Gradual change also prevented ventures into uncharted
territories. A violent overthrow of the system means that
something entirely new has to be built in place of what has
been removed. This was the case with the French
Revolution, when the first experiment with democracy led to
the Terror and then back to a monarchy twice before finally
leading to the French Third Republic in 1870. It was the
case in the Russian Revolution, where the desires of many
for a more equal system than that of the Russian Empire
led to a one-party dictatorship that was much more violent,
bloody, and vicious than what it had replaced. Gradual
reform was difficult in these societies precisely because
they lacked pluralism and were highly extractive. It was the
pluralism emerging from the Glorious Revolution, and the
rule of law that it introduced, that made gradual change
feasible, and desirable, in Britain.
The conservative English commentator Edmund Burke,
who steadfastly opposed the French Revolution, wrote in
1790, “It is with infinite caution that any man should venture
upon pulling down an edifice, which has answered in any
tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society,
or on building it up again without having models and
patterns of approved utility before his eyes.” Burke was
wrong on the big picture. The French Revolution had
replaced a rotten edifice and opened the way for inclusive
institutions not only in France, but throughout much of
Western Europe. But Burke’s caution was not entirely off
the mark. The gradual process of British political reform,
which had started in 1688 and would pick up pace three
decades after Burke’s death, would be more effective
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