Nothing, you know, is more common than for men to wish, and call loudly,
too, for a reformation, who, when it arrives, do by no means like the
severity of its aspect. Reformation is one of those pieces which must be
put at some distance in order to please. Its greatest favourers love it
better in the abstract than in the substance. When any old prejudice
of their own, or any interest that they value, is touched, they become
scrupulous, they become captious, and every man has his separate
exception. Some pluck out the black hairs, some the gray; one point must
be given up to one; another point must be yielded to another; nothing
is suffered to prevail upon its own principle; the whole is so frittered
down, and disjointed, that scarcely a trace of the original scheme
remains! Thus, between the resistance of power, and the unsystematical
process of popularity, the undertaker and the undertaking are both
exposed, and the poor reformer is hissed off the stage both by friends
and foes.