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Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to "The Edinburgh Review" (1850)
Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review - 1850 Author:Thomas Babington Macaulay Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LORD HOLLAND. (july, 1841.) The Opinioni of Lord Holland. at recorded in the Journalt of the Houte of Lords, from 1797 to 1841. Collected and edited by D. C. ... more »Moylan, of Lincoln's Inn, Barrister-at-Law. 8vo. London: 1841. Many reasons make it impossible for us to lay before our readers, at the present moment, a complete view of the character and public career of the late Lord Holland. But we feel that we have already deferred too long the duty of paying some tribute to his memory. We feel that it is more becoming to bring without further delay an offering, though intrinsically of little value, than to leave his tomb longer without some token of our reverence and love. We shall say very little of the book which lies on our table. And yet it is a book which, even if it had been the work of a less distinguished man, or had appeared under circumstances less interesting, would have well repaid an attentive perusal. It is valuable, both as a record of principles and as a model of composition. We find in it all the great maxims which, during more than forty years, guided Lord Holland's public conduct, and the chief reasons on which those maxims rest, condensed into the smallest possible space, and set forth with admirable perspicuity, dignity, and precision. To his opinions on Foreign Policy we for the most part cordially assent; but, now and then we are inclined to think them imprudently generous. We could not have signed the protest against the detention of Napoleon. The Protest respecting the course which England pursued at the Congress of Verona, though it contains much that is excellent, contains also positions which, we are inclinedto think, Lord Holland would, at a later period, have admitted to be unsound. But to all his doctrines on constitutional questions, we give our ...« less