第15章 Letter V(1)

Sir,Nothing is more useful,nothing more necessary,in the conduct of public affairs,than a just discernment of spirits.I mean here not only that natural private sagacity which is conversant about individuals,and enables some men to pry,as it were,into the heads and hearts of others,and to discover within them those latent principles which constitute their true characters,and are often disguised in outward action;but I mean principally that acquired,public,political sagacity,which is of the same kind,though I think not altogether the same thing as the former;which flows from nature too,but requires more to be assisted by experience,and formed by art.This is that superior talent of ministers of state,which is so rarely found in those of other countries,and which abounds so happily at present in those of Great Britain.It is by this,that they discover the most secret dispositions of other courts;and,discovering those dispositions,prevent their designs,or never suffer themselves to be surprised by them.It is by this,that they watch over the public tranquillity at home;foresee what effect every event that happens,and much more every step they make themselves,will have on the sentiments and passions of mankind.This part of human wisdom is therefore everywhere of use;but is of indispensable necessity in free countries,where a greater regard is to be constantly had to the various fluctuations of parties;to the temper,humour,opinion and prejudices of the people.Without such a regard as this,those combinations of peculiar circumstances,which we commonly call conjunctures,can never be improved to the best advantage,by acting in conformity,and in proportion to them;and without improving such conjunctures to the best advantage,it is impossible to achieve any great undertaking,or even to conduct affairs successfully in their ordinary course.

A want of this just discernment of spirits,if I am not extremely mistaken,defeated the designs of those who prosecuted with so much vigour the Popish Plot,and the exclusion of the Duke of York.Several of them were men of very great abilities;and yet we shall have no reason to be surprised that they failed in this point,if we reflect how unfit even the greatest genius is to discern the spirit of others,when he hath once overheated his own.

All men are fallible:but here lies the difference.Some men,such as I have just mentioned,crossed by difficulties,pressed by exigencies,transported by their own passions,or by the passions of those who fight under their banner,may now and then deviate into error,and into error of long and fatal consequence.But there are some men,such as I shall not mention upon this occasion (because I reserve them for another and a better),who never deviate into the road of good sense;who,crossed by no difficulties,pressed by no exigencies,meeting scarce opposition enough to excite their industry,and guiding a tame well-tutored flock,that follow their bell-wether obstinately,but never tread on his heels:there are men,I say,whose special privilege it is to proceed with all these advantages,deliberately and superciliously,from blunder to blunder,from year to year,in one perpetual maze of confused,incoherent,inconsistent,unmeaning schemes of business.

But having nothing to do with the men of this character at present,Ireturn to those of the former class;to the men who led the Whig party,at its first appearance,in the time of King Charles the Second.The foundation upon which they built all their hopes of success,was this:that they should frighten and force the King into a compliance with them:but they did not enough consider that the methods they took were equally proper to frighten and force a great part of the nation from them,by reason of the particular circumstances of that time.They did not enough consider,that when they began to put their designs in execution,scarce twenty years had passed from the Restoration;and that the highest principles,in favour of the Church and the monarchy,had prevailed almost universally during one half of that time,and very generally during the other half;that they had the accidental passions of the people for them,but the settled habits of thinking against them;that they were going off from a broad to a narrow bottom;from the nation to a part of the nation;and this at a time,when they wanted a more than ordinary concurrence of the whole body.They did not enough consider that they were changing the very nature of their party,and giving an opportunity to the court,which was then become,in the strict sense of the word,a faction,to grow up into a party again,and such a party as would divide,at least,the people with them,upon principles,plausible in those days,and sufficient to raise a spirit capable to disappoint all their endeavours.