In order to avoid violent change it is needful to allow free scope for gradual change. The greatest catastrophes may be caused by the accumulation of small forces; when a tiny stream becomes dammed by a landslip it may form a lake, which in bursting will devastate a whole valley. So when the gradual movement of a people is checked, and an artificial condition is enforced by laws, the breaking down of such restrictions will cause wholesale disaster. Had the Romans allowed free immigration of Gothic settlers there would never have been the Gothic conquest of Italy. Were the Californians and Australians to allow a free immigration of Japanese, under fair and equal laws, they would not have to fear a squadron demanding justice in their ports. The necessity of violent changes is therefore always the fault of those who prevent gradual changes to fit new conditions. If the House of Commons tries again the experiment of the Long Parliament, and by force or subterfuge abrogates the second chamber, it will be largely due to the House of Lords refusing changes in its mode of action. An Upper House which elected a legislative committee, like the election of Scotch and Irish Peers, would be in a far stronger position. The House of Commons at present is too much like an elephant picking up pins; and if the public become so much disgusted with its incapacity for business that at some crisis they throw the reins of power to an able man like Kitchener, it will be largely due to the fossilisation of the Rules of Procedure. A Lower House which allotted its time strictly according to the value of its votes of supply, or of the interests involved—which registered its decisions instantly, as by the electric signals which are now found in every hotel, and which employed diagrams in debate by means of the lantern and screen which are now found in every school—would stand a better chance of coping with its business in a creditable manner. The fault of violent change, and all its damaging consequences, rests in the first place on those who resist gradual change.