standard of a statesman." But that "ability to improve" conceals two
principles of which Burke never relaxed his hold. "All the reformations
we have hitherto made," he said, "have proceeded upon the principle of
reference to antiquity"; and the _Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs_,
which is the most elaborate exposition of his general attitude, proceeds
upon the general basis that 1688 is a perpetual model for the future.
Nor is this all. "If I cannot reform with equity," said Burke, "I will
not reform at all"; and equity seems here to mean a sacrifice of the
present and its passionate demands to the selfish errors of past policy.

Burke, indeed, was never a democrat, and that is the real root of his
philosophy. He saw the value of the party-system, and he admitted the
necessity of some degree of popular representation. But he was entirely
satisfied with current Whig principles, could they but be purged of
their grosser deformities. He knew too well how little reason is wont to
enter into the formation of political opinion to make the sacrifice of
innovation to its power. He saw so much of virtue in the old order, that
he insisted upon the equation of virtue with quintessence. Men of great
property and position using their influence as a public trust, delicate
in their sense of honor, and acting only from motives of right--these
seemed to him the men who should with justice exercise political power.
He did not doubt that "there is no qualification for government but
virtue and wisdom ... wherever they are actually found, they have, in
whatever state, condition, profession or trade, the passport to heaven";
but he is careful to dissociate the possibility that they can be found
in those who practice the mechanical arts. He did not mean that his
aristocracy should govern without response to popular demand. He had no
objection to criticism, nor to the public exercise of government. There
was no reason even for agreement, so long as each party was guided by an
honorable sense of the public good. This, so he urged, was the system