Note 64 — Chapter IV

Macaulay describes the manner in which Halifax endeavoured to vindicate his trimming. Hist., i. 254. The following quotation from Halifax is characteristic:—

“Why,” he asks, “after we have played the fool with throwing Whig and Tory at one another, as boys do snowballs, should we grow angry at a new name, which by its signification might do as much to put us into our wits, as the other has done to put us out of them. This innocent word Trimmer signifies no more than this, that if men are together in a boat, and one part of the company would weigh it down on one side, another would make it lean as much the contrary; it happens that there is a third opinion of those who conceive it would do as well if the boat went even, without endangering the passengers. Now ’tis hard to imagine by what figure in language, or by what rule in sense, this comes to be a fault, and it is much more a wonder it should be thought a heresy.” By a common fallacy, Halifax applies what is true of one thing to another thing very different. Too many miserably act respecting religion on the same principle as Halifax adopted in relation to politics.