nor any desire to offend:  it was painful to him to hurt the feelings of those who heard him, but it was a higher duty in him not to suppress his sincere and earnest convictions.  It is wonderful how much virtue and plain-dealing a man may be guilty of with impunity, if he has no vanity, or ill-nature, or duplicity to provoke the contempt or resentment of others, and to make them impatient of the superiority he sets up over them.  We do not recollect that Sir Francis ever endeavoured to atone for any occasional indiscretions or intemperance by giving the Duke of York credit for the battle of Waterloo, or congratulating Ministers on the confinement of Buonaparte at St. Helena.  There is no honest cause which he dares not avow:  no oppressed individual that he is not forward to succour.  He has the firmness of manhood with the unimpaired enthusiasm of youthful feeling about him.  His principles are mellowed and improved, without having become less sound with time:  for at one period he sometimes appeared to come charged to the House with the petulance and caustic sententiousness he had imbibed at Wimbledon Common.  He is never violent or in extremes, except when the people or the parliament happen to be out of their senses; and then he seems to regret the necessity of plainly telling them he thinks so, instead of pluming himself upon it or exulting over impending calamities.  There is only one error he seems to labour under (which, we believe, he also borrowed from Mr. Horne Tooke or Major Cartwright), the wanting to go back to the early times of our Constitution and history in search of the principles of law and liberty.  He might as well

  “Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream.”

Liberty, in our opinion, is but a modern invention (the growth of books and printing)—­and whether new or old, is not the less desirable.  A man may be a patriot, without being an antiquary.  This is the only point on which Sir Francis is at all inclined to a tincture of pedantry.  In general, his love of liberty is pure, as it is warm and steady:  his humanity is unconstrained and free.  His heart does not ask leave of his head to feel; nor does prudence always keep a guard upon his tongue or his pen.  No man writes a better letter to his Constituents than the member for Westminster; and his compositions of that kind ought to be good, for they have occasionally cost him dear.  He is the idol of the people of Westminster:  few persons have a greater number of friends and well-wishers; and he has still greater reason to be proud of his enemies, for his integrity and independence have made them so.  Sir Francis Burdett has often been left in a Minority in the House of Commons, with only one or two on his side.  We suspect, unfortunately for his country, that History will be found to enter its protest on the same side of the question!

[Footnote A:  Mr. Brougham is not a Scotchman literally, but by adoption.]

* * * * *