Change refers to the slow, measured process by which laws are passed and conventions and norms come into being. It represents a sceptical attitude toward revolution in general: change is necessary, but revolution is not. Advances in science and technology can change the skin of society, but on the inside, much stays the same. This scepticism about outward change does not imply a craving or preference for stagnation, but a cautious outlook toward things in general, and a marked indifference to the new-fangled for its own sake.

Change is a careful process. It requires deliberation. It most certainly does not sacrifice means for desired ends. Something good cannot come out of something that is bad.

When carried out hastily, or adopts the more angered, brash, and reckless form of ‘revolution’, it creates more harm than good. It is like a behemoth that ought to be controlled carefully so that the res publica can be served best. Revolutions, like the French sort, are bloody and require complex means-ends calculus which inevitably results in disaster: the Terror, Napoleon … and the list goes on. Compare this, as Edmund Burke does, with the Glorious Revolution of 1688: revolution here is a misnomer.

Change happens in accordance with existing norms, and is incompatible with a state run on the fumes of the arbitrary whims and fancies of any group of individual. Change is possible in a nomocracy, where laws reign sovereign in letter and spirit.