I thought Fox declamatory, though prosaic; one of those cavilling
minds, born to gainsay, rather than to say,--lawyers without gowns,
with mere lip-conscience, who plead above all for their own popularity.
I saw in Pitt a statesman whose words were deeds, and who in the crash
of Europe maintained his country, almost alone, on the foundation of
his good sense, and the consistency of his character. Pitt was
Mirabeau, with less impulse and more integrity. Mirabeau and Pitt
became, and have ever continued to be, my favorite statesmen of modern
days. Compared to them, I saw in Montesquieu only erudite, ingenious,
and systematical dissertations; Fenelon seemed to me divine, but
chimerical; Rousseau, more impassioned than inspired, greater by
instinct than by truth; while Bossuet, with his golden eloquence and
fawning soul, united, in his conduct and his language before Louis
XIV., doctoral despotism with the complaisance of a courtier. From
these studies of history and oratory I naturally passed on to politics.
The remembrance of the imperial yoke which had just been shaken off,
and my abhorrence of the military rule to which we had been subjected,
impelled me towards liberty.
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