The Sun.
London, England, 1835-11-18 00:00:00

RANDOM RECOLLECTIONS OF THE HOUSE

OF COMMONS,
FROM THE YEAR 1830 TO THE CLOSE OF i 835.

INCLUDING PERSONAL SKETCHES OF THE LEADING MEMBERS OF

ILL PARTIES.-BY ONE OF NO PARTY.

London. Smith, Elder, and Co., Cornhill. 183 G.
There is no department in general literature more
difficult of correct execution, and none which requires

a sounder judgment, a nicer discrimination, and a
greater freedom from prejudices, than that of writing
personal sketches, or biographical memoirs of public
men, during their lifetime. There are few persons who
could bear to look upon a correct portraiture of them
selves, and still fewer who could be brought to believe

hat the representation was other than a gross carica-
;ure. There is nothing more mortifying to a man of

quick sensibility and retiring habits than to have his
intellectual stature measured, and, in his opinion, cur-
tailed of half its dimensions, by a writer whose opi-

nions may guide the historian of the next century. To
be abused by an opponent is endurable—to be sneered
at or held up to public scorn or contempt in the co-
lumns of a party Journal may be painful for the time ;
but, on reflection, half the evil is neutralised by the
conviction, that the slander will not be believed by half
of those to whom it is addressed, and that by the other
half it will be forgotten almost as soon as heard. Then,
again, there is the popular canonization which extends
to all martyrs to certain principles or political dogmas,
and which is sure to operate as a sovereign balsam
with respect to wounds inflicted on the self-love of all
professors of patriotism. But when the writer, as in
the present instance, happens to be a person con-
nected with no party—when he writes with a view to
do justice to the intrinsic•merits of the most prominent
political men in the state—and when there is to be
found in his writings traces of a sound judgment, a cor-
rect taste, and a manner at once straightforward and

impartial, it is impossible for those whom he ranks
among the created rather than the creators of the cir-
cumstances to which they owe their elevation, not to
feel as though they had suffered an injury. Besides,
though all men are wont to claim only strict and im-
partial justice at the hands of others, yet none are sa-
tisfied if something more be not meted out to them.
The cause usually assigned for this is that men over-
rate their own good qualities in the same proportion
in which they underrate whatever is evil, either in

their habits or dispositions. This may be very true ;
but we think we could account for it in a more rational
way. There is no man who has not certain good qua-
lities, which blend themselves in all his ordinary
actions ; and which, though known to and felt by him-
self, and in his opinion obvious to all, yet are never
noticed beyond the circle of his most intimate friends.
These qualities he thinks the world ought to give him
credit for, when in point of fact it is ignorant of their
existence. The natural consequence therefore is, that
what is justice in the opinion of the mass is injustice
in the conviction of the individual. Both however arc
right, because both arc differently informed. Men, it
is true, very often overrate their own abilities ; but
we believe that in four cases out of five, they greatly
underrate them. The overweening vanity and pre-
sumption of mankind have not been more injurious to
the happiness of society than culpable diffidence,
Half the good which might be done, and half the
wonderful works which might be accomplished, are
never so much as thought of, solely because the world
is accustomed to deem their performance impossible.
We know nothing whatever of the author of the