It seemed to the poet—himself in need of peace—that all the weariness of life, and all the gentle humility of the tired but trusting soul, were compressed into those lines. There is nothing calamitous in death.
“The patrimony of a little mould,
And entail of four planks,”
is the common heritage of mankind, and we accept it reverently. A belief in the immortality of the soul has been fairly familiar to Christendom before the spiritualists adopted it as their exclusive slogan. But to escape from time, only to enter upon an eternity shorn of everything which could make eternity endurable, to pass through the narrow door which opens on the highways of God, only to find ourselves dictating dull books, and delivering platitudinous lectures,—which of us has courage to face such possibilities!
We are told that once, when Patience Worth was spelling out the endless pages of “The Sorry Tale,” she came to a sudden stop, then wrote, “This be nuff,” and knocked off for the night. A blessed phrase, and, of a certainty, her finest inspiration. Would that all dead authors would adopt it as their motto; and with ouija boards, and table-legs, and automatic pencils, write as their farewell message to the world those three short, comely words, “This be nuff.”
Consolations of the Conservative
There is a story of Hawthorne’s which is little known, because it is too expansively dull to be read. It tells how the nations of the earth, convulsed by a mighty spasm of reform, rid themselves of the tools and symbols of all they held in abhorrence. Because they would have no more war, they destroyed the weapons of the world. Because they would have no more drunkenness, they destroyed its wines and spirits. Because they banned self-indulgence, they destroyed tobacco, tea, and coffee. Because they would have all men to be equal, they destroyed the insignia of rank, from the crown jewels of England to the medal of the Cincinnati. Wealth itself was not permitted to survive, lest the new order be as corrupt as was the old. Nothing was left but the human heart with its imperishable and inalienable qualities; and while it beats within the human breast, the world must still be moulded by its passions. “When Cain wished to slay his brother,” murmured a cynic, watching the great guns trundled to the blaze, “he was at no loss for a weapon.”
If belief in the perfectibility of man—and not of man only, but of governments—is the inspiration of liberalism, of radicalism, of the spirit that calls clamorously for change, and that has requisitioned the words reform and progression, sympathy with man and with his work, with the beautiful and imperfect things he has made of the chequered centuries, is the keynote of conservatism. The temperamental conservative is a type vulnerable to ridicule, yet not more innately ridiculous than his neighbours. He has been carelessly defined as a man who is cautious because he has a good income, and content because he is well placed; who is thick-headed because he lacks vision, and close-hearted because he is deaf to the moaning wind which is the cry of unhappy humanity asking justice from a world which has never known how to be just. Lecky, who had a neat hand at analysis, characterized the great conflicting parties in an axiom which pleased neither: “Stupidity in all its forms is Tory; folly in all its forms is Whig.”
These things have been too often said to be quite worth the saying. Stupidity is not the prerogative of any one class or creed. It is Heaven’s free gift to men of all kinds, and conditions, and civilizations. A practical man, said Disraeli, is one who perpetuates the blunders of his predecessor instead of striking out into blunders of his own. Temperamental conservatism is the dower (not to be coveted) of men in whom delight and doubt—I had almost said delight and despair—contend for mastery; whose enjoyment of colour, light, atmosphere, tradition, language and literature is balanced by chilling apprehensiveness; whose easily won pardon for the shameless revelations of an historic past brings with it no healing belief in the triumphant virtues of the future.
The conservative is not an idealist, any more than he is an optimist. Idealism has worn thin in these days of colossal violence and colossal cupidity. Perhaps it has always been a cloak for more crimes than even liberty sheltered under her holy name. The French Jacobins were pure idealists; but they translated the splendour of their aspirations, the nobility and amplitude of their great conception, into terms of commonplace official murder, which are all the more displeasing to look back upon because of the riot of sentimentalism and impiety which disfigured them. It is bad enough to be bad, but to be bad in bad taste is unpardonable. If we had resolutely severed the word “idealism” from the bloody chaos which is Russia, we should have understood more clearly, and have judged no less leniently, the seething ambitions of men who passionately desired, and desire, control. The elemental instinct of self-preservation is the first step to the equally elemental instinct of self-interest. Natural rights, about which we chatter freely, are not more equably preserved by denying them to one class of men than by denying them to another. They have been ill-protected under militarism and capitalism; and their subversion has been a sin crying out to Heaven for vengeance. They are not protected at all under any Soviet government so far known to report.