England Under Seven Administrations (2); The Wellington Ministry (Concluded) the Grey Ministry

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1837 edition. Excerpt: ...as sailors do the log, throw it overboard to see how far you sail from it. If your householders are better than my coachman and gardener, inso- much as they are nearer to the all, how can you contend against the Radical that the perfection is not in going the whole way to the all. If the ab omnibus is too large a term to be filled by my gardener and coachman, or Lord Fingerfees' hundred voters, I am sure it is not filled by your housekeepers. Upon this the Whig waxes wroth: - What, Sir, would you make me out a Radical? Because I would gather the fruit of a principle would you insist on my grubbing to the roots of the tree. Ne quid nimis, says Terence; half is better than the whole, says Hesiod; and so say I. Besides, my constituency including the middle class, will in a compendious way represent the interests of the poor--for all that concerns them concerns the poor. Radical here rushes in again and objects: But what concerns the poor does not always concern the middle classes, and seldom in the same degree. The weight that presses upon a man and upon the child may be the same, but the effect is far different, and so 'it is with the bur- thens on the richer and the poorer classes. Do you remember the leather tax, for instance, which was levied by the weight; the gentleman wore for luxury his light boot or shoe, and was lightly taxed accordingly; the tradesman had his stouter shoe, which paid a little more, enough to make an injustice, but not enough to affect his purse to a degree worth thinking about; but the ploughman and labourer, in his strong heavy boots, paid the tax in sevenfold proportion, and ate the less bread in consequence! Here was a wrong of trifling...