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Page 45
We have remarked that one reason offered for being a progressive
is that things naturally tend to grow better. But the only real
reason for being a progressive is that things naturally tend
to grow worse. The corruption in things is not only the best
argument for being progressive; it is also the only argument
against being conservative. The conservative theory would really
be quite sweeping and unanswerable if it were not for this one fact.
But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave
things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not.
If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you
particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again;
that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you
want the old white post you must have a new white post. But this
which is true even of inanimate things is in a quite special and
terrible sense true of all human things. An almost unnatural vigilance
is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity
with which human institutions grow old. It is the custom in passing
romance and journalism to talk of men suffering under old tyrannies.
But, as a fact, men have almost always suffered under new tyrannies;
under tyrannies that had been public liberties hardly twenty
years before. Thus England went mad with joy over the patriotic
monarchy of Elizabeth; and then (almost immediately afterwards)
went mad with rage in the trap of the tyranny of Charles the First.
So, again, in France the monarchy became intolerable, not just
after it had been tolerated, but just after it had been adored.
The son of Louis the well-beloved was Louis the guillotined.
So in the same way in England in the nineteenth century the Radical
manufacturer was entirely trusted as a mere tribune of the people,
until suddenly we heard the cry of the Socialist that he was a tyrant
eating the people like bread. So again, we have almost up to the
last instant trusted the newspapers as organs of public opinion.
Just recently some of us have seen (not slowly, but with a start)
that they are obviously nothing of the kind. They are, by the nature
of the case, the hobbies of a few rich men. We have not any need
to rebel against antiquity; we have to rebel against novelty.
It is the new rulers, the capitalist or the editor, who really hold
up the modern world. There is no fear that a modern king will
attempt to override the constitution; it is more likely that he
will ignore the constitution and work behind its back; he will take
no advantage of his kingly power; it is more likely that he will
take advantage of his kingly powerlessness, of the fact that he
is free from criticism and publicity. For the king is the most
private person of our time. It will not be necessary for any one
to fight again against the proposal of a censorship of the press.
We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by
the press.
This startling swiftness with which popular systems turn
oppressive is the third fact for which we shall ask our perfect theory
of progress to allow. It must always be on the look out for every
privilege being abused, for every working right becoming a wrong.
In this matter I am entirely on the side of the revolutionists.
They are really right to be always suspecting human institutions;
they are right not to put their trust in princes nor in any child
of man. The chieftain chosen to be the friend of the people
becomes the enemy of the people; the newspaper started to tell
the truth now exists to prevent the truth being told. Here, I say,
I felt that I was really at last on the side of the revolutionary.
And then I caught my breath again: for I remembered that I was once
again on the side of the orthodox.
Christianity spoke again and said: "I have always maintained
that men were naturally backsliders; that human virtue tended of its
own nature to rust or to rot; I have always said that human beings
as such go wrong, especially happy human beings, especially proud
and prosperous human beings. This eternal revolution, this suspicion
sustained through centuries, you (being a vague modern) call the
doctrine of progress. If you were a philosopher you would call it,
as I do, the doctrine of original sin. You may call it the cosmic
advance as much as you like; I call it what it is--the Fall."
I have spoken of orthodoxy coming in like a sword; here I
confess it came in like a battle-axe. For really (when I came to
think of it) Christianity is the only thing left that has any real
right to question the power of the well-nurtured or the well-bred.
I have listened often enough to Socialists, or even to democrats,
saying that the physical conditions of the poor must of necessity make
them mentally and morally degraded. I have listened to scientific
men (and there are still scientific men not opposed to democracy)
saying that if we give the poor healthier conditions vice and wrong
will disappear. I have listened to them with a horrible attention,
with a hideous fascination. For it was like watching a man
energetically sawing from the tree the branch he is sitting on.
If these happy democrats could prove their case, they would strike
democracy dead. If the poor are thus utterly demoralized, it may
or may not be practical to raise them. But it is certainly quite
practical to disfranchise them. If the man with a bad bedroom cannot
give a good vote, then the first and swiftest deduction is that he
shall give no vote. The governing class may not unreasonably say:
"It may take us some time to reform his bedroom. But if he is the
brute you say, it will take him very little time to ruin our country.
Therefore we will take your hint and not give him the chance."
It fills me with horrible amusement to observe the way in which the
earnest Socialist industriously lays the foundation of all aristocracy,
expatiating blandly upon the evident unfitness of the poor to rule.
It is like listening to somebody at an evening party apologising
for entering without evening dress, and explaining that he had
recently been intoxicated, had a personal habit of taking off
his clothes in the street, and had, moreover, only just changed
from prison uniform. At any moment, one feels, the host might say
that really, if it was as bad as that, he need not come in at all.
So it is when the ordinary Socialist, with a beaming face,
proves that the poor, after their smashing experiences, cannot be
really trustworthy. At any moment the rich may say, "Very well,
then, we won't trust them," and bang the door in his face.
On the basis of Mr. Blatchford's view of heredity and environment,
the case for the aristocracy is quite overwhelming. If clean homes
and clean air make clean souls, why not give the power (for the
present at any rate) to those who undoubtedly have the clean air?
If better conditions will make the poor more fit to govern themselves,
why should not better conditions already make the rich more fit
to govern them? On the ordinary environment argument the matter is
fairly manifest. The comfortable class must be merely our vanguard
in Utopia.
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