"It pays in England to be a revolutionary and a bible-smacker most of one's life, and then come round"

Douglas skewers a cultural economy in which spectacle, not steadfastness, earns dividends. To be a “revolutionary” or a “bible-smacker” is to inhabit opposite poles of zeal: the incendiary breaker of idols and the sanctimonious defender of them. Both roles are attention engines. They mobilize followers, provoke enemies, and keep one’s name in the papers. The punchline lies in the final maneuver, “come round”, the late-life pivot to moderation and respectability. England, he implies, not only forgives that pivot; it rewards it. The establishment delights in converts, especially famous ones, and the public adores a redemption arc.

Embedded in this is a shrewd diagnosis of incentives. Extremes generate notoriety; contrition secures legitimacy. The person who has shouted loudest on the barricades or pounded the pulpit hardest can later claim wisdom, maturity, and balance, harvesting honors that would never accrue to the quietly consistent. The press amplifies the whole trajectory: first the scandal of fervor, then the drama of repentance. Clerics bless it, politicians cite it, biographers polish it. The harms done along the way get laundered by the narrative of growth.

Douglas also hints at the performative nature of public conviction. If one can profit equally from being prophet and puritan, perhaps the real currency is not belief but visibility. The line mocks English respectability politics: outrage is tolerated, even cherished, provided it culminates in a bow to convention. It is a satire of a society that romanticizes youthful fire while ultimately demanding submission to its norms, and then calls that submission wisdom.

There is an autobiographical sting as well. Douglas lived amid sensational conversions, religious, political, and personal, and knew how fame, scandal, and repentance braided together in late Victorian and Edwardian life. The aphorism stands as a wary reminder that institutions prize theatrical evolution over quiet integrity, and that the safest way to be radical is to plan one’s reconciliation in time for tea with the establishment.