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' Therefore he arose and spoke, and though he
averted the immediate attempt, yet the prophecies which he uttered
were amply fulfilled in other ways after the Reform Bill.
These, then, are the principles on which I have selected the pieces
that follow (some minor reasons for the particular choices being given
in the special introductions):--That they should be pamphlets proper
(_Malachi_ appeared first in a newspaper, but that was a sign of the
time chiefly, and the numbers of Cobbett's _Register_ were practically
independent pieces); that they should deal with special subjects of
burning political, and not merely personal, interest; and that they
should either directly or in the long-run have exercised an actual
determining influence on the course of politics and history. This last
point is undoubted in the case of the examples from Halifax, Swift,
Burke (who more than any one man pointed and steeled the resistance
of England to Jacobin tyranny), and Scott; it was less immediate, but
scarcely more dubious in those of Defoe, Cobbett, and Sydney Smith.


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