Reformers

“ The more enlightened reformers are conscious of the additional dignity and value which the popularity of reform has bestowed upon the American idea, but they still fail to realize the deeper implications of their own programme. ”

“ Reform exclusively as a moral protest and awakening is condemned to sterility. Reformers exclusively as moral protestants and purifiers are condemned to misdirected effort, to an illiberal puritanism, and to personal self-stultification. ”

“ The Reformers found government the profession of a few families of landed proprietors, at the best prevented from active abuse by an imperfect system of representation of classes. They made it a thing of trust and responsibility, for which every man must prove his competence by his readiness to act directly for the benefit of those whom he governed. ”

“ But you are notoriously Reformers merely from fear. You are Reformers under duress. If a concession is to be made to the public importunity, you can hardly deny that it will be made with more grace and dignity by Lord Grey than by you. ”

“ Is not this why so many reformers retire disappointed—men and women of finest excellencies of purpose and practical and fruitful thought—they have insisted in projecting their reforms from office or parlor upon the masses without knowing those masses? ”

“ No sooner do most reformers clear away a little ground, and discover what they take to be truths, than they attempt, by organising a sect, founding endowments, and framing articles and trust-deeds, to secure the permanent tradition of their own views to posterity in the form in which they are apprehended by themselves. ”

“ But the immediate object of reformers and the forms of persuasion by which they seek to advance them, vary much in different generations. To a hasty observer they might even seem contradictory, and to justify the notion that nothing better than a desire for change, selfish or perverse, is at the bottom of all reforming movements. ”

“ We hear constantly of "reform," and the reformers turn out to be people who do not like things as they are and wish that they could be made nicer. We hear a great many exhortations to make progress from people who do not know in what direction they want to go. ”

“ But the Nemesis of all reformers is finality; and the reformers of education, like those of religion, fell into the profound, however common, error of mistaking the beginning for the end of the work of reformation. ”

“ At any rate, you will find, if you look about you, that the chief reformers are not, as a rule, the ill-used classes themselves, but the sensitive and thinking souls who hate and loathe the injustice with which others are treated. ”

“ We are reformers in 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. ”

“ For in life, as we may always note, and at the very moment the greatest reformers are operating, there are also working—and quite as vigorously, else the reformer would have little to do—anti-reformers, or anti-Christs, or reactionaries, if you will, creatures who represent the obverse of what is sought by the reformer or changer, and who will by no means be permanently disposed of by him. ”

“ They were national reformers; and national reformers cannot do their work without coming into rude collision with the sins, and prejudices, and errors of their day; when they were taken from the earth, it was with all the soil and dust of Earth’s conflict upon them. ”

“ Most reformers have infinite confidence in creeds, resolutions, and laws. They think of the common people as raw material, out of which they propose to construct institutions and governments, like mechanical contrivances, where each person will stand for a cog, rope, wheel, pulley, bolt, or fuel, and the reformers will be the managers and directors. ”

“ Advanced and radical reformers of the new type all over the world, those who put forward a general plan of reform and wish to go to the common roots of our social evils, demand, first of all, reorganization. ”

“ The success of the great Reform Bill and the experiences of twenty years without any of the apprehensions of the anti-Reformers having been realised, are now in my opinion sources of danger, as they create an opinion that progress, as it is called, is not only necessary, but perfectly safe. ”

“ Men and women whose 'mission' it is to enlighten and instruct the people, abound in every walk of morals. Religion, science, ethics, and every department of social economy but this, have their 'reformers.' Before the great problem, How shall the evils which attend our domestic service be removed? the stoutest-hearted reformer stands appalled. These evils are so multiform and all-pervading, they strike their roots so strongly, and ramify so extensively, that they defy the attempt to eradicate them; and they are thus left to flourish and increase. ”

“ Gradually (it may be anticipated) reformers, who dare to criticise and who are not afraid to reconstruct will be sharply distinguished from reformers who believe reform to be a species of higher conservatism. The latter will be forced where they belong into the ranks of the supporters and beneficiaries of the existing system; and the party of genuine reform will be strengthened by their departure. ”

“ The ancestors of this class have not known how, or not cared to preserve those ancient Institutions in their original purity; and the class now wanted is the class of Restoratives, of men whose knowledge, wisdom, honesty and virtue, will enable them to purge out the accumulated errors of centuries, and restore the Institutions of the country to their pristine purity. I grant that this class is not found among the men who are commonly called or claim to be called Radical Reformers: there is as much ignorance in that class as in any other. ”

“ They may be the best Church reformers, for they will make more and more manifest how it is not institutions but righteousness which exalts a nation; how, one after108 another, all reforms fail because men tell lies and love themselves; and how, therefore, the first of all reforms is the reform of the Church, whose mission for the nation is that it create righteousness. ”

“ Then a habit of criticism and reform increased with the sense that the evils were both more flagrant and more stubborn than he imagined, until at the present time average well-intentioned Americans are likely to be reformers of one kind or another, while the more intelligent and disinterested of them are pretty sure to vote a "reform" ticket. ”

