The "New England Reformers" was a lecture by Ralph Waldo Emerson read before "The Society" in Amory Hall, on Sunday, March 3, 1844.^{[citation needed]} "The Society" has been identified as the American Anti-Slavery Society, led by William Lloyd Garrison.

In this lecture Emerson commented that men "are conservatives after dinner...".^[1][2]

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick, or aged: in the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience have been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.