ire a single and absolute general. But for the purpose now in
hand--that of preventing hasty action, and ensuring elaborate
consideration--there is no device like a polity of discussion.

The enemies of this object--the people who want to act quickly--see
this very distinctly. They are for ever explaining that the present is
'an age of committees,' that the committees do nothing, that all
evaporates in talk. Their great enemy is parliamentary government; they
call it, after Mr. Carlyle, the 'national palaver;' they add up the
hours that are consumed in it, and the speeches which are made in it,
and they sigh for a time when England might again be ruled, as it once
was, by a Cromwell--that is, when an eager, absolute man might do
exactly what other eager men wished, and do it immediately. All these
invectives are perpetual and many-sided; they come from philosophers,
each of whom wants some new scheme tried; from philanthropists, who
want some evil abated; from revolutionists, who want some old
institution destroyed; from new aeraists, who want their new aera
started forthwith. And they all are distinct admissions that a polity
of discussion is the greatest hindrance to the inherited mistake of
human nature, to the desire to act promptly, which in a simple age is
so excellent, but which in a later and complex time leads to so much
evil.

The same accusation against our age sometimes takes a more general
form. It is alleged that our energies are diminishing; that ordinary
and average men have not the quick determination nowadays which they
used to have when the world was younger; that not only do not
committees and parliaments act with rapid decisiveness, but that no one
now so acts. And I hope that in fact this is true, for according to me,
it proves that the hereditary barbaric impulse is decaying and dying
out. So far from thinking the quality attributed to us a defect, I wish
that those who complain of it were far more right than I much fear they
are. Still, certainly, eager and violent action IS somewhat diminished,
though only by a small fraction of what it ought to be. And I believe
that this is in great part due, in England at least, to our government
by discussion, which has fostered a general intellectual tone, a
diffused disposition to weigh evidence, a conviction that much may be
said on every side of everything which the elder and more fanatic ages
of the world wanted. This is the real reason why our energie