190 years of The Spectator
21 May 1831
Lucretius tells us, in some famous lines, that it is a pleasant thing to watch the sea in a tempest, from the shore: it is a far more gratifying employment to be throwing out Manby’s lifesaving apparatus, and saving the sinking mariners from the wreck. We have more than once observed, that it is difficult to be a mere spectator in times like these. It is all very well, in the piping times of domestic content, to sit still and report progress; but when, as in the great business of Reform, everything is at stake, it is the duty of even neutrals to arm. It is sometimes criminal not to take a side — there are cases in which he that is not with us must be against us. Such is the grand struggle that is now agitating the country from its centre to its remotest corners.
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