The Best Lack All Conviction...

“I think,” the Duke of Omnium says in Anthony Trollope’s The Prime Minister, “that we whom chance has led to be meddlers in the game of politics sometimes give ourselves hardly time enough to think what we are about.” He adds later: “It seems to me that many men—men whom you and I know—embrace the profession of politics not only without political convictions but without seeing that it is proper that they should entertain them. Chance brings a young man under the guidance of this or that elder man. He has come of a Whig family, as was my case, or from some old Tory stock, and loyalty keeps him true to the interests which have first pushed him forward into the world. There is no conviction there.”

...

“Convictions grow.”

“Yes—the conviction that it is the man’s duty to be a staunch liberal but not the reason why. Or a man sees his opening on this side or on that, as is the case with the lawyers. Or he has a body of men at his back ready to support him on this side or on that, as we see with commercial men. Or perhaps he has some vague idea that aristocracy is pleasant, and he becomes a conservative—or that democracy is prospering, and he becomes a liberal. You are a liberal, Mr. Finn.”

“Certainly, Duke.”

“Why?”

“Well, after what you have said I will not boast of myself. Experience, however, seems to show me that liberalism is demanded by the country.”

“So, perhaps, at certain epochs may the Devil and all his works, but you will hardly say that you will carry the Devil’s colors because the country may like the Devil. It is not sufficient, I think, to say that liberalism is demanded. You should first know what liberalism means and then assure yourself that the thing itself is good. I dare say you have done so, but I see some who never make the inquiry.”

“I will not claim to be better than my neighbors—I mean my real neighbors.”

“I understand, I understand,” said the duke, laughing. “You prefer some good Samaritan on the opposition benches to Sir Timothy and the Pharisees. It is hard to come wounded out of the fight and then to see him who should be your friend not only walking by on the other side but flinging a stone at you as he goes. But I did not mean just now to allude to the details of recent misfortunes, though there is no one to whom I could do so more openly than to you. I was trying yesterday to explain to myself why I have, all my life, sat on what is called the liberal side of the House to which I have belonged.”

“Did you succeed?”

“I began life with the misfortune of a ready-made political creed. There was a seat in the House for me when I was twenty-one. Nobody took the trouble to ask me my opinions.”