and capacity of the people at large that any attempt to replace it by the cut-and-dried schemes of logicians and theorists will assuredly bring on a reaction. It has always been so in the past. Great upheavals are followed by periods of unrest and change; but the continuity of history is never lost. When the wave of revolution has swept by, the habits of a nation, which are called traditions, have asserted their power. Reaction has followed revolution for some time, and after that the people have settled down to the task of making bottles for "the new wine that is worth preserving. Evolution does not always proceed at the same rate in human affairs; it is sometimes rapid, sometimes slow; but there is evolution, and it is more persistent in constitutional than in any other branch of British history.
Our age is in love with novelty and experiment, not only in the art of government, but in nearly all branches of art. Post-impressionism and cubism are almost as extreme as some of the more advanced theories of Anarchists and Bolshevists. They carry one principle so far that other principles, equally true, if brought to the test of experience and common sense, are abandoned or forgotten. It is likely that most of these theories in art and government will have their day and cease to be. They will not fail of some effect; the old order is bound to be modified and changed to some extent; but in matters of government tradition is so powerful that I shall be very much mistaken if Bolshevism of the twentieth century does not go the way of Communism and Anarchy of the nineteenth, and Antinomianism and Fifth Monarchism of the seventeenth century. Any "ism" is good enough to make a few converts; but unless it strikes its roots deeper than intellect it is not likely to live long. Institutions and systems that endure derive their nourishment from habit, feeling, and tradition, and all that goes to make up experience.
