THE CONVENTION-BREAKER S VINDICATION. 95 



negatived on like grounds. lie asks whether Luther s 

 sayings and doings were not extremely offensive to the 

 mass of his contemporaries ; whether the resistance of 

 Hampden was not disgusting to the time-servers around 

 him ; whether every reformer has not shocked men s 

 prejudices, and given immense displeasure by the opinions 

 he uttered. The affirmative answer he follows up by 

 demanding what right the reformer has, then, to utter 

 these opinions ; whether he is not sacrificing the feelings 

 of many to the feelings of one : and so proves that, to 

 be consistent, his antagonists must condemn not only 

 all nonconformity in actions, but all nonconformity in 

 thoughts. 



His antagonists rejoin that his position, too, may be 

 pushed to an absurdity. They argue that if a man may 

 offend by the disregard of some forms, he may as legiti 

 mately do so by the disregard of all ; and they inquire 

 Why should he not go out to dinner in a dirty shirt, and 

 with an unshorn chin ? Why should he not spit on the 

 drawing-room carpet, and stretch his heels up to the man 

 tel-shelf? 



The convention-breaker answers, that to ask this, im 

 plies a confounding of two widely-different classes of 

 actions the actions that are essentially displeasurable to 

 those around, with the actions that are but incidentally 

 displeasurable to them. He whose skin is so unclean as to 

 offend the nostrils of his neighbours, or he who talks so 

 loudly as to disturb a whole room, may be justly com 

 plained of, and rightly excluded by society from its assem 

 blies. But he who presents himself in a surtout in place 

 of a dress-coat, or in brown trousers instead of black, gives 

 offence not to men s senses, or their innate tastes, but 

 merely to their prejudices, their bigotry of convention. It 

 cannot be said that his costume is less elegant or less 

 intrinsically appropriate than the one prescribed ; seeing 

 G 



