Remarks on the Importance of the Study of Political Pamphlets, Weekly Papers, Periodical Papers, Daily Papers, Political Music
9781465671783
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
There cannot be a surer proof of ignorance and folly than impertinence, whether it betrays itself in the pertness of a coxcomb, or in the solemnity of a fop; provokes with the petulance of wit; stupifies with the dullness of narration; insults with the arrogance of superior birth, fortune, or learning; fatigues with frothy declamation, or stuns with the clamour of dispute; in private and in public, over a dish of tea, or over a bottle; from the pulpit, or the bar, or in the senate, it is always offensive and ridiculous. The humble and obscure writer of a Pamphlet cannot, however, if he happens to mistake his talents, be justly blamed for impertinence. He may be pitied for his misfortune; but for his faults as an author, he is answerable to no man: for there is scarce any man, who has dealt in this sort of reading, that has not had fair warning; it being more than an hundred to one, that he has bought an impertinent Pamphlet, some time, or other, in the course of his studies. He cannot well fail of knowing that such things are sometimes published; neither the writer nor the bookseller compels him to buy; and if he suffers himself to be imposed on by a title-page, he can have no good reason to complain of either. Besides, no Pamphlet can fairly be said to be wholly useless: it may be always made to serve, at least, some purpose; whereas I believe there is hardly any body but may remember to have been present, perhaps once in their lives, at a conversation, or a pleading, or a speech, or a sermon, that could serve no manner of purpose but to tire the audience, and make the speaker ridiculous: and this must be allowed to be a very unpardonable sort of impertinence; for a man may throw aside a Pamphlet, if he pleases, at the first page, or the first line; but he cannot decently get out of a company, or out of the senate, or out of a church, whenever he may have a mind. I do not mean this, as an apology for authors in general: the accidental writer of a Pamphlet, or a Paper, hardly deserves so respectable an appellation. On the contrary, every man who wantonly and vainly usurps that sacred profession, without being possessed of a moderate share at least, either of genius, or wit, or learning, or knowledge, besides the indispensable qualifications and ingredients of common honesty, sincerity, and benevolence, is guilty, in my opinion, of the highest degree of impertinence. But in this land of liberty, of general wealth, curiosity, and idleness, where there is scarce a human creature so poor that it cannot afford to buy or hire a Paper or a Pamphlet, or so busy that it cannot find leisure to read it; where every man, woman, and child, is, by instinct, birth, and inheritance, a politician; where the ordinary subjects of common conversation turn not, as in most countries, upon the impertinent trivial occurrences of the week or the day, nor on the small concerns, offices, and duties of private and social life; but on the greater and the more important objects of war, negociations, peace, laws, and the public and general weal; where men are more solicitous about the integrity and abilities of a lord commissioner of the treasury, or of a secretary of state, than the fidelity of their own wives, the chastity of their daughters, their sons, or their own honour and virtue; and where, like the virtuous citizens of Rome and Sparta, they unreluctantly offer up all the slenderer ties of blood, the endearments of love, the connexions of friendship, and the obligations of private gratitude, daily sacrifices and victims to the commonwealth; in such a country, the dullest Pamphlet may have a fair chance of gaining some readers, provided it be a political Pamphlet; whilst a treatise on religion or philosophy, unless the writer of it should happen to be thoroughly master of his subject, and know how to treat it with uncommon genius and learning, would meet with the fate it deserved, and be received with universal neglect.
