CANT AND RANT.

Western Star, Issue 143, 3 June 1876, Page 7

CANT AND RANT.

Lord Derby’s address to the Edinburgh students contains an excellent and characteristic definition of ‘cant ’ and ‘rant.’ The essence of cant, he says, is to ‘ use cut and dried phrases without attaching any definite meaning to them.’ The essence of rant is to * treat very little matters as if they were big ones.’ Culture, Lord Derby thinks, will save a man from both these errors, and certainly he has himself benefited by this protecting influence. He might usefully have gone on, however, to warn his hearers against an equally serious error, which is the exact opposite of rant, as he defines it. It is possible to treat all matters as though they were very little ones, to leave no place for strong opinions to see so clearly what can be said on both sides of every question as to forget that action must be decided by the fact that the balance inclines to one side or the other, rath«r than by the precise weight of the arguments which make it so incline. Lord Derby’s intellectual disposition naturally leads him to think less of this error than of the opposite one, and in the present condition of the political world he is likely to find many to agree with him. But it is well to remember that enthusiasm is a real force in human affairs, and that a policy which systematically excludes it from consideration may end by finding itself stranded through sheer want of motive power.