Janus in Modern Life

by W. M. Flinders Petrie

CHAPTER IV.
REVOLUTION OR EVOLUTION?

Those persons who are unaccustomed to consider the great effects which flow from a continuous action of small causes, are too liable to suppose that a large result can only be obtained by a violent and immediate action. They suppose that only some mighty impulse can change the face of affairs; they pray that the mountains be rent, and look to the earthquake and the tempest, not thinking that it is the still small voice that really directs. They forget that it is the humble earthworms that plough the land, and the invisible bacteria that destroy nations and alter the face of politics.

Ignoring the far-reaching after-effects of action, men are led to over-do all the changes which they attempt to carry out by direct and immediate means. This is like a child who asks to have its hand cut off because its finger aches.

The bad effect of sudden and violent changes may best be observed in our own history. The great changes of the Civil War left England without any checks on the violence of parties. The King and Lords had been abolished, and the Commons ruled alone. The fierce factions of the Presbyterians and Independents would have wrecked the country, had not a ruler come forward far more arbitrary than the one already rejected. Charles had looked over the wall when he tried to arrest five members, but Cromwell stole the horse outright when he dismissed the parliament by armed force. Pride's Purge was a greater violation of popular liberties than anything done by Tudor or Stuart; and the effect of half a generation of such violence was that the nation was heartily glad to get back a worse king than the one they had beheaded. Cromwell's great service was, that he saved England from a fanatical and factious House of Commons, by exercising monarchical prerogatives which Charles never dared to assert. The needs of the time drove him, as a capable man, to act for the highest good outside the law. When we hear a faction lauding Cromwell now, it may be overlooked that he made short work of Fifth Monarchy men and other extremists; and that the great struggle of mind to him was the dire necessity of crushing the factions, and of using that compulsion which he clearly saw was the only alternative to anarchy. The bitter persecuting spirit of the factions was far more violent than any course of action which preceded or followed their rule. Neither Charles I nor Charles II touched the private religious actions of the people; but the factions proscribed even the private use of the Book of Common Prayer. The subsequent Five-mile Act regulating public meetings for worship was mild compared with the domiciliary visitations in search of the Prayer Book in 1645. But for the visits of the parliamentary soldiery, breaking into chapels and putting their swords to the breasts of the kneeling communicants, there would never have been the milder dispersions of the Restoration. But for the bitter persecution of the so-called Malignants, and the deprivation of the clergy throughout the country by the parliament, there would never have been the milder reversion of Bartholomew's Day, 1662. In every point the violent changes of constitution wrought more tyranny and more personal hardship than was even caused by the revulsion which followed.

In France the same effect was seen. The Revolution probably caused more bloodshed and more personal misery in ten years, than the old régime had done in a century. England has paid twenty-five millions a year for a century past as interest on the debt incurred for crushing Napoleon.

Another result should be noted with care. A great popular ferment with a diminution of constitutional control, must result in establishing a military despotism as the lesser evil for the country. Caesar, Aurelian, Cromwell, Napoleon, all arose from the popular party, as the necessary substitutes, by arbitrary action, for the constitutionalism which had been abolished. In the place of the legally regulated courses, more or less unsuitable and corrupted, it proved absolutely necessary when they were abolished to have some other supreme authority with power to enforce obedience.

We are not concerned at this point to consider the relative right or wrong of the various parties just mentioned; that has nothing to do with the matter. The lesson is that a violent and rapid change of constitution leads to worse evils than those which it is sought to remedy. Every existing order of things, however imperfect or bad, must have a certain balance of parts or it could not continue. And when that balance is destroyed the results can seldom be foreseen. It is exactly the same in nature; when any species of animal is exterminated suddenly—as by firearms—the far-reaching consequences of its disappearance cannot be anticipated; other species will increase or disappear, and even vegetable life will be modified.

The phrase therefore of a "radical reform," or briefly "radicalism," is in defiance of natural science and of historical experience; it denies the principle of gradual evolution in the development of institutions and of character. A small amount of experience of different types is enough to show its fallacy, for radicals say that "travelling abroad always spoils a good radical."

In order to avoid violent change it is needful to allow free scope for gradual change. The greatest catastrophes may be caused by the accumulation of small forces; when a tiny stream becomes dammed by a landslip it may form a lake, which in bursting will devastate a whole valley. So when the gradual movement of a people is checked, and an artificial condition is enforced by laws, the breaking down of such restrictions will cause wholesale disaster. Had the Romans allowed free immigration of Gothic settlers there would never have been the Gothic conquest of Italy. Were the Californians and Australians to allow a free immigration of Japanese, under fair and equal laws, they would not have to fear a squadron demanding justice in their ports. The necessity of violent changes is therefore always the fault of those who prevent gradual changes to fit new conditions. If the House of Commons tries again the experiment of the Long Parliament, and by force or subterfuge abrogates the second chamber, it will be largely due to the House of Lords refusing changes in its mode of action. An Upper House which elected a legislative committee, like the election of Scotch and Irish Peers, would be in a far stronger position. The House of Commons at present is too much like an elephant picking up pins; and if the public become so much disgusted with its incapacity for business that at some crisis they throw the reins of power to an able man like Kitchener, it will be largely due to the fossilisation of the Rules of Procedure. A Lower House which allotted its time strictly according to the value of its votes of supply, or of the interests involved—which registered its decisions instantly, as by the electric signals which are now found in every hotel, and which employed diagrams in debate by means of the lantern and screen which are now found in every school—would stand a better chance of coping with its business in a creditable manner. The fault of violent change, and all its damaging consequences, rests in the first place on those who resist gradual change.