Note 37 — Chapter IV

Another passage from this letter is worth quoting in the margin:-“What I doubt (for I presume to go no further), is, whether it be for our interest to force on the course of events in the present circumstances. You are a man of frank character and high spirit, accustomed to represent a successful and triumphant government. You must from nature and habit be averse to temporise. But you have much too powerful an understanding to need to be told, that to temporise is sometimes absolutely necessary, and that men of your character only can temporise with effect. When Gentz was in England, in 1803 (during the peace), he said to me, that ‘it required the present system, and the late ministers;’ for nothing required the reality and the reputation of vigour so much as temporising.”—[Mackintosh to Malcolm, July 13, 1808.]