THE SABBATH. 43 



friends, for I would far rather have you as friends than 

 as enemies — far rather see you converted than anni- 

 hilated. You possess a strength and earnestness with 

 which the world cannot dispense ; but to be productive 

 of anything permanently good, that strength and that 

 earnestness must build upon the sure foundation of 

 human nature. This is that law of the universe spoken 

 of so frequently by your illustrious countryman, Mr. 

 Carlyle, to quarrel with which is to provoke and pre- 

 cipitate ruin. Join with us then in our endeavours to 

 turn our Sundays to better account. Back with your 

 support the moderate and considerate demands of the 

 Sunday Society, which scrupulously avoids interfering 

 with the hours devoted by common consent to public 

 worship. Offer the museum, the picture gallery, and 

 the public garden as competitors to the public-house. 

 By so doing you will fall in with the spirit of your time, 

 and row with, instead of against, the resistless current 

 along which man is borne to his destiny. 



Most of you here are Liberals ; perhaps Radicals, 

 perhaps even Republicans. In the proper sense of the 

 term, I am a Conservative. Madness or folly can de- 

 molish : it requires wisdom to conserve. But let us 

 understand each other. The first requisite of a true 

 conservatism is foresight. Humanity grows, and fore- 

 sight secures room for future expansion. In your walks 

 in the country you sometimes see a wall built round a 

 growing tree. So much the worse for the wall, which is 

 sure to be rent and ruined by the energy it opposes. We 

 have here represented not a true, but a false and igno- 

 rant conservatism. The true conservative looks ahead 

 and prepares for the inevitable. He forestalls revolution 

 by securing, in due time, sufficient amplitude for the 

 national vibrations. He is a wrong-headed statesman 

 who imposes his notions, however right in the abstract, 

 4 



