onsequent feeling will
be, as all experience shows, not that a ritual is too mean, too low, too
degrading for human nature, but that it is a mercy we have to do no
more,--that we have only to wash in Jordan, that we have not even to go
out into the unknown distance to seek for Abana and Pharpar, rivers of
Damascus. We have no right to judge; we cannot decide; we must do what
is laid down for us,--we fail daily even in this; we must never cease
for a moment in our scrupulous anxiety to omit by no tittle and to
exceed by no iota.

THE TYRANNY OF CONVENTION

From 'Sir Robert Peel'

It might be said that this [necessity for newspapers and statesmen of
following the crowd] is only one of the results of that tyranny of
commonplace which seems to accompany civilization. You may talk of the
tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of
your next-door neighbor. What law is so cruel as the law of doing what
he does? What yoke is so galling as the necessity of being like him?
What espionage of despotism comes to your door so effectually as the eye
of the man who lives at your door? Public opinion is a permeating
influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think
other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's
habits. Of course, if we do not, no formal ban issues; no corporeal
pain, no coarse penalty of a barbarous society is inflicted on the
offender; but we are called "eccentric"; there is a gentle murmur of
"most unfortunate ideas," "singular young man," "well-intentioned, I
dare say; but unsafe, sir, quite unsafe."

Whatever truth there may be in these splenetic observations might be
expected to show itself more particularly in the world of politics:
people dread to be thought unsafe in proportion as they get their living
by being thought to be safe. Those who desire a public career must look
to the views of the living public; an immediate exterior influence is
essential to the exertion of their faculties. The confidence of others
is your _fulcrum:_ you cannot--many people wish you could--go into
Parliament to represent yourself; you must conform to the opinions of
the electors, and they, depend on it, will not be original. In a word,
as has been most wisely observed, "under free institutions it is
necessary occasionally to defer to the opinions of other people; and as
other people are obviously in the wrong, this is a great hindrance to
the improvement of