Environmental Truth Foretold -- in 1828

In last week's Spectator magazine was a facsimile copy of its first issue in 1828.

Thus proving that politics and history simply repeat as farce, here is a description of "The Liberal" who, in 2008 sounds awfully like a number of our current politicians and their environmental obsessions:

For the new Tory "greens":

While the Briton of the old school may possibly carry his principle to an extent which is not right, he of the new or Liberal school will most probably tumble through sheer weakness into what is wrong.

For Gordon Brown:

In the Liberal there is a total absence of the sound healthy firmness,
which is absolutely essential to eminent usefulness; he yields this; he concedes that; he compromises the other thing; he winds, and twists, and hesitates; and when he wants to accomplish a thing, chooses rather to do it by a trick or stratagem, than by candour and plain dealing.

For all poiticians who think Climate Change is the world's greatest threat:

Even his principles he yields to circumstances, and he is particularly deferential to a vague impalpable something, which he is pleased to call 'the spirit of the age', but which, on investigation, appears to be nothing more than the affected tone of the weak trash which the press pours forth in such quantity.

He floats about upon the wide sea of the world's opinion, and is blown hither and thither by every gust which may come from the various quarters of the globe. He neglects the interests of the people round about him, while he considers what may promote the prosperity of the new kingdom of the new world, and sacrifices the most important interests of his own country in a paroxysm of general philanthropy and universal benevolence.

For the Aristocratic/Old Money Greens who run environmentalism in the UK:

But in every thing he does, he is most anxious that he himself should appear; he is not only of opinion that he knows better than all who have gone before him, but that the world should see that he is the person who has made the grand discovery that every one else was wrong ... a confused mass of crude ideas upon every subject, who went buzzing and fizzing about a-telling of the wonderful wonders of political economy, of their own philosophical and enlightened views, and pronouncing the subversion of our constitution, and of all our ancient institutions.

For Hilary Benn, our Environment Secretary:

All this time, however, nothing solid is done; your Liberal is the worst man of business in the world; it is true, he seems busy, but it is in making speeches, and devising plans and complicated refinements upon what works well enough already, while the more arduous and important concerns of the State are frequently neglected, because they afford no opportunity for display, or for showing off the advantages of the new and improved system.

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