out of the reach of popular temptation. "Our constitution," he said
in the _Present Discontents_, "stands on a nice equipoise, with sharp
precipices and deep waters on all sides of it. In removing it from a
dangerous leaning towards one side, there may be a danger towards
oversething it on the other." In straining, that is to say, after too
large a purification, we may end with destruction. And Burke, of course,
was emphatic upon the need that property should be undisturbed. It was
always, he thought, at a great disadvantage in any struggle with
ability; and there are many passages in which he urges the consequent
special representation which the adequate defence of property requires.

The argument, at bottom, is common to all thinkers over-impressed by the
sanctity of past experience. Hegel and Savigny in Germany, Taine and
Renan in France, Sir Henry Maine and Lecky in England, have all urged
what is in effect a similar plea. We must not break what Bagehot called
the cake of custom, for men have been trained to its digestion, and new
food breeds trouble. Laws are the offspring of the original genius of a
people, and while we may renovate, we must not unduly reform. The true
idea of national development is always latent in the past experience of
the race and it is from that perpetual spring alone that wisdom can be
drawn. We render obedience to what is with effortless unconsciousness;
and without this loyalty to inherited institutions the fabric of society
would be dissolved. Civilization, in fact, depends upon the performance
of actions defined in preconceived channels; and if we obeyed those novel
impulses of right which seem, at times, to contradict our inheritance,
we should disturb beyond repair the intricate equilibrium of countless
ages. The experience of the past rather than the desires of the present
is thus the true guide to our policy. "We ought," he said in a famous
sentence, "to venerate where we are unable presently to comprehend."

It is easy to see why a mind so attuned recoiled from horror at the
French Revolution. There is something almost sinister in the destiny
which confronted Burke with the one great spectacle of the eighteenth
century which he was certain not merely to misunderstand but also to
hate. He could not endure the most fragmentary change in tests of
religious belief; and the Revolution swept overboard the whole religious
edifice. He would not support the abolition even of the most flagran