cannot transform a
monarchy into a republic, but he can make sure that one citizen at least
shall aim at republican virtues, and abstain from the debasing
complaisance of the crowd.

'It is a very great mistake, said Burke, many years before the French
Revolution is alleged, and most unreasonably alleged, to have alienated
him from liberalism: 'it is a very great mistake to imagine that
mankind follow up practically any speculative principle, either of
government or of freedom, as far as it will go in argument and logical
illation. All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment,
every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and
barter. We balance inconveniences; we give and take;--we remit some
rights that we may enjoy others.... Man acts from motives relative to
his interests; and not on metaphysical speculations.[29] These are the
words of wisdom and truth, if we can be sure that men will interpret
them in all the fulness of their meaning, and not be content to take
only that part of the meaning which falls in with the dictates of their
own love of ease. In France such words ought to be printed in capitals
on the front of every newspaper, and written up in letters of burnished
gold over each faction of the Assembly, and on the door of every bureau
in the Administration. In England they need a commentary which shall
bring out the very simple truth, that compromise and barter do not mean
the undisputed triumph of one set of principles. Nor, on the other hand,
do they mean the mutilation of both sets of principles, with a view to
producing a _tertium quid_ that shall involve the disadvantages of each,
without securing the advantages of either. What Burke means is that we
ought never to press our ideas up to their remotest logical issues,
without reference to the conditions in which we are applying them. In
politics we have an art. Success in politics, as in every other art,
obviously before all else implies both knowledge of the material with
which we have to deal, and also such concession as is necessary to the
qualities of the material. Above all, in politics we have an art in
which development depends upon small modifications. That is the true
side of the conservative theory. To hurry on after logical perfection is
to show one's self ignorant of the material of that social structure
with which the politician has to deal. To disdain anything short of an
organic change in thought or instituti