PARTS:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
On these and the like grounds of general statement, conservatism plants itself without danger of being displaced. Especially before this _personal_ appeal, the innovator must confess his weakness, must confess that no man is to be found good enough to be entitled to stand champion for the principle. But when this great tendency comes to practical encounters, and is challenged by young men, to whom it is no abstraction, but a fact of hunger, distress, and exclusion from opportunities, it must needs seem injurious. The youth, of course, is an innovator by the fact of his birth. There he stands, newly born on the planet, a universal beggar, with all the reason of things, one would say, on his side. In his first consideration how to feed, clothe, and warm himself, he is met by warnings on every hand, that this thing and that thing have owners, and he must go elsewhere. Then he says; If I am born into the earth, where is my part? have the goodness, gentlemen of this world, to show me my wood-lot, where I may fell my wood, my field where to plant my corn, my pleasant ground where to build my cabin.
`Touch any wood, or field, or house-lot, on your peril,' cry all the gentlemen of this world; `but you may come and work in ours, for us, and we will give you a piece of bread.'
And what is that peril?
Knives and muskets, if we meet you in the act; imprisonment, if we find you afterward.
And by what authority, kind gentlemen?
By our law.
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