a set mode of behaviour, he resists equally with the tyranny that would limit his buyings and sellings, or dictate his creed.  Whether the regulation be formally made by a legislature, or informally made by society at large—­whether the penalty for disobedience be imprisonment, or frowns and social ostracism, he sees to be a question of no moment.  He will utter his belief notwithstanding the threatened punishment; he will break conventions spite of the petty persecutions that will be visited on him.  Show him that his actions are inimical to his fellow-men, and he will pause.  Prove that he is disregarding their legitimate claims—­that he is doing what in the nature of things must produce unhappiness; and he will alter his course.  But until you do this—­until you demonstrate that his proceedings are essentially inconvenient or inelegant, essentially irrational, unjust, or ungenerous, he will persevere.

Some, indeed, argue that his conduct is unjust and ungenerous.  They say that he has no right to annoy other people by his whims; that the gentleman to whom his letter comes with no “Esq.” appended to the address, and the lady whose evening party he enters with gloveless hands, are vexed at what they consider his want of respect, or want of breeding; that thus his eccentricities cannot be indulged save at the expense of his neighbours’ feelings; and that hence his nonconformity is in plain terms selfishness.

He answers that this position, if logically developed, would deprive men of all liberty whatever.  Each must conform all his acts to the public taste, and not his own.  The public taste on every point having been once ascertained, men’s habits must thenceforth remain for ever fixed; seeing that no man can adopt other habits without sinning against the public taste, and giving people disagreeable feelings.  Consequently, be it an era of pig-tails or high-heeled shoes, of starched ruffs or trunk-hose, all must continue to wear pig-tails, high-heeled shoes, starched ruffs, or trunk-hose to the crack of doom.

If it be still urged that he is not justified in breaking through others’ forms that he may establish his own, and so sacrificing the wishes of many to the wishes of one, he replies that all religious and political changes might be negatived on like grounds.  He asks whether Luther’s sayings and doings were not extremely offensive to the mass of his contemporaries; whether the resistance of Hampden was not disgusting to the time-servers around him; whether every reformer has not shocked men’s prejudices, and given immense displeasure by the opinions he uttered.  The affirmative answer he follows up by demanding what right the reformer has, then, to utter these opinions; whether he is not sacrificing the feelings of many to the feelings of one; and so proves that, to be consistent, his antagonists must condemn not only all nonconformity in actions, but all nonconformity in thoughts.

His antagonists rejoin that his position, too, may be pushed to an absurdity.  They argue that if a man may offend by the disregard of some forms, he may as legitimately do so by the disregard of all; and they inquire—­Why should he not go out to dinner in a dirty shirt, and with an unshorn chin?  Why should he not spit on the drawing-room carpet, and stretch his heels up to the mantle-shelf?