In the greater number of the revolutions enumerated above, we have seen governments perish by their weakness.As soon as they were touched they fell.
The Russian Revolution proved that a government which defends itself energetically may finally triumph.
Never was revolution more menacing to the government.After the disasters suffered in the Orient, and the severities of a too oppressive autocratic regime, all classes of society, including a portion of the army and the fleet, had revolted.The railways, posts, and telegraph services had struck, so that communications between the various portions of the vast empire were interrupted.
The rural class itself, forming the majority of the nation, began to feel the influence of the revolutionary propaganda.The lot of the peasants was wretched.They were obliged, by the system of the mir, to cultivate soil which they could not acquire.The government resolved immediately to conciliate this large class of peasants by turning them into proprietors.Special laws forced the landlords to sell the peasants a portion of their lands, and banks intended to lend the buyers the necessary purchase-money were created.The sums lent were to be repaid by small annuities deducted from the product of the sale of the crops.
Assured of the neutrality of the peasants, the government could contend with the fanatics who were burning the towns, throwing bombs among the crowds, and waging a merciless warfare.All those who could be taken were killed.Such extermination is the only method discovered since the beginning of the world by which a society can be protected against the rebels who wish to destroy it.
The victorious government understood moreover the necessity of satisfying the legitimate claims of the enlightened portion of the nation.It created a parliament instructed to prepare laws and control expenditure.
The history of the Russian Revolution shows us how a government, all of whose natural supports have crumbled in succession, can, with wisdom and firmness, triumph over the most formidable obstacles.It has been very justly said that governments are not overthrown, but that they commit suicide.
3.Revolutions effected by Governments.--Examples:
China, Turkey, &c.
Governments almost invariably fight revolutions; they hardly ever create them.Representing the needs of the moment and general opinion, they follow the reformers timidly; they do not precede them.Sometimes, however, certain governments have attempted those sudden reforms which we know as revolutions.The stability or instability of the national mind decrees the success or failure of such attempts.
They succeed when the people on whom the government seeks to impose new institutions is composed of semi-barbarous tribes, without fixed laws, without solid traditions; that is to say, without a settled national mind.Such was the condition of Russia in the days of Peter the Great.We know how he sought to Europeanise the semi-Asiatic populations by means of force.
Japan is another example of a revolution effected by a government, but it was her machinery, not her mind that was reformed.
It needs a very powerful autocrat, seconded by a man of genius, to succeed, even partially, in such a task.More often than not the reformer finds that the whole people rises up against him.
Then, to the contrary of what befalls in an ordinary revolution, the autocrat is revolutionary and the people is conservative.
But an attentive study will soon show you that the peoples are always extremely conservative.
Failure is the rule with these attempts.Whether effected by the upper classes or the lower, revolutions do not change the souls of peoples that have been a long time established.They only change those things that are worn by time and ready to fall.
China is at the present time making a very interesting but impossible experiment, in seeking, by means of the government, suddenly to renew the institutions of the country.The revolution which overturned the dynasty of her ancient sovereigns was the indirect consequence of the discontent provoked by reforms which the government had sought to impose with a view to ameliorating the condition of China.The suppression of opium and gaming, the reform of the army, and the creation of schools, involved an increase of taxation which, as well as the reforms themselves, greatly indisposed the general opinion.
A few cultured Chinese educated in the schools of Europe profited by this discontent to raise the people and proclaim a republic, an institution of which the Chinese could have had no conception.
It surely cannot long survive, for the impulse which has given birth to it is not a movement of progress, but of reaction.The word republic, to the Chinaman intellectualised by his European education, is simply synonymous with the rejection of the yoke of laws, rules, and long-established restraints.Cutting off his pigtail, covering his head with a cap, and calling himself a Republican, the young Chinaman thinks to give the rein to all his instincts.This is more or less the idea of a republic that a large part of the French people entertained at the time of the great Revolution.
