Bull is a born Conservative; for this too I inexpressibly honour him. All great Peoples are conservative; slow to believe in novelties; patient of much error in actualities; deeply and forever certain of the greatness that is in LAW, in Custom once solemnly established, and now long recognised as just and final. --True, O Radical Reformer, there is no Custom that can, properly speaking, be final; none. And yet thou seest _Customs_ which, in all civilised countries, are accounted final; nay, under the Old Roman name of _Mores,_ are accounted _Morality,_ Virtue, Laws of God Himself. Such, I assure thee, not a few of them are; such almost all of them once were. And greatly do I respect the solid character,--a blockhead, thou wilt say; yes, but a well- conditioned blockhead, and the best-conditioned,--who esteems all 'Customs once solemnly acknowledged' to be ultimate, divine, and the rule for a man to walk by, nothing doubting, not inquiring farther. What a time of it had we, were all men's life and trade still, in all parts of it, a problem, a hypothetic seeking, to be settled by painful Logics and Baconian Inductions! The Clerk in Eastcheap cannot spend the day in verifying his Ready-Reckoner; he must take it as verified, true and indisputable; or his Book- keeping by Double Entry will stand still. "Where is your Posted Ledger?" asks the Master at night.--"Sir," answers the other, "I was verifying my Ready-Reckoner, and find some errors. The Ledger is--!"--Fancy such a thing! True, all turns on your Ready-Reckoner being moderately correct, --being _not_ insupportably incorrect! A Ready-Reckoner which has led to distinct entries in your Ledger such as these: _'Creditor_ an English People by fifteen hundred years of good Labour; and _Debtor_ to lodging in enchanted Poor-Law Bastilles: _Creditor_ by conquering the largest Empire the Sun ever saw; and _Debtor_ to Donothingism and "Impossible" written on all departments of the government thereof: _Creditor_ by mountains of gold ingots earned; and _Debtor_ to No Bread purchasable by them:'--_such_ Ready-Reckoner, methinks, is beginning to be suspect; nay is ceasing, and has ceased, to be suspect! Such Ready-Reckoner is a Solecism in Eastcheap; and must, whatever be the press of business, and will and shall be rectified a little. Business can go on no longer with _it._ The most Conservative English People, thickest-skinned, most patient of Peoples, is driven alike by its Logic and its Unlogic, by things 'spoken,' and by things not yet spoken or very speakable, but only felt and very unendurable, to be wholly a Reforming People. Their Life as it is has ceased to be longer possible for them.