Political Pamphlets | Page 4

from a man who is not often rated high
as a political thinker, even by those who sympathise with his political
views. But here as elsewhere the politician, no less than the poet, the
critic, the historian, bears the penalty of the pre-eminent greatness of
the novelist. Nothing is more uncritical than to regard Scott as a mere
sentimentalist in politics, and I cannot think that any competent judge
can do so after reading Malagrowther, even after reading Scott's own
Diary and letters on the subject. As he there explains, he was not
greatly carried, as a rule, to interest himself in the details of politics. As
both Lockhart and he admit, he might not have been so interested even
at this juncture had it not been for the chagrin at his own misfortunes,
which, nobly and stoically repressed as it was, required some issue. But
his general principle on this occasion was clear; it can be thoroughly
apprehended and appreciated even by an Englishman of Englishmen. It
was thoroughly justified by the event, and, I may perhaps be permitted
to observe, ran exactly contrary to a sentiment rather widely adopted of
late. No man, whether in public writings or private conduct, could be
more set than Scott was against a spurious Scotch particularism. He
even earned from silly Scots maledictions for the chivalrous justice he
dealt to England in The Lord of the Isles, and the common-sense justice
he dealt to her in the mouth of Bailie Jarvie. But he was not more
staunch for the political Union than he was for the preservation of
minor institutions, manners, and character; and the proposed
interference with Scotch banking seemed to him to be one of the things
tending to make good Scotchmen, as he bluntly told Croker, 'damned

mischievous Englishmen.' Therefore he arose and spoke, and though he
averted the immediate attempt, yet the prophecies which he uttered
were amply fulfilled in other ways after the Reform Bill.
These, then, are the principles on which I have selected the pieces that
follow (some minor reasons for the particular choices being given in
the special introductions):--That they should be pamphlets proper
(Malachi appeared first in a newspaper, but that was a sign of the time
chiefly, and the numbers of Cobbett's Register were practically
independent pieces); that they should deal with special subjects of
burning political, and not merely personal, interest; and that they
should either directly or in the long-run have exercised an actual
determining influence on the course of politics and history. This last
point is undoubted in the case of the examples from Halifax, Swift,
Burke (who more than any one man pointed and steeled the resistance
of England to Jacobin tyranny), and Scott; it was less immediate, but
scarcely more dubious in those of Defoe, Cobbett, and Sydney Smith.
And so in all humility I make my bow as introducer once more to the
English public of these Seven Masters of English political writing.

I.--'LETTER TO A DISSENTER'
BY GEORGE SAVILE, MARQUESS OF HALIFAX
(There is no doubt that Halifax's work deserves to rank first in a
collection of political pamphlets. He signed none; it was indeed almost
impossible for a prominent person in the State then safely or decently
to do so, and different attributions were made at the time of some of
them, as of the Character of a Trimmer to Coventry, and of this Letter
(this 'masterly little tract,' as Macaulay justly calls it) to Temple. But
shortly after his death all were published as his unchallenged, and
there never has been any doubt of their authorship in the minds of good
judges. Four of them are so good that extrinsic reasons have to be
brought in for preferring one to the other. The Character of a Trimmer
is rather too long for my scheme; the Anatomy of an Equivalent is too
technical, and requires too much illustration and exegesis; the

Cautions for Choice of Members of Parliament, though practically
valuable to the present day, is a little too general. The Letter to a
Dissenter escapes all these objections. It is brief, it is thoroughly to the
point, it is comprehensible almost without note or comment to any one
who remembers the broad fact that by his Declaration of Indulgence
James the Second attempted to detach, and almost succeeded in
detaching, the Dissenters from their common cause with the Church in
opposing his enfranchisement of the Roman Catholics, and his
preferment of them to great offices. As for its author, his most eminent
acts are written in the pages of the universally read historian above
quoted. But he was in reality more of a Tory than it suited Macaulay to
represent him, though he gloried in the name of Trimmer, and certainly
showed what is