Reformist

“ Reform is born of need, not pity. ”

“ The people will have reform, and it must be no sham, no juggler's trick, pleasant in word and hollow in practice. The people will have no more wretched talk of checks and counter-balancings; they will have a real, wide, bona fide measure of reform. They ask a vote for honest, resident, industrious manhood, and if you dally longer, if you trifle much further with their appeal you will be greeted with the terrible news that in obstinately and wickedly preventing reform you have been madly provoking revolution. ”

“ Reform must become a farce in the hands of those who either do not understand it or do not care for it. If you mean reform, intrust the work to none but those who understand it and honestly do care, and care more for it than for their own personal ends. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As to the men whom we shall present for the high offices of the Government, let us, I entreat you, not lose sight of the fact that great reforms, the overthrow of inveterate abuses, the establishment of a better order of things are not accomplished by mere promises and declarations, but require the wise and energetic action of statesmen if this is to be truly a reform movement, and if it be not merely on paper. But it must be embodied in the men we trust with the power to infuse the spirit of reform into practical action. ”

“ If they had understood the nature of their task, spoken to the people, awakened their sympathies, and kept silence when they did not understand; if they had made less extravagant pretensions, and had shown more respect for public intelligence,—perhaps the reform would now, thanks to them, be in progress. But why are these earnest reformers continually bowing to power and wealth,—that is, to all that is anti-reformatory? How, in a thinking age, can they fail to see that the world must be converted by demonstration, not by myths and allegories? ”

“ 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. ”

“ I wish it therefore to be considered as my humble opinion, that what, in political slang, is termed Radical Reform, is, in reality, proximate revolution:—Universal Suffrage, inextinguishable uproar:—and Annual Parliaments, periodical bloodshed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He laughs at those who cannot hear the word revolution without a shudder. "Revolution," he says, "means merely transformation, and is accomplished when an entirely new principle is—either with force or without it—put in the place of an existing state of things. Reform, on the other hand, is when the principle of the existing state of things is continued, and only developed to more logical or just consequences. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These reforms are our contemporaries; they are ourselves; our own light, and sight, and conscience; they only name the relation which subsists between us and the vicious institutions which they go to rectify. They are the simplest statements of man in these matters; the plain right and wrong. I cannot choose but allow and honor them. The impulse is good, and the theory; the practice is less beautiful. The Reformers affirm the inward life, but they do not trust it, but use outward and vulgar means. They do not rely on precisely that strength which wins me to their cause ”

“ It is not for me to suggest schemes of reform, as it is the fashion to ask critics to do, but for those who are paid to do that work rightly and earnestly, or who choose to undertake to legislate for us. ”

“ I readily concede that in this, as in every period of intellectual activity, there has been a noise of denial and protest; much was to be resisted, much was to be got rid of by those who were reared in the old, before they could begin to affirm and to construct. Many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish, — and that makes the offensiveness of the class. They are partial; they are not equal to the work they pretend. They lose their way; in the assault on the kingdom of darkness, they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and power of benefit. ”

“ It knows that reforms—great, far-sweeping reforms—are necessary, and it has the power to make them. God help our civilization if it does not! . . . It must repress the trusts or stand before the world responsible for our system of government being changed into a social republic. ”

“ You see how very inferior the business of the political reformer is, after all. The non-political reformer is not restricted by any law, any Constitution, any man, nor by the people, because he is not to deal with institutions; he is to make the institutions better. ”

“ The progress of a great reform is a nation's school. It creates as it advances, the moral principle, the individual independence, the habit of private judgment, the enlightened public opinion, which are necessary for its own success, and thus, by new moulding the national character, and elevating its tone of morals, it confers far other and greater benefits than its originators at first proposed. ”

“ It will afford no security from the new ideas, that the old nations, the laws of centuries, the property and institutions of a hundred cities, are built on other foundations. The demon of reform has a secret door into the heart of every lawmaker, of every inhabitant of every city. ”

“ Some reluct at the long time requisite to change the institutions of a nation, or regenerate its public sentiment. But here, too, a moment's thought shows us, how wise in this respect is the order of Providence. The progress of a great reform is a nation's school. ”

