ABSTRACT
A feature of colonial American life which planted among us the proper inertia toward liberty and order, under God and in law, is the failure of a series of English kings to set up among us a peerage, a viceregal court, and a fully established church—an episcopacy. Perhaps its generically American influence on the composite self of the Republic has been in sustaining our national disposition to be sanguine. The author speaks of one development within the American experience which, at this point in the national history, threatens to subvert particular version of the conservative heritage. From the authors' reaction to alterations in the meaning and authority of equality as a term of honor among us, we will easily infer his reaction to many other changes in the American value system which has occurred within his lifetime.
