such governments are prosperous and durable. When they happen seldom or are ill improved, these political bodies live in pain, or in langour, and die soon.-Bolingbroke.

The world will not endure to hear that we are wiser than any which went before. In which consideration there is a cause why we should be slow and unwilling to change without very urgent necessity the ancient ordinances, rites and long approved customs of our venerable predecessors. The love of things ancient doth argue a stayedness, but levity and want of experience maketh apt unto innovations. That which wisdom did first begin, and hath been with good men long continued, challengeth allowance of them that succeed, although it plead for itself nothing. That which is new, if it promise not much, doth fear condemnation before trial; till trial, no man doth acquit or trust it, what good soever it pretend or promise. So that in this kind there are few things known to be good, till such time as they grow to be ancient.-Richard Hooker.

Reform is affirmative, conservatism negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth. Conservatism is more candid to behold another's worth; reform more disposed to maintain and increase its own. Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry. It makes a great difference to your figure and to your thought, whether your foot is advancing or receding. Conservatism never puts the foot forward; in the hour when it does that it is not establishment but reform. -Emerson.

There is a rule of conduct common to individuals and to states, established by the experience of centuries as that of everyday life. This rule declares that we must not dream of reformation while agitated by passion; wisdom directs that at such moments we should limit ourselves to maintaining.-Metternich.

There is no probability of ever establishing in England a more democratic form of government than the present English constitution. . . The disposition of property in England throws the government of the country into the hands of its natural aristocracy. I do not believe that any scheme of the suffrage, or any method of election, could divert that power into other quarters.-Disraeli (1836).

The trouble with modern Conservatism is that it is suffering from an absence of Conservative thinkers. Disraeli was the last; for Lord Randolph Churchill was practically driven out of the party owing to his excessive originality. -J. M. Kennedy (Tory Democracy).

The Tory party has been called in modern times Conservative. It desires, indeed, to stand in the ancient ways. But it is the vision which it has inherited, and not the unconsecrated past, which it desires to preserve for the present and bequeath to the future. . . . It believes in the Crown, because the Crown is the symbol and stay of the unity of the Commonwealth; it believes in a national church because it believes in the conservation of the Commonwealth; it believes in a national system of economy, such, and so suited to the genius of the Commonwealth, that human welfare is the first care and the first charge on the production of wealth, and while agriculture is not sacrificed to industry, neither is industry sacrificed to agriculture.-Lord Henry Bentinck (Tory Democracy).

Temperamental sympathy, common in youth, is apt, like optimism, to run thin with advancing years. This, in fact, is the secret of the number of reversions from Liberalism to Conservatism among elderly men.-J. M. Robert

son.

The word Tory had from the first a political application. Originally it designated a particular class of Irish freebooters, and was probably first used in Ireland to express, in a calumnious form, that class of politicians who attributed to the king a right of levying taxes without consent of the subject appearing by his proxy in Parliament.-De Quincey.

CHAPTER XIX.

T

CHAMBERLAIN AND IMPERIALISM.

HE complete change of view which appeared to be indicated by Joseph Chamberlain's defection from the English Liberal party in 1886, and his alliance with the Conservative party, signalised by joining Lord Salisbury's Cabinet, in 1895, does not seem to have been so surprising to those who were intimate with him as it was to the world at large. Lord Morley, who knew his mind well, observes that "it is an error to suppose that Chamberlain ever had anything like complete sympathy with the Manchester programme. As I was writing about Cobden towards the end of the seventies, our talk naturally fell now and again upon colonies, non-intervention, foreign policy. Without any formal declaration of dissent, I still had an instinctive feeling that the orthodox Cobdenite word was by no means sure of a place in the operations of the future leader."

This passage is chiefly convincing by reason of its source, and any confirmation of it can only increase our wonder that during the years when Chamberlain was a leader and the hope of what he himself called "aggressive Radicalism," he should have concealed his Imperialistic leanings so successfully. In his Radical days he was regarded by the horrified Tories as a new Jack Cade made in Birmingham. He had then spoken of Gladstone as "the greatest man of his time," and of Salisbury as "the most immoral of politicians." He had referred to England as "a peer-ridden country," and to the Conservative party as "the old stupid party," as comprehending "fossil reactionaries," and as a heterogeneous combination "who unite their discordant voices in order to form a mutual protection society for assuring to each of its members place, privilege and power." Yet after the split in the Liberal party on the Irish Home