It will be said, perhaps, that the old Whigs, in order to guard themselves against popular odium, pretended to assert tenets contrary to those which they secretly held.  This, if true, would prove, what Mr. Burke has uniformly asserted, that the extravagant doctrines which he meant to expose were disagreeable to the body of the people,—­who, though they perfectly abhor a despotic government, certainly approached more nearly to the love of mitigated monarchy than to anything which bears the appearance even of the best republic.  But if these old Whigs deceived the people, their conduct was unaccountable indeed.  They exposed their power, as every one conversant in history knows, to the greatest peril, for the propagation of opinions which, on this hypothesis, they did not hold.  It is a new kind of martyrdom.  This supposition does as little credit to their integrity as their wisdom:  it makes them at once hypocrites and fools.  I think of those great men very differently.  I hold them to have been, what the world thought them, men of deep understanding, open sincerity, and clear honor.  However, be that matter as it may, what these old Whigs pretended to be Mr. Burke is.  This is enough for him.

I do, indeed, admit, that, though Mr. Burke has proved that his opinions were those of the old Whig party, solemnly declared by one House, in effect and substance by both Houses of Parliament, this testimony standing by itself will form no proper defence for his opinions, if he and the old Whigs were both of them in the wrong.  But it is his present concern, not to vindicate these old Whigs, but to show his agreement with them.  He appeals to them as judges:  he does not vindicate them as culprits.  It is current that these old politicians knew little of the rights of men,—­that they lost their way by groping about in the dark, and fumbling among rotten parchments and musty records.  Great lights, they say, are lately obtained in the world; and Mr. Burke, instead of shrouding himself in exploded ignorance, ought to have taken advantage of the blaze of illumination which has been spread about him.  It may be so.  The enthusiasts of this time, it seems, like their predecessors in another faction of fanaticism, deal in lights.  Hudibras pleasantly says of them, they

    “Have lights, where better eyes are blind,—­
     As pigs are said to see the wind.”

The author of the Reflections has heard a great deal concerning the modern lights, but he has not yet had the good fortune to see much of them.  He has read more than he can justify to anything but the spirit of curiosity, of the works of these illuminators of the world.  He has learned nothing from the far greater number of them than a full certainty of their shallowness, levity, pride, petulance, presumption, and ignorance.  Where the old authors whom he has read, and the old men whom he has conversed with, have left him in the dark, he is in the dark still.