Note 150 — Chapter III

I need not speak of Brougham, then the most conspicuous advocate of Whiggism. He published in 1843 a Political Philosophy, which, according to Lord Campbell, killed the 'Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.' No such hypothesis is necessary to account for the death of a society encumbered by a 'Dictionary of Universal Biography.' But the book was bad enough to kill, if a collection of outworn platitudes can produce that effect.