The Contemporary Review, January 1883: Vol 43, No. 1Various
Science
The Contemporary Review, January 1883: Vol 43, No. 1
Various
Arts -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals; Political science -- Periodicals
Yet there is, and always will be, room for a Conservative party in
English politics, only it must move along the historic lines, and not
needlessly renounce its old watchwords. We need two brooms to keep our
constitutional mansion in a tidy state, one in use, the other undergoing
repairs, or put in pickle, and ready to be brought in when wanted.
Government by party requires the existence of two parties, and demand is
apt to generate supply. It is not necessary that the two parties should
be separated by an impassable gulf. It is only necessary that materials
for two separate connections should be provided, and in this emergency
Nature does much to help us. There are opposite moods of mind in
politics as in literature and art; there are antithetical differences of
intellect and temperament to be found among men of all countries and all
times; there is the standing opposition between what is and what ought
to be, between the actual and the ideal, between the desire of the poor
human wayfarer to sit down and rest, and the curiosity which ever lures
him on. Possession and the desire to possess, divine contentment and
still diviner discontent, self-centreing reflectiveness and impulses
whose proper object is the welfare of mankind,--here are agencies which
play their part in politics as well as in social life. These
multifarious forces tend to range themselves on opposite sides, the
sympathetic in each class readily finding out their kinsmen in the rest.
With such materials to work upon, a Conservatism which chooses to follow
the ordinary course of things can never be defunct. Extinction can only
come from an endeavour after some monstrous birth against which both
Nature and history have pronounced their ban.
HENRY DUNCKLEY.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Contemporary Review, January 1883, by Various
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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