the hardest to express. Perhaps it might
be put thus: that we need watchfulness even in Utopia, lest we fall from
Utopia as we fell from Eden.

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