or will not join with a great party to secure the ends for which they strive. The independent politician, in fact, must of necessity appear an incomplete sort of man—always leading up to something and never getting it; everlastingly striking the quarters, but never quite reaching the finished hour.

It is not only, however, the crotchety man, or the quarrelsome man, or the tactless man, who, because he cannot work with anybody else, poses as “independent.” There are also “men of no decided character, without judgment to choose, and without courage to profess any principle whatever—such men can serve no cause for this plain reason, they have no cause at heart.” Burke here clearly describes a large section of “armchair politicians,” who turn many an election without a distinct idea of what will be the ultimate result of their action. They are of the kind even more forcibly characterized by Dryden a century before—