Conservatives

“ Let me first address myself to Conservatives. What is it that persons of Conservative feelings specially deprecate in a plan of Parliamentary reform? It is the danger that some classes in the nation may be swamped by other classes. What is it that we are warned against, as the chief among the dangers of democracy? not untruly, as democracy is vulgarly conceived and practised. ”

“ All, therefore, which the best Conservatives chiefly dread in the complete ascendancy of democracy would be, if not wholly removed, at least diminished in a very great degree. These are the recommendations of the plan when looked at on its Conservative side. Let us now look at it in its democratic aspect. I claim for it the support of all democrats, as being the only true realisation of their political principles. What is the principle of democracy? Is it not that everybody should be represented, and that everybody should be represented equally? ”

“ If one were to say that a Conservative was a supporter of the Throne and the Established Church, a Jingo in foreign politics, an Imperialist in colonial matters, an advocate of a strong navy and a disbeliever in free trade, tens of thousands of Conservatives might object to having assigned to them one or all of these sentiments, and tens of thousands of Liberals might insist on laying claim to any of them. ”

“ Aspiring to rise to power through the agency of Conservatives, whose narrow-minded conventional conservatism he despised, and to whose defects he was keenly alive, he wisely judged that it was a necessity, if his programme were to be executed, that the association of political power with landed possessions should be the sheet-anchor of his system ”

“ Conservatives, who could tolerate no society without such pillars of order, were, from their point of view, right in answering, "Give us rather the worst despotism of Europe,—there our souls at least may have a chance of salvation!" ”

“ All that the conservatives can ask or do ask is that the people shall act deliberately and under circumstances calculated to afford time and opportunity for full explanation and a full understanding of the scope and tendency of the proposed changes, to the end that errors may be discovered and exposed, that theorizing, sentimentalism, clamor and prejudice may exhaust themselves, and that the sober second thought of every part of the country may be asserted. ”

“ The conservatives were of all shades of opinion, and of all parties; the radicals were, as is usually the case, confined mostly to those who had little to lose, either of wealth, reputation, or social position. ”

“ Wherever the chances were in favour of a liberal candidate, the satisfaction, the joy, and I may say the triumph of all liberals knew no bounds; and where a conservative seemed likely to have the greatest number of votes, the delight of the conservatives was equally great. For every Englishman takes a deep interest in politics, and is either a conservative or a liberal, and accordingly wishes to see conservatives or liberals returned to Parliament. ”

“ But you are betrayed by your own nature. You also are conservatives. However men please to style themselves, I see no other than a conservative party. You are not only identical with us in your needs, but also in your methods and aims. You quarrel with my conservatism, but it is to build up one of your own ”

“ And so, no doubt, they are in their hearts and wishes, and so they would be, if the Conservatives would allow them to keep their places, and give them strength enough to maintain Conservative interests. ”

“ The Conservatives, or Monarchists, or the old political class, whatever one pleases to call them, begin to perceive that they are beaten in the intellectual, the argumentative struggle. They therefore make an appeal to arms. ”

“ The final result was to bring out differences of opinion more sharply and to widen the gulf between conservatives who clung to everything which belonged to the past and liberals whose desire was to give the people all that had been gained and even more. ”

“ Men in power at the present day will laugh at the idea,—but nevertheless the wave of liberal opinions in England is advancing with a rapidity which is remarkable and significant. Measures which were considered radical fifteen years ago are now considered practicable or even not advanced enough, and conservatives in the present day are, it is a well known fact, purloining and adopting one by one those measures which liberals twenty years ago could only broach as ideas. The conservatives cannot help themselves,—they must either do this or go to the wall,—for the nation wants these measures. ”

“ I have no doubt the great bulk of you are Liberals, but yet I shall be very glad if some of you are Conservatives. Are Conservatives seriously considering with the gravity which becomes the people of this country—the responsible people of this country—what course they shall take upon the coming occasion? ”

“ Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick, or aged: in the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused; when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals. ”

“ After all, both parties are agreed upon main points, for Conservatives and Liberals alike have, or are supposed to have, the best interests of the nation at heart. Our divisions are caused by our divergence of opinion as to the means by which the same ends are to be secured. ”

“ The conservatives therefore could not look for power at all and only for office on the same ignoble terms as those upon which they had obtained it for three short periods during the previous twenty years that is to say, by allying themselves with the radicals to the discomfiture of the whigs. ”

“ Then, again, it is always urged by Conservatives, and is one of the best parts of their creed, that the legislators of a nation should not all be men of the same stamp—a variety of feelings, interests, and prepossessions should be found in this House—and it should contain persons capable of giving information and guidance on every topic of importance that is likely to arise. ”

“ Less scrupulous both as regards political and ecclesiastical rights than the real Conservatives, but decidedly hostile to democracy and disorder, they nearly agreed in opinions, whilst they differed widely in character. ”

“ The Conservatives are so charmed with him, that they court his society with the liveliest demonstrations of regard, and he meets their advances more than half way. They are very naturally delighted with his unrivalled agreeableness, and they are not sorry to pat him on the back as a flagellifer of the Ministers ”

“ Neither party foresaw that the elements common to human nature everywhere would influence the course of politics just as fully after the working men had been admitted within the pale of the Constitution as before, and that we should find even amongst the lower orders the same differences between Liberals and Conservatives as prevailed in the middle class. ”