“ The reformers want to get a majority, that is, to get the power of the state and so to make other people do what the reformers think it right and wise to do. A and B agree to spend Sunday in a certain way. ”

“ British society, in its large majority, may be fairly described as Reformers, in the sense of being favourably disposed to a general spirit of ventilation and reform carried through all departments of public business, political or judicial ”

“ I have outlined above the national reforms necessary. But we are slow reformers, and it may be well to indicate reforms immediately possible. These are outlined in a series of articles published last March in the Poor Law Officers' Journal. ”

“ Those who have heard or read anything from me on the subject, know that one of the principal points insisted on is, the forming of societies or any other artificial combinations is the first, greatest, and most fatal mistake ever committed by legislators and by reformers. ”

“ No, you've got me wrong again. I'm not a [pg 215] reformer, and never will be, I hope. Reformers, or most that ever I met, are only men who first tried to play politics and got licked at it. I'm only an observer. ”

“ And there are few signs of a radical change for the better. The confusion and incongruousness that mark the ideas of the reformers, and the hesitancy and conflicting interests of politicians make one dubious of the outcome of the present contest. ”

“ As soon as the reformers give up trying to be statesmen, and perceive that their own function is purely educational, and that they are mere anti-slavery agitators and persons of no account whatever, they will succeed better. ”

“ That will be done when the body is chosen in such a way that its interests are necessarily coincident with those of the community at large. Hence there is of course no difficulty in deducing the actual demands of reformers. ”

“ I go with the reformers partly because I hate the Old Order, partly because I see in the coming changes a chance for me to rise, and partly because I believe the reformers are right. I have read books which gave me new ideas ”

“ In every age of the world there has been an established system, which has been opposed from time to time by isolated and dissentient reformers. The established system has sometimes fallen, slowly and gradually: it has either been upset by the rising influence of some one man, or it has been sapped by gradual change of opinion in the many. ”

“ I know that it has been proposed by enthusiastic, but not too practical, reformers to do away with parties by some legerdemain of governmental reconstruction, accompanied and supplemented by some rehabilitation, devoutly to be wished, of the virtues least commonly controlling in fallen human nature ”

“ that the question was, whether, if the reformers of society and government could succeed in their objects, and every person in the community were free and in a state of physical comfort, the pleasures of life, being no longer kept up by struggle and privation, would cease to be pleasures. ”

“ Every project in the history of reform, no matter how violent and surprising, is good, when it is the dictate of a man's genius and constitution, but very dull and suspicious when adopted from another. ”

“ The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers and revolutionists are indispensable, to counterbalance the inertness and fossilism making so large a part of human institutions. ”

“ As there were many reformers, so likewise many reformations; every country proceeding in a particular way and method, according as their national interest, together with their constitution and clime inclined them; some angrily, and with extremity; others calmly, and with mediocrity, not rending, but easily dividing the community, and leaving an honest possibility of a reconciliation; which, though peaceable spirits do desire, and may conceive that revolution of time and the mercies of God may effect, yet that judgment that shall consider the present antipathies between the two extremes, p. ”

“ It was clear that life, for Canadian Reformers, would very soon be not worth living. They despaired of the future, which, to their depressed vision, seemed to be overhung by a sky of unrelieved blackness. Their despair was accompanied by a smarting sense of defeat and injustice proportionate to the circumstances. Such feelings were not confined to defeated candidates and their immediate friends, but were participated in by Reformers generally. Some of them began to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of removal from the Province. ”

“ Do you not ask the people to vote for you on the ground that you are a reformer? Is it not the office of a true reformer to remove bad things and put better things in their place? And now you come and say, that your opponents have forced upon us a bad thing, and you propose to reform by giving us more of it! You are opposed to all dangerous assumptions of power by the Government, and now you propose to reform by giving us more of that! ”

“ Reform is born of need, not pity. ”

“ Each step in the Reform movement, whether theological, social, or political, is educational in its effects even beyond the circle in which the step is taken. My advice would be: Seek justice; but refuse no point which may be conceded, for each concession gives you additional means and strength to enforce your claim. ”

“ He had no idea of reforming society from the outside as from a separate world; but he proceeded upon the principle that, as real reformation and progress must be the result of reformed internal conditions, so the reformer himself must be a sympathetic part of his world. ”

“ It is quite impossible for me, having been one who brought forward the measure of reform, who feel bound by the declarations then made, to take any part in these large measures of reconstruction, or to consent to the repeal of the Reform Act, without being guilty of what I think would be a breach of faith towards those with whom I was then acting. If the people of England are not of that mind they may reject me. ”

“ At any rate, permit me to remind you that no great reform ever succeeded without a high degree of impracticability among its champions; that, not to any political cunning, to your own impracticability you owe all the prestige and power you have; and that you need all of it now more than ever to save your cause, your party and your own standing in the confidence of the people. ”

“ Revolution or reformation is his alternative. Sir, the people will have to resort to revolution when it is too late for reform. But as long as reform is possible, it will be too early for revolution. Where is the possibility of reform? It is as a return to first principles. It is in a revival of the original spirit of the constitution; it is in strict construction. ”