But there is another Conservatism,—and its treatment belongs to this occasion,—of a different character, which performs no good office, and cannot secure respect. Child of indifference, of ignorance, of prejudice, of selfishness, it seeks to maintain things precisely as they are, deprecates every change, and, disregarding the transitory condition of all that is human, blindly prays for the perpetuity of existing institutions. Such an influence is productive of disorder rather than order, and is destructive rather than justly conservative. Contrary to the Law of Progress, it plants itself upon ancient ways, and vainly exalts all that was done by our ancestors, as beyond addition and above amendment. It is well illustrated in the early verses,—
"Some ther be that do defye
All that is newe, and ever do crye,
The old is better, awaye with the newe,
Because it is false and the old is true";
and again, in the conversation between two eminent English ecclesiastics. "Brother of Winchester," said Cranmer to Lord Chancellor Gardyner, "you like not anything new, unless you be yourself the author thereof." "Your Grace wrongeth me," replied the inveterate Conservative. "I have never been author yet of any one new thing; for which I thank my God."[265] Such a Conservatism is the bigotry of science, of literature, of jurisprudence, of religion, of politics. An example will exhibit its character.
When Sir Samuel Romilly proposed to abolish the punishment of death for stealing a pocket-handkerchief, the Commons of England consulted certain officials of the law, who assured the House that such an innovation would endanger the whole criminal law of the realm. And when afterwards this illustrious reformer and model lawyer (for, of all men in the history of the English law, Romilly is most truly the model lawyer) proposed to abolish the obscene punishment for high treason, requiring the offender to be drawn and quartered, and his bowels to be thrown into his face, while his body yet palpitates with life, the Attorney-General of the day, in opposing this humane amendment, asked, "Are the safeguards, the ancient landmarks, the bulwarks of the Constitution, to be thus hastily removed?" Which gave occasion for the appropriate exclamation in reply, "What! to throw the bowels of an offender into his face, one of the safeguards of the British Constitution! I ought to confess that until this night I was wholly ignorant of this bulwark!"[266] An irrational enormity, with a fit parallel only in our own country, where Slavery is called a "divine institution," and important to the stability of our Constitution!
"Esto perpetua!" was the dying conservative ejaculation of Paul Sarpi, the Venetian friar, over the constitution of his atrocious republic; and this same phrase is invoked by Sir William Blackstone for the British Constitution, enfolding so many inequalities and so many abuses. It were well—and here all must agree—to exclaim of Truth, of Justice, of Peace, of Freedom, May it be perpetual! But is it not irrational to make this claim for any institutions of human device, and therefore finite? How can they provide for the Infinite Future? The Finite cannot measure the Infinite. Nothing from Man's hands—nor laws, nor constitutions—can be perpetual. It is God alone who builds for eternity. His laws are everlasting.
Out of this pernicious prejudice have proceeded that persecution and neglect which are the too frequent lot of the world's pioneers. Among the ancient Greeks, the wisdom which first assigned the natural cause of thunder and storm was condemned by conservative savages as impiety to the gods. In the eighth century, an ignorant conservative Pope persecuted a priest who declared that the world was round. At a later day, to the everlasting scandal of mankind, the book of Copernicus, unfolding the true system of the universe, was branded by a conservative Papal bull as heretical and false, and Galileo, after announcing the annual and diurnal motions of the earth, was sentenced to the dungeons of the conservative Inquisition. This was in Italy; but in England—and here we come nearer home—Harvey was accustomed to say, that, after the publication of his book on the circulation of the blood,—one of the epochs of modern discovery,—"he fell mightily in his practice, and it was believed by the vulgar that he was crack-brained, and all the physicians were against his opinion."[267] According to him, nobody older than forty, at the time of his discovery, received it as true. The age of forty was the dividing line of life,—a Mason and Dixon's line,—determining the capacity to receive that discovery. This little story may admonish all who have passed that conservative line to be careful how they are inhospitable to any new truth.
This same undue tenacity to existing things and repugnance to what is new threw impediments in the way of successive improvements by which travel and intercourse among men are promoted. Surely stage-coaches, when first introduced into England, must have been welcome, though novel, as contributing to the comfort of men. But this was not the case universally. An early writer calls for their suppression, breaking forth against them in this wise. "These coaches," he says, "are one of the greatest mischiefs that hath happened of late years to the kingdom,—mischievous to the public, destructive to trade, and prejudicial to lands. First, by destroying the breed of good horses, the strength of the nation, and making men careless of attaining to good horsemanship, a thing so useful and commendable in a gentleman: for, hereby they become weary and listless, when they ride a few miles, and unwilling to get on horseback, not able to endure frost, snow, or rain, or to lodge in the fields; and what reason, save only their using themselves so tenderly, and their riding in these stage-coaches, can be given for this their inability? Secondly, by hindering the breed of watermen, who are the nursery for seamen, and they the bulwark of the kingdom: for, if these coaches were down, watermen, as formerly, would have work, and be encouraged to take apprentices, whereby their number would every year greatly increase. Thirdly, by lessening of his Majesty's revenues: for now four or five travel in a coach together, without any servants, and it is they that occasion the consumption of beer and ale on the roads; and all inn-keepers do declare that they sell not half the drink nor pay the king half the excise they did before these coaches set up."[268] Such was the conservative bill of indictment against stage-coaches. The history of canals, of steamboats, and, lastly, of railways, shows similar prejudices. Even Mr. Jefferson (and I cannot mention him as an immoderate conservative), when told that the State of New York had explored the route of a canal from the Hudson to Lake Erie, and found it practicable,—that same canal which now, like a thread of silver, winds its way through your imperial State,—replied, that "it was a very fine project, and might be executed a century hence." This is only a little better than the observation of the Greenwich pensioners, who, on first seeing the steamboat upon the waters of the Thames, as they looked out from their palatial home, said, "We do not like the steamboat, it is so contrary to Nature." In our own country, Fitch brought forward the idea of a steamboat amidst ill-disguised sneers; and at a later day, Fulton, while building his first experiment at New York, was viewed with indifference or contempt, as a visionary; and when, at last, he accomplished the long distance to Albany, distrust of the Future still prevailed, and it was doubted if the voyage could be accomplished again, or, if successful again, it was still doubted if the invention could be of permanent value. Thus did this evil spirit perplex noble aims! And in England, as late as 1825, railways were pronounced "altogether delusions and impositions," and the conservative "Quarterly Review," alluding to the opinion of certain engineers that the railway engine could go eighteen or twenty miles an hour, says: "These gross exaggerations may delude for a time, but must end in the mortification of those concerned.... We should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's ricochet rockets, as trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine, going at such a rate."[269]