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'Reform, therefore, without bravery, or scandal of former times and persons; but yet set it down to thyself, as well to create good precedents as to follow the m.'

'To warn a public man (says the author of The Bishop) of ordinary sense, against innovation, is just as idle as to warn him against taking physic; he will have recourse to neither one nor the other, unless forced by necessity. The thing to be feared in both cases is, that he will delay the application of alteratives until the disease can only be cured by violent remedies. One of the finest mills in our manufacturing districts is also one of the oldest; the machinery in it has always kept abreast with the progress of modern invention, but it has never been closed a single day for the purpose of renovation or repair. I asked its proprietor the explanation of so remarkable a phenomenon ; he gave it in one sentence, 'I am always altering, but never changing.' Men sometimes deal with institutions as Sir John Cutler did with his stockings; they darn them with worsted. until, from silken, they are changed into woollen, while the stupid owners persist in asserting their continued identity. The cry of innovation' belongs exclusively to the Duncery; but reluctance to change is a feeling shared with them by sensible people.

'Among the many fallacies of the day that pass unquestioned, there is none more general nor more fallacious than that innovation is popular: the truth is, that a judicious innovator is likely to be, at least for a time, the most unpopular man in the universe; he will be hated by those who are satisfied with old evils; he will be disliked by the timid and the lazy, who dread the peril and the trouble of change; and he will receive little favour from those most conscious of the evil, because his remedies will not act as a charm, and remove in an instant the accumulated ills of centuries.

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'Some persons are not aware of the fact, that in all men the love of ease is far superior to the love of change; in the serious concerns of life, novelty is never desired for its own sake; then, habit becomes a second nature, and it is only the positive pressure of evil that can drive us to alteration. We do find men occasionally rash and insatiable in changing; but this is only

from their being impatient under the sense of real evils, and in error as to remedies. The violent vicissitudes of the first French Revolution were not the result of a mad love of experiments; they were produced by the national bankruptcy of France, and the starving condition of the people of Paris. An ignorant man suffering under painful disease will try the prescription of every mountebank, and without waiting to see how one quack medicine operates, will have recourse to another. A fevered nation, like a feverish patient, turns from side to sidenot through love of change, but because, while the disease continues, any fixed posture must be painful. The physician who superintends his condition knows that his restlessness and impatience are symptoms of the disease: it would be well if those who superintend our political and ecclesiastical state, while they justly regard discontents and disturbances as evils in themselves, would also look upon them as certain signs that there is something wrong somewhere.' (Pages 315-318.)

Embrace and invite helps and advices touching the execution of thy office.'

'The dread of unworthy imputations of undue influence may often drive a worthy man into a perilous course. The fear of being deemed an imitator is scarcely less dangerous than that of being supposed to be led. We frequently see those who regard the course of a wise and good man with mingled affection and veneration, influenced by his example for the worse rather than for the better, by indulging their ruling passion for originality, and by their abhorrence of being regarded as followers and imitators. To avoid coincidences becomes the great labour of their lives, and they take every opportunity of ostentatiously declaring the originality and independence of their course. Nay, they will not only declare their originality, but they will seek to make or find opportunities of exhibiting it, though the course they adopt in consequence may be contrary to their own secret judgment. A man who yields to this weakness, which is far more rife than the world generally believes, is the slave of any one who chooses to work upon his foible. The only thing requisite to make him commit any conceivable folly, is to dare him to depart from his friend's counsel or example. Miss

Edgeworth, in her Juvenile Tales, has admirable illustrated the consequence of yielding to such fears; Tarlton in vain strove to persuade the weak Lovett to break bounds, by appeals to his courage, but when he hinted that his refusal would be attributed to his dependence on the strong-minded Hardy, the poor boy sprang over the wall with nervous alacrity. This dread of imitation often leads to the neglect of valuable suggestions which might be derived from the tactics and example of adversaries. Fas est et ab hoste doceri,' is a maxim more frequently quoted than acted on, and yet its wisdom is confirmed by every day's experience. A casual remark made long ago to me by your Lordship contains the rationale of the whole matter- It is ignorance, and not knowledge, that rejects instruction; it is weakness, and not strength, that refuses cooperation.' (Page 77.)

