Popular Government

Essay III: The Age of Progress

PopulrGov_101-150.indd 137 12/16/11 1:11 PM ESSAY III THE AGE OF PROGRESS PopulrGov_101-150.indd 138 12/16/11 1:11 PM PopulrGov_101-150.indd 139 12/16/11 1:11 PM There is no doubt that some of the most inventive, most polite, and best instructed portions of the human race are at present going through a stage of thought which, if it stood by itself, would suggest that there is nothing of which human nature is so tolerant, or so deeply enamoured, as the transformation of laws and institutions. A series of political and social changes, which a century ago no man would have thought capable of being effected save by the sharp convulsion of Revolution , is now contemplated by the bulk of many civilised communities as sure to be carried out, a certain number of persons regarding the prospect with exuberant hope, a somewhat larger number with equanimity, many more with indifference or resignation. At the end of the last century, a Revolution in France shook the whole civilised world; and the consequence of the terrible events and bitter disappointments which it brought with it was to arrest all improvement in Great Britain for thirty years, PopulrGov_101-150.indd 140 12/16/11 1:11 PM 140 Popular Government merely because it was innovation. But in 1830 a second explosion occurred in France, followed by the reconstruction of the British electorate in 1832, and with the British Reformed Parliament began that period of continuous legislation through which, not this country alone, but all Western Europe appears to be passing. It is not often recognised how excessively rare in the world was sustained legislative activity till rather more than fifty years ago, and thus sufficient attention has not been given to some characteristics of this particular mode of exercising sovereign power, which we call Legislation. It has obviously many advantages over Revolution as an instrument of change; while it has quite as trenchant an edge, it is milder, juster, more equable, and sometimes better considered . But in one respect, as at present understood, it may prove to be more dangerous than revolution. Political insanity takes strange forms, and there may be some persons in some countries who look forward to "The Revolution" as implying a series of revolutions. But, on the whole, a Revolution is regarded as doing all its work at once. Legislation, however, is contemplated as neverending . One stage of it is doubtless more or less distinctly conceived. It will not be arrested till the legislative power itself, and all kinds of authority at any time exercised by States, have been vested in the People, the Many, the great majority of the human beings making up each community . The prospect beyond that is dim, and perhaps will prove to be as fertile in disappointment as is always the morrow of a Revolution. But doubtless the popular expectation is that, after the establishment of a Democracy , there will be as much reforming legislation as ever. PopulrGov_101-150.indd 141 12/16/11 1:11 PM The Age of Progress 141 This zeal for political movement, gradually identifying itself with a taste for Democracy, has not as yet fully had its way in all societies of Western Europe. But it has greatly affected the institutions of some of them; even when it is checked or arrested, it is shared by considerable minorities of their population; and when (as in Russia) these minorities are very smalt the excessive concentration of the passion for change has a manifest tendency to make it dangerously explosive. The analogies to this state of feeling in the Past must be sought rather in the history of Religion than in the history of Politics. There is some resemblance between the period of political reform in the nineteenth century and the period of religious reformation in the sixteenth. Now, as then, the multitude of followers must be distinguished from the smaller group of leaders. Now, as then, there are a certain number of zealots who desire that truth shall prevail. Some of them conceive the movement which they stimulate as an escape from what is distinctly bad; others as an advance from what is barely tolerable to what is greatly better; and a few as an ascent to an ideal state, sometimes conceived by them as a state of Nature, and sometimes as a condition of millennia! blessedness. But, behind...