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Updated: May 31, 2025
The imputation of inconsistency is one to which every sound politician and every honest thinker must sooner or later subject himself. Fools and dead men are the only people who never change their opinions or their course of action. The course of great statesmen resembles that of navigable rivers, avoiding immovable obstacles with noble bends of concession, seeking the broad levels of opinion on which men soonest settle and longest dwell, following and marking the almost imperceptible slope of national tendency, yet forever recruited from sources nearer heaven, from summits where the gathered purity of ages lies encamped, and sometimes bursting open paths of progress and civilisation through what seem the eternal barriers of both. It is a loyalty to great ends, an anchored cling to solid principles, which knows how to swing with the tide, but not to be carried away by it, that we demand in public men, and not persistence in prejudice, sameness of policy, or stolid antagonism to the inevitable. But we demand also that they shall not too lightly accept Wrong instead of Right, as inevitable; and there is a kind of change that is suspicious because it is sudden, and detrimental to the character in proportion as it is of advantage to the man; and the judgment of mankind allows a well-founded distinction between an alteration of policy compelled by events, and an abandonment of professed principles tainted with any suspicion of self-interest. We hold that a Representative is a trustee for those who elected him, that his political apostasy only so far deserves the name of conversion as it is a conversion of what was not his to his own use and benefit; and we have a right to be impatient of instruction in duty from those whom the hope of promotion could nerve to make the irrevocable leap from a defeated party to a triumphant one, and who can serve either side, if so they only serve themselves. It is this kind of freedom from prejudice that has brought down our politics to the gambling level of the stock-market; it is this kind of unlucky success, and the readiness of the multitude to forgive and even to applaud it, that justify the old sarcasm, Patibulum inter et statuam qu
Drawing a long breath, he said: "Patibulo is a bad Latin word, and your fathers, who formerly sat here, understood its meaning far less thoroughly than you. Now, every child in the Netherlands knows it, Alva has impressed it on our minds. More than eighteen thousand worthy citizens have come to the gallows through his 'ad patibulum."
It was he, as it will be remembered, who habitually fell asleep at that horrible council board, and could only start from his naps to-shout "ad patibulum," while the other murderers had found their work less narcotic. A letter from Hessels to Count de Reux, late royal governor of Flanders, was at the present juncture intercepted.
It was he, as it will be remembered, who habitually fell asleep at that horrible council board, and could only start from his naps to-shout "ad patibulum," while the other murderers had found their work less narcotic. A letter from Hessels to Count de Reux, late royal governor of Flanders, was at the present juncture intercepted.
"You might be hung from a hook perhaps, but where should we hang a lesson? Adrian Van der Werff." The lad called rose quickly, saying: "'Suspendere lectionen' means to break off the lesson." "Very well; and if we wanted to hang up Jan Mulder, what should we say?" "Patibulare ad patibulum!" cried the scholars. Van Hout, who had just been smiling, grew very grave.
He was generally asleep during the meeting, and when his turn came to vote on a sentence of death he used to cry out, still half asleep: "Ad patibulum! Ad patibulum!" so glibly did his tongue utter this word.
"You might be hung from a hook perhaps, but where should we hang a lesson? Adrian Van der Werff." The lad called rose quickly, saying: "'Suspendere lectionen' means to break off the lesson." "Very well; and if we wanted to hang up Jan Mulder, what should we say?" "Patibulare ad patibulum!" cried the scholars. Van Hout, who had just been smiling, grew very grave.
This preliminary ceremony having been concluded, the two aged prisoners were forthwith hanged on a tree, without-the least pretence of trial or even sentence. Such was the end of the famous councillor who had been wont to shout "ad patibulum" in his sleep.
Drawing a long breath, he said: "Patibulo is a bad Latin word, and your fathers, who formerly sat here, understood its meaning far less thoroughly than you. Now, every child in the Netherlands knows it, Alva has impressed it on our minds. More than eighteen thousand worthy citizens have come to the gallows through his 'ad patibulum."
It was he, as it will be remembered, who habitually fell asleep at that horrible council board, and could only start from his naps to-shout "ad patibulum," while the other murderers had found their work less narcotic. A letter from Hessels to Count de Reux, late royal governor of Flanders, was at the present juncture intercepted.
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