The Henson Journals

[17]

Monday, September 22nd, 1924.

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The worst of these politics of revolution is this: they temper and harden the breast, in order to prepare it for the desperate strokes which are sometimes used in extreme occasions. But as these occasions may never arrive, the mind receives a gratuitous taint: & the moral sentiments suffer not a little, when no political purpose is served by the depravation. This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man, that they have totally forgot his nature. Without opening one new avenue to the understanding, they have succeeded in stopping up those that led to the heart. They have perverted in themselves, and in those that attend to them, all the well–placed sympathies of the human breast.

Burke. 'Reflections' (iii.316)

This is absolutely true of our clerical socialists, who, "under the name of religion, teach little else than wild & dangerous politics".

I finished the sermon for the sectaries of South Shields.

The pretty legend of the discovery of the lost books of Livy has finally been disposed by the "discoverer's" confession. Dr di Martino Fusco, with his erudite backers, looks sufficiently foolish. Another notable example of a Hoax has been added to the long list.

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