France and England do gradually learn from each other against their will. The consequence is that their political habits are slowly assimilating. The English have adopted the closure, and are tending towards earlier parliamentary sittings. In elections they have accepted the French system of secret voting, and in course of time they will accept the French principle of “one man, one vote.” In 1888 the English at last adopted the French _Conseils Généraux_. CHAPTER IV STABILITY [Sidenote: Reactionary French Ideas about English Stability.] It is customary with the reactionary parties in France to look to England as the model of everything that is stable; and as their ignorance of English affairs prevents them from seeing what is going on beneath the surface, they conclude that what they believe to be the British constitution is invested with indefinite durability, whilst the French republican constitution is always about to perish. [Sidenote: Old Institutions provoke Change.] In calculating thus, the French reactionists omit one consideration of immense importance. They fail to see that the very presence of old institutions, unless they are so perfectly adapted to modern wants as to make people forget that they are old, is in itself a provocative to the spirit of change, and that it excites a desire for novelty which remains unappeased so long as the old institutions last. The old thing quickens the impulse to modernise when something not old enough to attract attention by its antiquity would have left that special and peculiar passion unawakened. [Sidenote: Mediæval Buildings.] [Sidenote: “Historical Monuments.”] As an example of this, I may mention the existence of mediæval buildings in the streets of a town. Such buildings act as a powerful stimulus to the destructive tendencies of modern municipalities. French cities formerly abounded in such old buildings, but the municipalities cleared most of them away, and it became necessary to restrain this destructive instinct by the enactment of a law for the protection of all buildings classed as “historical monuments.” [Sidenote: Anti-Conservative Effect of the House of Lords.] In like manner the presence of the State Church in England, of the hereditary legislating peers, and of the royal family, as well as of many other ancient things of minor importance, is a stimulus to the spirit of change in radical politicians. It sounds paradoxical, but it is true, that the conservative House of Lords is an obstacle to the final establishment of a conservative spirit in the people. Great numbers of the English electors and many of their representatives are animated by the same tendency to destroy and reconstruct which used to be very active in France. [Sidenote: A Future of Change for Great Britain.] [Sidenote: Instability in English Cabinets.] [Sidenote: Division into two Parties at an End.]