“You will soon find that out, Sam; go and talk to a Consarvative as a Tory, and you will find he is a Whig: go and talk to him again as a Whig, and you will find he is a Tory. They are, for all the world, like a sturgeon. There is very good beef steaks in a sturgeon, and very good fish too, and yet it tante either fish or flesh. I don’t like taking a new name, it looks amazing like taking new principles, or, at all events, like loosenin’ old ones, and I hante seen the creed of this new sect yet—I don’t know what its tenets are, nor where to go and look for ‘em. It strikes me they don’t accord with the Tories, and yet arn’t in tune with the Whigs, but are half a note lower than the one, and half a note higher than t’other. Now, changes in the body politic are always necessary more or less, in order to meet the changes of time, and the changes in the condition of man. When they are necessary, make ‘em, and ha’ done with ‘em. Make ‘em like men, not when you are forced to do so, and nobody thanks you, but when you see they are wanted, and are proper; but don’t alter your name.
“My wardens wanted me to do that; they came to me, and said ‘Minister,’ says they, ‘we don’t want you to change, we don’t ask it; jist let us call you a Unitarian, and you can remain Episcopalian still. We are tired of that old fashioned name, it’s generally thought unsuited to the times, and behind the enlightment of the age; it’s only fit for benighted Europeans. Change the name, you needn’t change any thing else. What is a name?’
“‘Every thing,’ says I, ‘every thing, my brethren; one name belongs to a Christian, and the other don’t; that’s the difference. I’d die before I surrendered my name; for in surrenderin’ that, I surrender my principles.’”
“Exactly,” said Mr. Slick, “that’s what Brother Eldad used to say. ‘Sam,’ said he, ‘a man with an alias is the worst character in the world; for takin’ a new name, shows he is ashamed of his old one; and havin’ an old one, shows his new one is a cheat.’”
“No,” said Mr. Hopewell, “I don’t like that word Consarvative. Them folks may be good kind of people, and I guess they be, seein’ that the Tories support ‘em, which is the best thing I see about them; but I don’t like changin’ a name.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Mr. Slick, “p’raps their old name was so infarnal dry rotted, they wanted to change it for a sound new one. You recollect when that super-superior villain, Expected Thorne, brought an action of defamation agin’ me, to Slickville, for takin’ away his character, about stealing the watch to Nova Scotia; well, I jist pleaded my own case, and I ups and sais, ‘Gentlemen of the Jury,’ sais I, “Expected’s character, every soul knows, is about the wust in all Slickville. If I have taken it away, I have done him a great sarvice, for he has a smart chance of gettin’ a better one; and if he don’t find a swap to his mind, why no character is better nor a bad one.’
“Well, the old judge and the whole court larfed right out like any thin’; and the jury, without stirrin’ from the box, returned a vardict for the defendant. P’raps now, that mought be the case with the Tories.”
“The difference,” said Mr. Hopewell, is jist this:—your friend, Mr. Expected Thorne, had a name he had ought to have been ashamed of, and the Tories one that the whole nation had very great reason to be proud of. There is some little difference, you must admit. My English politics, (mind you, I say English, for they hare no reference to America,) are Tory, and I don’t want to go to Sir Robert Peel, or Lord John Russell either.”
“As for Johnny Russell,” said Mr. Slick, “he is a clever little chap that; he—”
“Don’t call him Johnny Russell,” said Mr. Hopewell, “or a little chap, or such flippant names, I don’t like to hear you talk that way. It neither becomes you as a Christian nor a gentleman. St. Luke and St. Paul, when addressing people of rank, use the word ‘[Greek text]’ which, as nearly as possible, answers to the title of ‘your Excellency.’ Honour, we are told, should be given to those to whom honour is due; and if we had no such authority on the subject, the omission of titles, where they are usual and legal, is, to say the least of it, a vulgar familiarity, ill becoming an Attache of our embassy. But as I was saying, I do not require to go to either of those statesmen to be instructed in my politics. I take mine where I take my religion, from the Bible. ‘Fear God, honour the King, and meddle not with those that are given to change.’”