As a matter of act, we obtain reforms (such
as they are), not by allowing the electorate to draft statutes,
but by persuading it that a certain minister and his cabinet are
gifted with sufficient political sagacity to find out how to
produce the desired result. And the usual penalty of taking
advantage of this power to reform our institutions is defeat by a
vehement "swing of the pendulum" at the next election. Therein
lies the peril and the glory of democratic statesmanship. A
statesman who confines himself to popular legislation--or, for the
matter of that, a playwright who confines himself to popular
plays--is like a blind man's dog who goes wherever the blind man
pulls him, on the ground that both of them want to go to the same
place.
WHY STATESMEN SHIRK THE MARRIAGE QUESTION
The reform of marriage, then, will be a very splendid and very
hazardous adventure for the Prime Minister who takes it in hand.
He will be posted on every hoarding and denounced in every
Opposition paper, especially in the sporting papers, as the
destroyer of the home, the family, of decency, of morality, of
chastity and what not. All the commonplaces of the modern
anti-Socialist Noodle's Oration will be hurled at him.
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