gments which used to furnish it with sustenance are dead. The
divine right of kings, which nourished as a sentiment long after it was
disowned by the laws, has at last gone spark out. The divine rights of
the Church have followed suit. The legal abuses which were clung to as a
symbol of the unchangeableness of English institutions are being swept
away. The monopoly of political power which gave the right of governing
the realm as a perquisite to a few patrician families has been broken
down. The compromise which transferred the old privileges of the
aristocracy to the middle classes has had to be abandoned. The
"advancing tide of democracy" at which men looked through a telescope
twenty years ago, wondering at what comparatively remote period it would
reach our shores, has already reached us, and the waters are still
rising. The superstitions formerly attaching to the possession of land,
to hereditary descent, to ancestral titles, to the feudal pretensions of
the squirearchy, are all dissipating into thin air. If it is not yet
proved whether science is a democratic power, at any rate it asserts the
predominance of natural laws, and at their fiat artificial distinctions
must tend to disappear.

In such a state of things what part is left for Conservatism to play?
Mr. Disraeli asked and answered the same question when he began his
witches' dance. What have you to conserve? Nothing! The answer is not
true. There is much that may be conserved for a long time to come, and
when it can no longer be conserved in its present shape something will
have to be said as to the altered form it shall assume. One thing is
certain. Conservatism cannot emancipate itself from the conditions of
the age. It may indeed turn hermit and shut itself up in parsonages and
manor-houses, but if it is still to be a political power it can only
plan and achieve what is possible. It accepts, and cannot but accept,
the law of progress as the rule of legislation, and the only arbiter to
whom it can appeal is the national will. But you may advance slowly or
rapidly, you may resort to modifications and compromises instead of
sweeping things bodily away. In establishing a preference on these
questions there is abundant room for popular advocacy. The people are
not swayed by pure reason. They are actuated to a great extent by their
prejudices and their passions. They must be taken as they are, and
recent experience shows that it is difficult to say beforehand w