CONSERVATIVES AND CONSCIENCE 31

society and any age. It is the doctrinaire radical of mod-

ern times, rather, who denies the divine source of con-

science and the sense of personal responsibility and tradi-

tional duty which gives conscience meaning. Some peo-

ple calling themselves conservatives are afflicted with the

vice of selfishness, arrogant pride of possessionjust as

some people calling themselves radicals are afflicted with

the vice of envy, lusting after their neighbors' goods. But

we are talking here of social principles, not of individual

failings.

It has been said by a hostile critic that the conservative

believes all social questions to be at bottom questions of

private morality. Properly understood, this is quite true;

and thinking conservatives can take a modest pride in

this conviction. A society in which men and women are

governed by conscience, by a strong sense of moral right

and wrong, by private convictions of honor and justice,

will be a good society, the conservative thinks, whatever

political machinery it may utilize; while a society in

which men and women are morally adrift, ignorant of

conscience, and intent only upon gratification of sensual

desires, will be a bad society, no matter how many peo-

ple vote and no matter how "liberal" its formal constitu-

tion may be. For justice and generosity in any nation are

no better and no worse than the prevailing private con-

victions of the men and women who compose that nation.

Soviet Russia may have a model constitution, in the eyes

of the doctrinaire radical; but justice and generosity are

nearly dead in Soviet Russia, because conscience is left

out of question. Britain may have a very antiquated

constitution, in the eyes of the doctrinaire radical; but

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