Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW
any previous human polity. And this not in the
least because of the voice of Mr. Hyndman or the
horns of his followers ; but by the mere glacier
movement of the political soil, bearing forward on
its bosom, apparently undisturbed, the proud camps
of Whig and Tory. If Mr. Hyndman were a man
of keen humour, which is far from my conception of
his character, he might rest from his troubling and
look on : the walls of Jericho begin already to
crumble and dissolve. That great servile war, the
Armageddon of money and numbers, to which we
looked forward when young, becomes more and more
unHkely ; and we may rather look to see a peaceable
and blindfold evolution, the work of dull men
immersed in pohtical tactics and dead to political
results.
The principal scene of this comedy lies, of course,
in the House of Commons ; it is there, besides, that
the details of this new evolution (if it proceed) will
fall to be decided ; so that the state of Parliament is
not only diagnostic of the present but fatefully
prophetic of the future. Well, we all know what
Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it. We
may pardon it some faults, indeed, on the ground of
Irish obstruction — a bitter trial, which it supports
with notable good humour. But the excuse is
merely local ; it cannot apply to similar bodies in
America and France ; and what are we to say of
these ? President Cleveland's letter may serve as a
picture of the one ; a glance at almost any paper
will convince us of the weakness of the other. Decay
II— T 289