| <Saturday Review 26 April 1856: Bagehot>
| <Intellectual Conservatism>
| At first sight, it does not seem difficult to be a Conservative. 
| The <hi> status quo </hi> is a plain creed ~~ you have to 
| discover nothing and to invent nothing. Very heavy men 
| have been able to say <hi> <f> Nolumus leges Angliae 
| mutari. </f> </hi> Yet, when the matter is more carefully 
| looked at, we may see reason to change our opinion. 
| Father Newman used to teach at Oxford that true opinions 
| might become false because of the <hi> manner </hi> of 
| holding them. He viewed ~~ or seemed to view ~~ truth as 
| a succession of perpetual oscillations, like the negative and 
| positive signs of an alternate series, in which you were 
| constantly more or less denying or affirming the same 
| proposition; and he deemed it certain that a person who 
| unthinkingly rested at the beginning of the series, although 
| he affirmed the truth, might really be further from it than the 
| thoughtful inquirer, some steps on, who actually denied it. 
| The realization ~~ such was the creed of those days ~~ 
| which you gained in the process of inquiry, and which was 
| on the point of bringing you to more effectual belief, was 
| more than a compensation for the error of the momentary 
| denial. And, whatever may be the inference from these 
| severe metaphysics as to the mind of the inquirer himself, 
| there is no doubt that, as to those around him, and among 
| whom he desires to diffuse his belief, his power of so doing 
| is directly proportioned to his realization of what he holds, 
| to his insight into its features and principles ~~ to his 
| mastery of it. The very plainness of the Conservative creed 
| is here a difficulty. People in the country fancy they 
| understand it. A rural dinner-party is rarely remarkable for 
| adventurous conversation, but a good opinion-extractor will 
| not have the least difficulty in eliciting from the average 
| inhabitant ~~ squire or rector ~~ an admission that he 
| knows why what is ought to be; and if you try to show an 
| oddness in anything, the sentiment of society will be 
| against you. If we look at the political party, the traces of 
| the fact are evident. We do not speak of the leaders. The 
| final cause of Mr. Disraeli is the <p> “great Asian mystery” 
| </p> that is not yet revealed ~~ his partiality for the 
| Caucasian and ancient races has drawn him back to <p> 
| “the times before morality.” </p> When a man is infinitely 
| above having an opinion, it would be illogical to inquire how 
| he holds that opinion. But take the average follower of this 
| great man ~~ any member of the plain and simple party 
| which resisted Catholic Emancipation, which clove to 
| Protection, which hates Maynooth, which could not 
| understand Sir Robert Peel ~~ of how few can even the 
| most partial friend maintain that they really know what they 
| are holding ~~ that they have sounded the complicated 
| depths of English society ~~ that they understand the 
| traditional maxims which they repeat ~~ that they 
| appreciate and comprehend the nice adjustment of the 
| institutions which they would risk their lives to uphold. Their 
| plain intellect seems unequal, their simple temperament 
| seems opposed, to so elaborate an investigation. Does not 
| the very fact of their being led by Mr. Disraeli at once 
| evince that they do not themselves possess that full 
| mastery of principles which is necessary for their 
| argumentative exposition ~~ that they scarcely appreciate 
| the moral thoughtfulness which accompanies careful and 
| rational conviction?
| Looking back to the past fortunes and history of this great 
| party, we observe two great sentiments or feelings which 
| have in great part ~~ sometimes worthily, and sometimes 
| unworthily ~~ supplied the place of intellectual conviction. 
| The first is the old Cavalier feeling of loyalty ~~ the belief 
| that all existence is a <f=hi> <f> regium donum </f> </hi> 
| ~~ that the very fact of doubt or inquiry is a misdeed ~~ 
| that the first duty of life is to accept that which is given, 
| because of the king from whom it comes. Traces, few and 
| faint, of this feeling may still be discerned among us, 
| especially among those to whom a happy organization 
| gives a daily enjoyment. In old customs and ancient 
| associations it would not be difficult to show the vestiges of 
| this curious and often noble feeling. It can, however, at 
| least in that form, be only looked on as a great thing of the 
| past. When once the change in politics is made from the 
| one heaven-appointed monarch to a divided, shifting, 
| constitutional system, the romance of royalty passes away 
| ~~ we are governed by a cabinet, and who ever found 
| sentiment for a managing Committee?
