Conservatism

“ But you will always find this conservatism, as it calls itself—discover it where you may and under whatever name or association it lies—posted and trenched against every species of reform, improvement and progression; standing still like a mile-stone, and sneering at and ridiculing every thing that passes by in its flying career. ”

“ Is conservatism not exposing for food rotten over-ripe fruit when it hucksters its insistence that government is only an umpire in a fight which is said to be between equals but which is not between equals? Is radicalism not crying out ware that is but half made when it lures us to buy its toy, no government at all, or all by government? Is the doctrine of rights so glib on tongue of conservative and radical not also a half-truth? Every right, be it of property, of labor, or of what else, is pillared upon a duty. ”

“ If the principles of conservatism are based on firm supports, on a recognition of values, a sense of measure and proportion, a due regard for order,—its prejudices are indefensible. The wise conservative does not attempt to defend them; he only clings to them more lovingly under attack. ”

“ Conservatism, we are told, is out-of-date. The charge is preposterous and we ought boldly to say so. The laws of God, and of nature, have no dateline. The principles on which the Conservative political position is based have been established by a process that has nothing to do with the social, economic and political landscape that changes from decade to decade and from century to century. These principles are derived from the nature of man, and from the truths that God has revealed about His creation. ”

“ Are there not such things as a constitutional conservatism, and a constitutional tendency to change? Is there not a class which clings to the old in all things; and another class so in love with progress as often to mistake novelty for improvement? Do we not find some men ready to bow to established authority of whatever kind; while others demand of every such authority its reason, and reject it if it fails to justify itself? ”

“ 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. ”

“ But you say you are conservative—eminently conservative—while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? ”

“ The conservative theory would really be quite sweeping and unanswerable if it were not for this one fact. But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. ”

“ Last of all, I stop not to argue with those who decry agitation and extol conservatism, not knowing that conservatism is of two kinds—that one which, yielding to cowardly fear of present inconvenience or danger, covers even political leprosy with protecting folds; and that other and better conservatism, that heals, in order that the body of the Commonwealth may be healthful and immortal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I never read the debates, and my mind always wanders when people are talking politics; but my Conservatism and Hubert’s Radicalism enter into everything—into our way with servants, into our treatment of our friends, into our ideas about dress, manners, church. ”

“ I am not undervaluing the part, the important part, played by conservatism, the conservatism that holds on to what has been gained if it is good, that insists on discipline and heed to the plain teaching of experience, that refuses to go into hysterics of enthusiasm over every flighty suggestion, or to follow every leader simply because he proposes something new and strange—I do not mean the conservatism that refuses to try anything simply because it is new, and prefers to energetic life the stagnation that inevitably leads to decay. ”

“ The truth of conservatism lies, first, in its love of the existing order. Every established form of social life has had a certain wholeness and strength and perfection of its own. This is as true of savagery as it is of any type of civilization. Interests are in equilibrium, and are guaranteed security within certain limits that are generally understood. In other words, at least a measure of fulfilment may be counted on. The conservative is right in valuing this as a prodigious achievement. ”

“ Although he professed conservatism only in those cases where conservatism was essential to the public good and radicalism in everything which might require radical treatment and radical reform, the spirit of opposition to the Tribune, as well as his temperamental leanings, carried him definitely to the conservative side. He was by nature inclined to accept the established order and make the best of it. Change, if it came, should come not through radical agitation and revolution, but by cautious and gradual evolution. The world needed brushing, not harrowing. ”

“ We are a conservative race, and our conservatism has been eminently successful in that matter of supreme moment,—the preservation of the faith and the purity of our people. It is difficult, therefore, to see the necessity of change, to meet the exigencies of the times, and the higher demands of the nation and the race. ”

“ Speaker, those are the four principles of conservatism. A little tidbit of wisdom that came out this morning--and I made a little note and slipped it in my pocket--I think it is important that we here in this Congress reflect upon those values that made America great and what it is going to take to strengthen those values, restore those values, and carry America to the next level of our destiny. ”

“ They suggested too what is suggested in England at every turn, that conservatism here has all the charm and leaves dissent and democracy and other vulgar variations nothing but their bald logic. Conservatism has the cathedrals, the colleges, the castles, the gardens, the traditions, the associations, the fine names, the better manners, the poetry; Dissent has the dusky brick chapels in provincial by-streets, the names out of Dickens, the uncertain tenure of the h, and the poor mens sibi conscia recti. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Bending every energy for years to stay the tide of change and progress, suppressing freedom of thought with relentless vigor, and quarantining herself and her dependencies against new ideas, conservatism grew to be her settled habit and the organs of government became ossified. ”