In bestowing office, and in selecting instruments, a man anxious to do his duty must take into account both the kind and degree of fitness in the candidates. Of the degrees of intelligence the world is a very incompetent judge, and of the differences in kind, it knows little or nothing. With the vulgar everything is good, bad, or middling; and if three persons are worthy and intelligent men, you will find that the preference you show to any one of them is considered to be the result of mere caprice. For instance, you know that the clerical requisites for an agricultural parish are different from those necessary in a manufacturing district, and that both are dissimilar to the qualifications for a chaplaincy to a collegiate institution, or for a prebendal stall. Your choice will be guided by these considerations; but, beyond doubt, you will find very few who can appreciate or even understand such motives. . Now, this want of discriminating power and knowledge in the spectators of your career, will by no means induce them to suspend the exercise of their fallacious judgment; on the contrary, opinions will be pronounced most positively by those who are most wanting in opportunity to discover, and in capacity to estimate, your motives. But the erroneous judgments of others must not lead you to be suspicious of your own; the value of the tree will be finally known by its fruits,-it would be folly to neglect its training, or to grub it up, because people ignorant of the adaptations of soil to growth, tell you that another tree

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in the same place would be more useful or more ornamental. You know both the soil and the plant-the vast majority of your censurers will know nothing of the one, and very little of the other.' (Page 174.)

When thou changest thine opinion or course, profess it plainly, and declare it, together with the reasons that moved thee to change.'

Considering that the course Bacon here recommends is not only the most ingenuous and dignified, but also the most prudent with a view to men's approbation, it is wonderful how often this maxim is violated. Many persons will rather back out of an opinion or course of conduct, by the most awkward shifts, than frankly acknowledge a change of mind. They seem to dread nothing so much as a suspicion of what they call 'inconsistency; that is, owning oneself to be wiser to-day than yesterday.

In the backwoods of America, men have a mode of catching the wild turkey by taking advantage of that bird's silliness. On the side of a gently-sloping bank they construct a kind of pen covered in at top, and having a passage into it on the lower side, wide enough to admit a turkey. They strew corn so as to allure them; and when the turkeys have been thus enticed into the pen, they are imprisoned there through their own stupidity. Instead of simply turning back and walking out as they had walked in, they vainly endeavour to escape by beating against the sides of the pen, till the trapper comes up and seizes them. Many men are so much of turkeys that they are imprisoned, as it were, in some error which they cannot bring themselves to retract.

It has been pointed out in the Elements of Rhetoric,' that there is no inconsistency (though the term is often improperly so applied) in a change of opinion, provided it be frankly avowed; since this is what any sensible man, conscious of being fallible, holds himself always ready for, if good reasons can be shown. Indeed, any one who, while not claiming infallibility, yet resolves never to alter his opinion, is, in that, manifestly inconsistent. For, real inconsistency is the holding—either expressly or impliedly-two opposite opinions at the same time;

Part ii. chap. iii. sec. 5.

as, for instance, proclaiming the natural right of all men to freedom, and yet maintaining a system of slavery; or condemning disingenuous conduct in one party, which, in the opposite party, you vindicate; or confessing yourself fallible, and yet resolving to be immutable.

It is remarkable that a change of opinions is sometimes falsely imputed to a man in high office, or otherwise influential, as a device of party-craft, or to cover a change in the way of treating him. When some Party has been vainly trying to hunt down (as the phrase is) by calumny and vexatious opposition, one who refuses to join them, and they find that their assaults instead of prevailing, rather recoil on themselves, or perhaps that he may be a useful help to them in some object, the most crafty of them will sometimes give out that he has changed, and is converted, -or in a fair way to be converted-to their party:-that he has modified his views,' and is becoming (suppose) 'Conservative,' or 'Liberal,' or 'Orthodox,' or 'Evangelical,' &c., as the case may be. Thus they escape the shame (as the vulgar account it) of frankly owning that they were wrong in their former persecution. And, moreover, they perhaps hope actually to win him to their party; or at least, to persuade the multitude that they have done so; and thus enlist at least the influence of his name in their cause.

And here it is worth observing that any one who has been brought up in a certain system, true or false (whether of religion, politics, or philosophy), and has never heard, or never listened to anything against it, will not be unlikely, when he does come to hear objections, to change his views. Any one, again, who has attentively examined the arguments on opposite sides, and has thereupon made up his mind, will be much less likely to change. Yet many instances do occur of such change taking place. But if this does take place,-if a man abandons the opinion he had deliberately embraced and long held,-then there is little fear, or hope, of his changing for the worse, or for the better. You have a fair chance of converting one who has never yet heard both sides: you have much less, with one who has heard both sides, and embraced the wrong but still, you have some chance even with him. But with one who has deliberately embraced the right, and then abandoned it, your labour will generally be quite lost.

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