he should think so much more of what other people on his side or the
other think, than of the widest and highest of the ideas on which a
conservative philosophy of life and human society reposes. Such ideas
are these,--that the social union is the express creation and ordering
of the Deity: that its movements follow his mysterious and fixed
dispensation: that the church and the state are convertible terms, and
each citizen of the latter is an incorporated member of the former: that
conscience, if perversely and misguidedly self-asserting, has no rights
against the decrees of the conscience of the nation: that it is the most
detestable of crimes to perturb the pacific order of society either by
active agitation or speculative restlessness; that descent from a long
line of ancestors in great station adds an element of dignity to life,
and imposes many high obligations. We do not say that these and the
rest of the propositions which make up the true theoretic basis of a
conservative creed, are proper for the hustings, or expedient in an
election address or a speech in parliament. We do say that if these high
and not unintelligible principles, which alone can give to reactionary
professions any worth or significance, were present in the minds of men
who speak reactionary language, the country would be spared the ignominy
of seeing certain real truths of society degraded at the hands of
aristocratic adventurers and plutocratic parasites into some miserable
process of 'dishing Whigs.'

This impoverishment of aims and depravation of principles by the triumph
of the political spirit outside of its proper sphere, cannot
unfortunately be restricted to any one set of people in the state. It is
something in the very atmosphere, which no sanitary cordon can limit.
Liberalism, too, would be something more generous, more attractive--yes,
and more practically effective, if its professors and champions could
allow their sense of what is feasible to be refreshed and widened by a