“ The greatest reforms which could now be accomplished would consist in undoing the work of statesmen in the past, and the greatest difficulty in the way of reform is to find out how to undo their work without injury to what is natural and sound. ”

“ Reform, so called, is becoming confessedly more potent than its antagonist. The admission is reluctantly forced from pallid lips that revolutions—political, social and religious—constitute the programme of the coming age. ”

“ The reformation we propose in its utmost scope is radical and universal. It is not the mere perfecting of a reform already in motion, a detail of some established plan, but it is an epochal movement — the emancipation of a class, the redemption of half the world, and a conforming reorganization of all social, political, and industrial interests and institutions. ”

“ The question is whether or not we shall, before the general zeal for reform dies away, through an abolition of the spoils system and the permanent establishment of a sensible civil service, win the other branch of reform, which is of still greater importance for the future of our political life. ”

“ Its services on behalf of negative criticism are very slight; and these, as you rightly remarked, are for the most part, due to the circumstances and conditions of a revolutionary age for which the reformers can hardly be held responsible.
Modern social life, the outcome of the revolution, is regenerating in its nature; it does not occupy itself solely with tearing down the old, but is mainly busy with creating new forms. ”

“ Only a very innocent person will expect reformers to be convinced of such a novel notion of reform by mere assertion, no matter how emphatic, or by argument, no matter how conclusive. But if, as I have said, reform actually implies a criticism of traditional American ideas, and a more responsible and more positive conception of democracy, these implications will necessarily be revealed in the future history of the reforming agitation. The reformers who understand will be assisted by the logic of events, whereas those who cannot and will not understand will be thwarted by the logic of events. ”

“ In contrast to the ordered pursuit of reform, the spirit of which the Utilitarians hoped to embody in societies and Acts of Parliament, were the rebellious impulses of men filled with a prophetic spirit, walking in obedience to an inward voice, eager to cry aloud their message to a generation wrapped in prosperity and self-contentment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Reform for reform's sake supersedes reform for the people's sake. Candidates have been afraid of those mouths. Such mouths as those outside there assert that they are talking for the whole people in the name of morality, but there are only a few mouths of that kind. It is time to test it out. I propose to see whether the people will not follow the real thing in honesty instead of the mere protestation of it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just as, in my view, reform must naturally precede the securing of independence, liberty, and equality, in political dogma, so do I believe that the political synthesis, or at any rate a glimpse of this synthesis, must, in the new epoch, precede in renovated Europe the manifestation of the religious synthesis of the epoch. ”

“ In fact, we are living in an era of small reforms of which little good and but little harm can be predicated. Can it not be made the eve of an era of reforms really great and far-reaching? If, as was indicated above, there is a general and profound realization of the threatening evils, is it not possible to evolve an agreement with regard to the irreducible minimum of social reform? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Between the two lay the conquest of political power by a new class, and in this lies the essential difference between revolution and reform. Measures which seek to adjust the juridical and political superstructure of society, to changed economic conditions, are reforms if they proceed from the class which is the political and economic ruler of society. ”

“ I hear some gentlemen say, ’Oh, yes, we are for reform, but this does not reform enough,’ I am somewhat alarmed when I find a man who says he wants to reform but cannot begin at all unless he can reform all over in one minute. ”

“ I must explain, however, in what sense I consider myself bound with regard to the Reform Act. When I brought forward that measure it will be recollected that the cry was that it was too large, that it was too extensive; and those who were Radical Reformers were upon the whole much better pleased with it than those who were moderate Reformers. ”

“ A reform would have been fearful and calamitous. A political revolution with one class was morally impracticable. Consulting a wise humanity, they submitted to a condition in which Providence had placed them. ”

“ How utterly confusing it is, consequently, to consider reform as equivalent merely to the restoration of the American democracy to a former condition of purity and excellence! Our earlier political and economic condition was not at its best a fit subject for any great amount of complacency. ”

“ Thus the reformer explains that it is not against the natural restraints, but against the artificial ones, that he protests; and that manifestly the fire of sneers and angry glances which he has to bear, is poured upon him because he will not bow down to the idol which society has set up. ”

“ 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. ”