on in infatuation. To be willing
to make such changes too frequently, even when they are possible, is
foolhardiness. That fatal French saying about small reforms being the
worst enemies of great reforms is, in the sense in which it is commonly
used, a formula of social ruin.

On the other hand, let us not forget that there is a sense in which this
very saying is profoundly true. A small and temporary improvement may
really be the worst enemy of a great and permanent improvement, unless
the first is made on the lines and in the direction of the second. And
so it may, if it be successfully palmed off upon a society as actually
being the second. In such a case as this, and our legislation presents
instances of the kind, the small reform, if it be not made with
reference to some large progressive principle and with a view to further
extension of its scope, makes it all the more difficult to return to the
right line and direction when improvement is again demanded. To take an
example which is now very familiar to us all. The Education Act of 1870
was of the nature of a small reform. No one pretends that it is anything
approaching to a final solution of a complex problem. But the government
insisted, whether rightly or wrongly, that their Act was as large a
measure as public opinion was at that moment ready to support. At the
same time it was clearly agreed among the government and the whole of
the party at their backs, that at some time or other, near or remote, if
public instruction was to be made genuinely effective, the private,
voluntary, or denominational system would have to be replaced by a
national system. To prepare for this ultimate replacement was one of the
points to be most steadily borne in mind, however slowly and tentatively
the process might be conducted. Instead of that, the authors of the Act
deliberately introduced provisions for extending and strengthening the
very system which will have eventually to be superseded. They thus by
their small reform made the future great reform the more difficult of
achievement. Assuredly this is not the compromise and barter, the give
and take, which Burke intended. What Burke means by compromise, and what
every true statesman understands by it, is that it may be most
inexpedient to meddle with an institution merely because it does not
harmonise with 'argument and logical illation.' This is a very different
thing from giving new comfort and strength with one hand, to an
i