“ The conservatives of the present day would have been extreme radicals in the past; and the radicals of the present will occupy conservative ground when an extreme radicalism shall be pressing in advance of future generations. ”

“ To reconcile this theory and this practice, they produce what they call ‘the best bargain;’ some arrangement which has no principle and no purpose, except to obtain a temporary lull of agitation, until the mind of the Conservatives, without a guide and without an aim, distracted, tempted, and bewildered, is prepared for another arrangement, equally statesmanlike with the preceding one. ”

“ Bradlaugh by Sir Stafford Northcote. ‘The differences of principle which sever the Conservatives from the Radicals are even greater and more vital to the future of the nation than those which agitated the times of Pitt and Fox, or the more recent days of the Duke of Wellington and Lord Grey. The questions of the continuation of the monarchy, the existence of an hereditary legislature, the preservation of a central government for the three kingdoms, the connection between Church and State, are all more or less rapidly coming within the range of practical politics.... ”

“ All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive. ”

“ They had seen very much, in consequence, that the line taken by the Conservative portion of their friends, in addressing the people through the press, had not been an efficient one;—their friends had set themselves to make the people both good Conservatives and good Churchmen, and of course had never got over the first point, and never would ”

“ Then he may demand, and would probably obtain, as the condition of his acceptance of office, the support of a large proportion of the moderate of the Whig party, and the necessity of conciliating such men and of acquiring their support could afford him an excuse for adopting those Liberal maxims which, though far from palatable to the Conservatives, would be indispensable to the formation of a strong Government, as without their adoption no Whig could with honour and consistency support him. ”

“ P. Tories one side—Socialists the other. Well it ain't always so comfortable in the middle. You're like to get squeezed. Now, I s'y to the women, the Conservatives don't promise you much but what they promise they do!
Stonor (to Jean) . This fellow isn't half bad.
Mr. P. The Liberals—they'll promise you the earth, and give yer ... the whole o' nothing. ”

“ Conservatives cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping out the "new people" whom New York was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to; ”

“ The conservative party in the universe concedes that the radical would talk sufficiently to the purpose, if we were still in the garden of Eden; he legislates for man as he ought to be; his theory is right, but he makes no allowance for friction ”

“ Conservatism stands on man's confessed limitations, reform on his indisputable infinitude; conservatism on circumstance, liberalism on power; one goes to make an adroit member of the social frame, the other to postpone all things to the man himself; conservatism is debonair and social, reform is individual and imperious. We are reformers in the spring and summer, in autumn and winter we stand by the old; reformers in the morning, conservers at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth. ”

“ But, if the House of Lords is Conservative now, the reason is plain. It is the present Government that has alarmed the House, and has driven over from the Liberal to the Conservative side men who, from father to son, have been Liberal. ”

“ Conservatism, while believing in “the good of things as they are,” has usually grappled with reforms under the stimulus of an increasingly feared and potent democracy. Liberalism has had to wrench from Conservatism responsible government by the people, manhood suffrage, equal taxation, the right of like opportunity for all classes of the community. Conservatism has clung to precedent, the established order, the old authoritarian basis of government, and has yielded but slowly and as a rule only on compulsion. ”

“ And if it is the other way around, if government grants rights, then government can also take those rights away. If that is the case, we would be similar to many of the other governments, many of the other civilizations, and we are not. We are the United States of America, founded upon four of these conservative principles.
All of these principles are conservative principles: the respect for tradition and wisdom of past generations, the rule of law, the belief in individual freedom and liberty, and the fourth thing is a belief in a law higher than man's law. ”

“ I need hardly repeat that I am a true Conservative, because I believe true Conservatism to consist in aiding social progress and the reparation, when necessary, of those institutions of our country to which England owes its present greatness. As your representative, it will be my duty to support that Government which is to give the greatest stability to the nation at large, and the greatest amount of happiness to the community. So far as I am able to judge, the Government of Lord Derby fulfils these requirements, and I believe they will not waver. I am fighting in three different capacities. ”

“ If belief in the perfectibility of man—and not of man only, but of governments—is the inspiration of liberalism, of radicalism, of the spirit that calls clamorously for change, and that has requisitioned the words reform and progression, sympathy with man and with his work, with the beautiful and imperfect things he has made of the chequered centuries, is the keynote of conservatism. ”

“ In other words to unite the spirit of conservatism with the Spirit of Progress—to train ourselves to a sense of responsibility and discipline—to end all mockeries and to substitute realities in their place—to work with unhesitating, unfaltering steps—for self-government—the crown and consummation of all the political efforts of civilized man. ”

“ Even the rascality of which the conservative complains is individual rascality for private aims, tempered by public opinion, and no longer the sublimely organized rascality of all power and government. ”

“ Welcome here the Conservative and the Reformer! for our cause stands on the truest Conservatism and the truest Reform. In seeking the reform of existing evils, we seek also the conservation of the principles handed down by our fathers. Welcome especially the young! To you I appeal with confidence. Trust to your generous impulses, and to that reasoning of the heart, which is often truer, as it is less selfish, than the calculations of the head. [Enthusiasm.] Do not exchange your aspirations for the skepticism of age. ”