Politics & Power Quote by Douglas Jerrold

Jerrold’s line is a punchy little stage prop: he turns the moon into a political cartoon and lets the audience do the laughing. The “new moon” isn’t just novelty; it’s a harmless, cyclical fact of life. Refusing to look at it “out of respect” for the old moon exposes conservatism, in his telling, as something more like ritualized loyalty than reasoned judgment. The joke lands because it treats change as literally visible in the sky, undeniable, and yet still capable of being snubbed through sheer stubborn etiquette.

The subtext is class-coded and institutional. “Ancient institution” is doing heavy lifting: it’s the language of deference, the kind you’d hear defending aristocracy, the established church, inherited titles, and the web of customs that made early Victorian Britain feel stable to some and suffocating to others. Jerrold, a playwright and satirical journalist, is writing from a world where reform bills, industrial upheaval, and expanding public literacy were prying open old hierarchies. He frames the conservative temperament as performative reverence: not protecting a principle, but protecting the performance of respect itself.

What makes it work is the exaggerated politeness. It’s not “I hate the new moon,” it’s “I won’t even look.” Jerrold skewers the impulse to treat the past as morally superior by default, as if acknowledging the new would be a kind of betrayal. The moon will wax anyway; the only question is whether you choose to see it.