THE SLOWNESS OF POLITICAL PROGRESS

In all primitive communities, therefore, the spirit of conservatism prevails; and wisely so, for even slight experience teaches how infrequently sudden and lasting changes in the conditions of human life can be produced by mere volition. The illusion that thought can be readily transformed into reality is persistent; and yet, when the trial is made, men quickly discover how difficult the process is. It then becomes easy for them to decide to accept what circumstances grant to them, to adapt themselves to stern realities, and thus maintain an existence which a more spirited effort to introduce changes might put in jeopardy.

The first great obstacle to social change is found in the material conditions of life. Against this array of purely natural forces the mind rebels in vain. The fact that a large portion of every twenty-four hours

must be spent in restoring exhausted energies, that food and shelter are necessary to existence, and that the individual capable of toil and conflict is closely associated with the incapable, who demand a portion of his energy for their support and protection, compels the units composing society to rest content with what it is possible to obtain under existing limitations.

Even a slight material difference may prove an impediment to liberty of action or afford an advantage in determining social position, whether regarded from the economical or the political point of view. Take into account, for example, the difference that existed in the feudal age between men of equal bodily strength and equal mental powers, produced by a circumstance at first thought so trivial as the possession of a horse and a suit of mail. Yet in this simple difference lay the distinction between the abject helplessness of the peasant and the

power of compulsion possessed by the armed knight or the country squire, for whose protection as a dispenser of justice the unarmed man was willing to accept the position of a serf, bowing with reverence before a fellowcreature upon whose clemency toward his protégés hung the issues of life and death.

Consider also for a moment the revolution that occurred in the nature of the State as an institution, when the invention of gunpowder and the use of artillery concentrated power in the hands of those who alone were able to possess them. In the presence of this new set of material conditions the mailed knight was an anachronism..

Unless he possessed the means to arm with muskets his troop of vassals, and even to provide them with artillery, the superiority formerly afforded him by the ownership of a horse and a suit of armor suddenly disappeared. Only a few powerful princes could organize standing armies equipped

with the new weapons. In the presence of these more capable protectors the mailed cavalier, armed with spear and battle-axe, even though he dwelt in a castle, was a poor competitor. The king now superseded the feudal overlord. To strengthen his hands against the local despot, from whose extortions he alone could rescue them, the people were willing to contribute freely of their substance. What they paid in regularly assessed taxes was less than they had forfeited in arbitrarily exacted tribute, and they were thus made faithful partisans of royal supremacy. Before this formidable concentration and centralization of power feudalism gradually vanished away. The monarch became the sole dispenser of favors, his court the center of all that was potent or brilliant within his realm, his service the only pathway to distinction within the State.

In such conditions, what had at first been

freely accorded by the people, for the purpose of obtaining exemption, was demanded and enforced as a sovereign right. Monarchy, in time, becoming absolute, was even more oppressive than feudalism had once been. In place of trivial combats, in which a handful of servile followers fought body to body with a posse of equally rude contestants, under the walls of rival castles, at whose feet the medieval villages sheltered their dependent inhabitants, great armies were mustered and led afar upon ambitious schemes of world conquest, in which every subject of the Crown was compelled to contribute without murmuring his substance, his service, and, in case of need, his life.

Not until after large sums of money were needed for these vast enterprises did the will of the commons become the balance of power in the State, able to determine peace or war by according or withholding the needed tribute. It was by the triumph