64 MANNERS AKD FASHION. 



with an exactness, and enforced with a rigour, not else 

 where to be found. 



Can we consider these two series of coincidences aa 

 accidental and unmeaning ? Must we not rather conclude 

 that some necessary relationship obtains between them ? 

 Are there not such things as a constitutional conservatism, 

 and a constitutional tendency to change ? Is there not a 

 class which clings to the old in all things ; and another 

 class so in love with progress as often to mistake novelty 

 for improvement ? Do we not find some men ready to 

 bow to established authority of whatever kind ; while 

 others demand of every such authority its reason, and 

 reject it if it fails to justify itself? And must not the 

 minds thus contrasted tend to become respectively con- 

 formist and nonconformist, not only in politics and religion, 

 but in other things ? Submission, whether to a govern- 

 ment, to the dogmas of ecclesiastics, or to that code of 

 behaviour which society at large has set up, is essentially 

 of the same nature ; and the sentiment which induces 

 resistance to the despotism of rulers, civil or spiritual, like- 

 wise induces resistance to the despotism of the world's 

 opinion. Look at them fundamentally, and all enactments, 

 alike of the legislature, the consistory, and the saloon — all 

 regulations, formal or virtual, have a common character : 

 they are all limitations of men's freedom. " Do this — 

 Refrain from that," are the blank formulas into which they 

 may all be written : and in each case the understanding is 

 that obedience will bring approbation here and paradise 

 hereafter ; while disobedience will entail imprisonment, or 

 sending to Coventry, or eternal torments, as the case may 

 be. And if restraints, however named, and through what- 

 ever apparatus of means exercised, are one in their action 

 upon men, it must happen that those who are patient under 

 one kind of restraint, are likely to be patient under another; 

 and conversely, that those impatient of restraint in general, 



