3. Revolutions effected by Governments.—Examples:
China, Turkey, &c.
Governments almost invariably fight revolutions; they hardly
ever create them. Representing the needs of the moment and
general opinion, they follow the reformers timidly; they do not
precede them. Sometimes, however, certain governments have
attempted those sudden reforms which we know as revolutions. The
stability or instability of the national mind decrees the success
or failure of such attempts.
They succeed when the people on whom the government seeks
to impose new institutions is composed of semi-barbarous tribes,
without fixed laws, without solid traditions; that is to say,
without a settled
national mind. Such was the condition of Russia in the days of
Peter the Great. We know how he sought to Europeanise the semi-Asiatic populations by means of force.
Japan is another example of a revolution effected by a
government, but it was her machinery, not her mind that was
reformed.
It needs a very powerful autocrat, seconded by a man of
genius, to succeed, even partially, in such a task. More often
than not the reformer finds that the whole people rises up
against him. Then, to the contrary of what befalls in an
ordinary revolution, the autocrat is revolutionary and the people
is conservative. But an attentive study will soon show you that
the peoples are always extremely conservative.
Failure is the rule with these attempts. Whether effected
by the upper classes or the lower, revolutions do not change the
souls of peoples that have been a long time established. They
only change those things that are worn by time and ready to fall.
China is at the present time making a very interesting but
impossible experiment, in seeking, by means of the government,
suddenly to renew the institutions of the country. The
revolution which overturned the dynasty of her ancient sovereigns
was the indirect consequence of the discontent provoked by
reforms which the government had sought to impose with a view to
ameliorating the condition of China. The suppression of opium
and gaming, the reform of the army, and the creation of schools,
involved an increase of taxation which, as well as the reforms
themselves, greatly indisposed the general opinion.
A few cultured Chinese educated in the schools of Europe profited
by this discontent to raise the people and proclaim a republic,
an institution of which the Chinese could have had no conception.
It surely cannot long survive, for the impulse which has
given birth to it is not a movement of progress, but of reaction.
The word republic, to the Chinaman intellectualised by his
European education, is simply synonymous with the rejection of
the yoke of laws, rules, and long-established restraints.
Cutting off his pigtail, covering his head with a cap, and
calling himself a Republican, the young Chinaman thinks to give
the rein to all his instincts. This is more or less the idea of
a republic that a large part of the French people entertained at
the time of the great Revolution.
China will soon discover the fate that awaits a society
deprived of the armour slowly wrought by the past. After a few
years of bloody anarchy it will be necessary to establish a power
whose tyranny will inevitably be far severer than that which was
overthrown. Science has not yet discovered the magic ring
capable of saving a society without discipline. There is no need
to impose discipline when it has become hereditary, but when the
primitive instincts have been allowed to destroy the barriers
painfully erected by slow ancestral labours, they cannot be
reconstituted save by an energetic tyranny.
As a proof of these assertions we may instance an
experiment analogous to that undertaken by China; that recently
attempted by Turkey. A few years ago young men instructed in
European schools and full of good intentions succeeded, with the
aid of a
number of officers, in overthrowing a Sultan whose tyranny seemed
insupportable. Having acquired our robust Latin faith in the
magic power of formulæ, they thought they could establish
the representative system in a country half-civilised, profoundly
divided by religious hatred, and peopled by divers races.
The attempt has not prospered hitherto. The authors of
the reformation had to learn that despite their liberalism they
were forced to govern by methods very like those employed by the
government overthrown. They could neither prevent summary
executions nor wholesale massacres of Christians, nor could they
remedy a single abuse.
It would be unjust to reproach them. What in truth could
they have done to change a people whose traditions have been
fixed so long, whose religious passions are so intense, and whose
Mohammedans, although in the minority, legitimately claim to
govern the sacred city of their faith according to their code?
How prevent Islam from remaining the State religion in a country
where civil law and religious law are not yet plainly separated,
and where faith in the Koran is the only tie by which the idea of
nationality can be maintained?
It was difficult to destroy such a state of affairs, so
that we were bound to see the re-establishment of an autocratic
organisation with an appearance of constitutionalism—that is to
say, practically the old system once again. Such attempts afford
a good example of the fact that a people cannot choose its
institutions until it has transformed its mind.
4.
Social elements which survive the changes of
Government after Revolution.
What we shall say later on as to the stable foundation of
the national soul will enable us to appreciate the force of
systems of government that have been long established, such as
ancient monarchies. A monarch may easily be overthrown by
conspirators, but these latter are powerless against the
principles which the monarch represents. Napoleon at his fall
was replaced not by his natural heir, but by the heir of kings.
The latter incarnated an ancient principle, while the son of the
Emperor personified ideas that were as yet imperfectly
established in men's minds.
For the same reason a minister, however able, however
great the services he has rendered to his country, can very
rarely overthrow his Sovereign. Bismarck himself could not have
done so. This great minister had single-handed created the unity
of Germany, yet his master had only to touch him with his finger
and he vanished. A man is as nothing before a principle
supported by opinion.
But even when, for various reasons, the principle
incarnated by a government is annihilated with that government,
as happened at the time of the French Revolution, all the
elements of social organisation do not perish at the same time.
If we knew nothing of France but the disturbances of the
last hundred years and more we might suppose the country to live
in a state of profound anarchy. Now her economic, industrial,
and even her political life manifests, on the contrary, a
continuity that seems to be independent of all revolutions and
governments.
The fact is that beside the great events of which history treats
are the little facts of daily life which the books neglect to
tell. They are ruled by imperious necessities which halt for no
man. Their total mass forms the real framework of the life of
the people.
While the study of great events shows us that the nominal
government of France has been frequently changed in the space of
a century, an examination of the little daily events will prove,
on the contrary, that her real government has been little
altered.
Who in truth are the real rulers of a people? Kings and
ministers, no doubt, in the great crises of national life, but
they play no part whatever in the little realities which make up
the life of every day. The real directing forces of a country
are the administrations, composed of impersonal elements which
are never affected by the changes of government. Conservative of
traditions, they are anonymous and lasting, and constitute an
occult power before which all others must eventually bow. Their
action has even increased to such a degree that, as we shall
presently show, there is a danger that they may form an anonymous
State more powerful than the official State. France has thus
come to be governed by heads of departments and government
clerks. The more we study the history of revolutions the more we
discover that they change practically nothing but the label. To
create a revolution is easy, but to change the soul of a people
is difficult indeed.
