which underlay the temporary evils of the British Constitution. An
aristocracy delegated to do its work by the mass of men was the best
form of government his imagination could conceive. It meant that
property must be dominant in the system of government, that, while
office should be open to all, it should be out of the reach of most.
"The characteristic essence of property," he wrote in the _Reflections_,
"... is to be unequal"; and he thought the perpetuation of that
inequality by inheritance "that which tends most to the perpetuation of
society itself." The system was difficult to maintain, and it must be
put out of the reach of popular temptation. "Our constitution," he said
in the _Present Discontents_, "stands on a nice equipoise, with sharp
precipices and deep waters on all sides of it. In removing it from a
dangerous leaning towards one side, there may be a danger towards
oversething it on the other." In straining, that is to say, after too
large a purification, we may end with destruction. And Burke, of course,
was emphatic upon the need that property should be undisturbed. It was
always, he thought, at a great disadvantage in any struggle with
ability; and there are many passages in which he urges the consequent
special representation which the adequate defence of property requires.

The argument, at bottom, is common to all thinkers over-impressed by the
sanctity of past experience. Hegel and Savigny in Germany, Taine and
Renan in France, Sir Henry Maine and Lecky in England, have all urged
what is in effect a similar plea. We must not break what Bagehot called
the cake of custom, for men have been trained to its digestion, and new
food breeds trouble. Laws are the offspring of the original genius of a
people, and while we may renovate, we must not unduly reform. The true
idea of national development is always latent in the past experience of
the race and it is from that perpetual spring alone that wisdom can be
drawn. We render obedience to what is with effortless unconsciousness;