Reform, that you may preserve.

The maxim urges timely, moderate change as a strategy of conservation: institutions that refuse to adapt invite crisis, while those that reform can maintain continuity. In Macaulay’s political imagination—shaped by Whig constitutionalism and the memory of revolutionary upheavals—reform functions as a safety valve, preserving social order by addressing grievances before they become explosive. The line encapsulates a pragmatic, incremental view of progress: reform is not the enemy of tradition but a means of saving what is valuable within it. It is often invoked in debates about constitutional change, social policy, and institutional modernization to argue that preservation sometimes requires alteration.