ABSTRACT
The prejudices of the one are counter-balanced by the paradoxes of the other; and folly, 'putting in one scale a weight of ignorance, in that of pride,' might be said to 'smile delighted with the eternal poise.' As the modern politician always asks for this day's paper, the modern sciolist always inquires after the latest paradox. With him instinct is a dotard, nature a changeling, and common sense a discarded bye-word. As with the man of the world, what everybody says must be true, the citizen of the world has a quite different notion of the matter. 'My lot,' says Mr Canning in the conclusion of his Liverpool speech, 'is cast under the British Monarchy. Such is Mr Canning's common-place; and in giving the following answer to it, the author does not think he can be accused of falling into that extravagant and unmitigated strain of paradoxical reasoning, with which he has already found so much fault.
