So
strange a definition and still less pardonable adherence to it can only
be justified on the ground of Johnson's warm feelings for the comfort of
the middle class of society. He knew that the execution of the excise
laws involved an intrusion into the privacies of domestic life, and
often violated the fireside of the unoffending and quiet tradesman. He,
therefore, disliked those laws altogether, and his warm-hearted
disposition would not allow him to calculate on their abstract
advantages with modern political economists, who, in their generalizing
doctrines, too frequently overlook individual comfort and interests. His
remarks, in the same paper, on the edition of the Pleas of the Crown
cannot be thus vindicated, and we must here lament an error in an
otherwise honest and well-intentioned mind[12]. Every impartial reader
of his works may thus easily trace to their origin Johnson's chief
political errors, and his research must terminate in admiration of a
writer, who never prostituted his pen to fear or favour; and who, though
erroneous often in his estimate of men and measures, still, in his
support of a party, firmly believed himself to be the advocate of
morality and right.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25