“ An ardent republican, in the truest and noblest sense of that abused term, a foe to absolutism and radicalism in every shape, he was the noblest product of a conservatism in which the elements of distinction were ability, intelligence, refinement, and social position. ”

“ Liberalism is ordained of the common people and sprang from a common resistance to the oppression of arbitrary and self-centred rule. Conservatism had its birth in the doctrine of the divine right of kings. The “governing classes” were ordained of God because they themselves arranged the ordination. Liberalism has its principles embodied in the human heart. ”

“ Their conservatism is a dead but solid heart-wood which is the pivot and firm column of support to all their growth, appropriating nothing to itself, but forever, by its support, assisting to extend the area of their radicalism. Half a century after they are dead at the core, they are preserved by radical reforms. They do not, like men, from radicals turn conservatives. ”

“ It is high time that we should hear something of the rights of the Free States, and of the duties consequent upon them. We also have our prejudices to be respected, our theory of civilization, of what constitutes the safety of a state and insures its prosperity, to be applied wherever there is soil enough for a human being to stand on and thank God for making him a man. Is conservatism applicable only to property, and not to justice, freedom, and public honor? ”

“ Neither our conservatism nor our liberalism, neither our oligarchic nor our ‘levelling’ zeal, can find much to claim as its own in a struggle which was for a hierarchy under royal licence on the one side, and for a freedom founded in grace on the other. ”

“ Affairs everywhere, be it remembered, were moving with incredible swiftness. In every quarter the beleaguered forces of conservatism found themselves surrounded and hemmed in by radical elements which manifested a spirit of militancy and a resolute will to conquer. ”

“ And I repeat: if you have no other pride or ambition in the matter—if only for your own good—it is essential that you try to stand for advanced policies and break away from this benumbing conservatism; for the place which I hold and to which you should sometime succeed is not one where a man may sit still; it demands of him activity and progress, and if he does not respond, it will demand some one who will. ”

“ In these days of social and political introspection, mankind, if not governed, is largely influenced by ideals, and ideals are provided for us by the Liberal and by the Socialist parties. Conservatism, which, after all, is the habitual attitude of the English nation, seems to hold the balance, and stands for no special ideal, but rather for the practical experience which notes that reformers’ dreams are not always fulfilled, and that it is salutary, in the first instance at any rate, to look askance at things which are new. ”

“ It is sometimes a pleasant duty to resist the pervasive pressure of the business world.
Political conservatism may be a lost cause in modern democracy; but temperamental conservatism dates from the birth of man’s reasoning powers, and will survive the clamour and chaos of revolutions. ”

“ He represents his age both in his deep-rooted conservatism or moderate liberalism, and in his reverence for the new knowledge which was undermining the conservative stronghold, especially in religion. ”

“ The reformer concedes that these mitigations exist, and that, if he proposed comfort, he should take sides with the establishment. Your words are excellent, but they do not tell the whole. Conservatism is affluent and openhanded, but there is a cunning juggle in riches. I observe that they take somewhat for everything they give. I look bigger, but am less ”

“ That would be a party sin. Conservatism is a principle of government; the best because the safest for an old country; and the guarantee that we do not lose the wisdom of past experience in our struggle with what is doubtful. ”

“ If radicalism in both were to be effectually resisted, some better foundation must be found for conservatism. I should be tempted to say that a critical period was approaching, did I not admit that every period can always be described as critical. In fact, however, thoughtful people, perceiving on the one hand that the foundations of their creed were shaking, and yet holding it to be essential to their happiness, began to take a new position. ”

“ If there is a word in the English language that means treachery, servility, and cowardice, it is that word 'conservative.' It ought never hereafter to be on the lips of an American statesman. For twenty years it has stood in America the synonym of meanness and baseness. I have studied somewhat carefully the political history of the country during the last fifteen or twenty years, and I have always noticed that when I heard a man prate about being a conservative and about conservatism, he was about to do some mean thing. ”

“ The indefiniteness of this mass of episcopal opinion justifies the title ‘Conservative.’ In adopting it freely, we must not forget, what the whole foregoing account has gone to shew, that their conservatism was of the empirical or short-sighted kind, prone to acquiesce in things as they are, hard to arouse to a sense of a great crisis, reluctant to step out of its groove. ”