Mend, patch, take down a little here, prop up some
tottering nuisance there, fill in gaping chinks with patent
legislative cement, coat old facades with bright paint, hide
decay beneath a gloze of novelty, titivate, decorate,
furbish--and after all your house is not a new one, but a whited
sepulchre shaking to decay. Repair? There is a Repair party,
intermediating between Tories and Reformers--Radicals or Rooters
let us call these latter if you like--who cling to "vested
interests" and all other sorts of antique nuisances, yet say they
are willing to improve them. REFORM, which means, Pull down with
bold statesman's hand, and with like hand REBUILD, is no darling
of your political Repairer. Call the party and the men by their
right names: and give me for utility in legislation or
administrative action an Old Tory and Obstructive party rather
than this middling, meddling, muddling Repairer--
"Eager to change yet fearful to destroy."
Just now all Social Reformation, in its noblest aims and
attempts, is fettered by the Repair party. What is termed
Sanitary Reform is enfeebled, and the vigor withdrawn from it, by
this party. "Vested rights," "the Liberty of the people,"
"Interference with personal freedom," "EXPENSE," --these are the
watchwords of the Repairer in opposition to him who, pointing to
the pallor and fever of a hundred neighborhoods, calls upon a
ministry to cleanse them with imperial force.
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