The House rarely assembled without him, and
though the debate might be prolonged to two or three o'clock in the
morning, his name was seldom found absent from the division. In
short, to perform the work which he did, extending over so long a
period, in the face of so many Administrations, week after week,
year after year,--to be outvoted, beaten, laughed at, standing on
many occasions almost alone,--to persevere in the face of every
discouragement, preserving his temper unruffled, never relaxing in
his energy or his hope, and living to see the greater number of his
measures adopted with acclamation, must be regarded as one of the
most remarkable illustrations of the power of human perseverance
that biography can exhibit.
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