The failure of individual nonconformity to customs, as above illustrated, suggests that an analogous series of changes may have to be gone through in this case also.  It is true that the lex non scripta differs from the lex scripta in this, that, being unwritten, it is more readily altered; and that it has, from time to time, been quietly ameliorated.  Nevertheless, we shall find that the analogy holds substantially good.  For in this case, as in the others, the essential revolution is not the substituting of any one set of restraints for any other, but the limiting or abolishing the authority which prescribes restraints.  Just as the fundamental change inaugurated by the Reformation was not a superseding of one creed by another, but an ignoring of the arbiter who before dictated creeds—­just as the fundamental change which Democracy long ago commenced, was not from this particular law to that, but from the despotism of one to the freedom of all; so, the parallel change yet to be wrought out in this supplementary government of which we are treating, is not the replacing of absurd usages by sensible ones, but the dethronement of that secret, irresponsible power which now imposes our usages, and the assertion of the right of all individuals to choose their own usages.  In rules of living, a West-end clique is our Pope; and we are all papists, with but a mere sprinkling of heretics.  On all who decisively rebel, comes down the penalty of excommunication, with its long catalogue of disagreeable and, indeed, serious consequences.

The liberty of the subject asserted in our constitution, and ever on the increase, has yet to be wrested from this subtler tyranny.  The right of private judgment, which our ancestors wrung from the church, remains to be claimed from this dictator of our habits.  Or, as before said, to free us from these idolatries and superstitious conformities, there has still to come a protestanism in social usages.  Parallel, therefore, as is the change to be wrought out, it seems not improbable that it may be wrought out in an analogous way.  That influence which solitary dissentients fail to gain, and that perseverance which they lack, may come into existence when they unite.  That persecution which the world now visits upon them from mistaking their nonconformity for ignorance or disrespect, may diminish when it is seen to result from principle.  The penalty which exclusion now entails may disappear when they become numerous enough to form visiting circles of their own.  And when a successful stand has been made, and the brunt of the opposition has passed, that large amount of secret dislike to our observances which now pervades society, may manifest itself with sufficient power to effect the desired emancipation.

Whether such will be the process, time alone can decide.  That community of origin, growth, supremacy, and decadence, which we have found among all kinds of government, suggests a community in modes of change also.  On the other hand, Nature often performs substantially similar operations, in ways apparently different.  Hence these details can never be foretold.