| Another feeling of a different kind is that which animates 
| what the call on the Continent the Party of Order. This is 
| nothing more or less than fear. It finds expression in 
| excellent sentences as to the safety of society, the 
| protection of the <p> “results of ages;” </p> but when you 
| analyse it, it simply comes to this, ~~ that those who feel it 
| dread that their shop, their house, their life ~~ not so much 
| their physical life as their whole mode and sources of 
| existence ~~ will be destroyed and cast away. The English 
| Tory party, at the end of the last century, shared largely in 
| this sentiment. The French Revolution terrified mankind all 
| through the period which Arnold called <p> “the misused 
| trial-time of modern Europe.” </p> The old cavalier feeling 
| had been gradually melting down into a simple 
| acquiescence in a comfortable existence. The whole life of 
| the higher classes ~~ as it remains to us in books, so 
| agreeable that we can hardly blame what they describe ~~ 
| was a succession of careless enjoyments. They accepted 
| that which was given them ~~ and well they might accept 
| it; for on few generations have the comforts of intellectual 
| cultivation been bestowed in so large measure, and so 
| unchecked by the cares and evils which, in most days, as 
| in ours, that cultivation at once reveals. It is not necessary 
| to say how the danger was speedily revealed. The <p> 
| “French volcano,” </p> as Sir Archibald Alison always 
| terms it, soon burst, and brought on, among other effects, 
| Lord Eldon ~~ the man who objected to volcanoes. He was 
| the chief of the party of order at that time. The mass of the 
| people lived in fear that any alteration ~~ anything touching 
| the crust of outward existence ~~ might bring on an 
| eruption. Lord Eldon told them it would bring on an eruption, 
| but if they would keep him Chancellor, there should be no 
| eruption. He held up the Court of Chancery to mankind, 
| and said, <q> </q>. No generation more closely observed 
| the sign which was given them. The history of England for 
| thirty years is the history of a craven maintenance of 
| misunderstood institutions. The consequence ~~ the nearly 
| fatal ~~ consequence of this has been admitted by those 
| most likely to form a contrary judgment. <p> “A few more 
| drops.” </p> said the <hi> Quarterly Review, </hi> <p> “of 
| Eldonine, and we should have had the People’s Charter.” 
| </p> Nothing, indeed, could have been more likely to foster 
| an all-destroying Radicalism than the consecutive 
| omnipotence of the two most contemptible Conservatisms 
| ~~ first, of the careless enjoyment which does not regard 
| the evil of others ~~ next, if a shrinking terror when the 
| possible personal consequences of that evil are suddenly 
| comprehended.
| It would be very unjust to cast on any portion of the 
| Conservatives of the present day any great share in either 
| of these reproaches. A spirit of earnestness has gone out 
| into society, which forbids the diffusion of reckless and 
| selfish enjoyment. The high-minded pluck of the English 
| gentleman detests the Conservatism of fear. But it yet can 
| hardly be said that we possess a Conservatism of 
| reflection ~~ at least we do not possess it in the degree 
| which we should. How few, even of those who are most 
| anxious to claim the title, have a real mastery of the 
| reasons, a real familiarity with the moral grounds ~~ to say 
| nothing of the political consequences ~~ of the existing 
| state of things! How few could satisfy a fair and candid 
| objection! How few of the vaunted arguments which are 
| paraded before minds already convinced would do in the 
| face of an enemy ~~ in the face of those who doubt! How 
| little toleration is there for the refinements of necessary 
| reasoning ~~ for the complexities of political investigation! 
| How strong a tendency to exact a narrow consistency of 
| result, in place of a statesmanlike consideration of 
| problems ~~ a wise and patient weighing of facts. Nor is 
| this a mere party misfortune. It is not because we deem 
| our institutions perfect that we regret the defects of the 
| Conservative party ~~ our grounds are national. To a great 
| extent, every Liberal is now a Conservative. That moral 
| and intellectual state ~~ that gradual training of the 
| politically unintelligent ~~ that unity of order and freedom 
| which it is the aim of Liberalism to produce, already exists. 
| Yet our institutions are daily assailed by the <p> “uneasy 
| classes” </p> ~~ by the lovers of correct bureaucracy, 
| all-involving democracy, and quickly striking despotism. In the 
| face of questioning classes, every unthinking Conservative 
| endangers what he defends ~~ he is a vexation to the 
| Liberal, and a misfortune to his country.