m
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I
I
THE
International Scientific Series
VOL. XLV.
THE
SCIENCE OF POLITICS
BY
SHELDON AMOS, M.A.
BARRISTER-AT-LAW ; AUTHOR OF 'THE SCIENCE OF LAW' ETC.; LATE PUOFESSOK
OF JURISPRUDENCE IN UNIVERSITY CUL,LSGE, LONDON, AND TO THE
INNS OF COURT ; LATE EXAMINER IN CONSTITU'HONAL
HISTORY TO THE UXIA'SRSITY OF LONDON
THIED EDITION
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER, & CO. Ltd.
1890
4^ J"2^ ^^cf"
{The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved)
PEEFACE.
I HAVE done my best to avoid tlie temptation of con-
stnicting an ideal polity founded on mere guesses and
hopes.
That there is an ideal polity for each State, if not
one for all States, I steadfastly believe. But it is only
to be discovered in the paths of history and observa-
tion.
In passing from the ' Science of Law ' to that of
Politics, some change of method is inevitable, owing to
the superior complexity and larger range of the subject-
matter. But the exercise, once become familiar in the
narrower field, of applying a severe terminology and
logical process to ethical notions will be found of the
highest service in the wider field.
A two years' journey round the world, in the course
of which I visited the chief centres of political life,
ancient and modern, in Europe, America, Australasia,
Polynesia, and North Africa, has not only helped me
with illustrations, but has been of no small use in
stimulating thought.
Alexandkia.
VUl CONTENTS.
♦ CHAPTER VIII.
PAGE
THE GOVERNMENT OF DEPENDENCIES . . .
. . 311
CHAPTER IX.
FOREIGN RELATIONS . c -,
342
I
CHAPTER X.
A
THE PROVINCE OF GOVERNMENT 371 \
CHAPTER XI.
REVOLUTIONS IN STATES 427
CHAPTER Xn.
RIGHT AND WRONG IN POLITICS 447
INDEX 485
'V^?.^^
o^
'ORltl^
THE
SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
CHAPTER I.
KATURE AND LIMITS OP THE SCIENCE OP POLITICS.
The process of the strictly physical sciences in modern
|times has had a two-fold influence on the advancement
of those branches of knowledge which deal less with
ihysical than with moral, social, and political facts.
3n the one hand, the exact methods and indisputable
conclusions of the sciences conceraed with matter have
fiaugurated modes of study and enquiry which are
elieved to be of universal application. On the other
jiand, the standard of rigorous logic in all studies is so
ar exalted that those subjects of thought or investi-
gation which do not conform to identically the same
standard as that maintained for the study of matter
are thought to be not worth pursuing with any regard
to the claims of a severe logical process. This sort of
antipathy between the physical and the ethical regions
of search and argument has been intensified by the co-
existence of two opposed orders of minds, the ardently
speculative and the persistently practical. The former
i
THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
are discontented with the notion of a so-called Scienc
of Politics because of the complexity of the subjecii
matter, and the intrusion, at all points, of such seeming!
incalculable factors as the will and passions of mankind
Practical statesmen, again, immersed in actual business
and oppressed by the ever-recurring presence of nev
emergencies, almost resent the notion of applying th
comprehensive principles of science, and still more th
conjectural use of foresight, in respect of subject
which, for them, are in ceaseless flux, and can, at best
only be safely and wisely handled by momentarily
adjusted contrivances.
Between these two extreme classes lies all the larg«'
portion of society composed of p^soris with minds
less distinctly determined and trained in one directioii
or the other, and therefore all the more open to bo
impressed by influences derived from sound thinker^
and energetic workers, but experiencing these influence
only in a loose and diluted form. The aggregate]
result is that the subject of Politics fl^oats in th<|
public mind either as a mere field for ingenious chican*'}
or as a bbundless waste for the evolutions of scholastic
phantasy. If Politics are to be vindicated from th^
aspersions cast upon them from the opposite quarter!
here indicated, and are ever to be erected into a sciencL
with its own appropriate methods and limitations, the
foundation of these sceptical suspicions must be in-
vestigated and their real value strictly assessed. The|
investigation will proceed as follows. *
1. One obvious class of objections to the possibility
of applying rigorous scientific > methods to Politics is
founded on the number and nature of the component
and preparatory studies which are presupposed in
NATURE AND LIMITS OY THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 3
all strict enquiries into tlie theory of Government.
Assuming that the physical sciences, — beginning (say)
with astronomy and ending with physiology or psycho-
logy, — have reached a strictly scientific stage, there yet
remain, as properly leading the way to the study of
Politics, all those branches of knowledge which depend
oii. tlie composite nature of man both as isolated and as
in society. Such are Ethics in the Aristotelian sense,
comprehending as topics decorum and propriety as well
as duty ; political economy, which deals with the con-
ditions under which national wealth is produced,
accumulated, and distributed; law and legislation,
(sometimes comprised under the general head of juris-
prudence) which deal with the essential nature, logical
distribution, and historical growth of the general rules
of conduct which all Governments maintain and enforce ;
and lastly, the somewhat novel science of Sociology,
which deals with the inherent problems to which the
aggregation of mankind into groups gives rise, so far
as these problems can be abstracted and treated inde-
pendently of Government.
This list of studies, which might be multiplied and
varied to any extent according to individual proclivities,
encloses large areas of knowledge over the subjects of
which the human will and human passions must have, at
least in the course of ages and in passing from country
to country, an amount of influence which seems to set
scientific ;^recision at defiance. Nevertheless, and in
spite of all the controversies waged among those who
prosecute these sttidies, there is no doubt that in all these
pursuits the most searching and exact methods, so far as
they are applicable, are beginning to be used, and the
certainty and universality of the sequence of cause and
B 2
4 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
effect, — that is, of Laws of Nature, — to be recognised
as a premise.
The extension of the like severity of process to
political studies is mainly delayed by the constantly
disappointing incompleteness of the constituent and
preparatory studies just enumerated. A Science of
Politics, indeed, has its own special sources of em-
barrassment, owing, among other things, to the necessity
of co-ordinating in one view all the conclusions dedueible
from those other, and as it were introductory, researches.
Of course this process of combination abounds with it?
own manifold opportunities of error ; but this fact need
no more produce despair than the composite quality
of physiology leads the student to be sceptical of the
scientific character of enquiries into the constitution
of the animal world.
There is a vast difference between calling a branch
of knowledge a science, because it can only be profitably
studied by the use of the same logical methods as are
indispensable in the mastery of the best-established phy-
sical sciences, and being, as yet, scientifically cultivated,
or advanced in outward form to the full proportions
.of a maturely developed science. It may be, indeed,
that, from a number of causes to be shortly adverted
to. Politics will always present an appearance neither
homogeneous nor, in one sense, exact. !3ut these de-
fects neither impair the genuine truth of the universal
laws to which the topic is submitted, nor ought to
convey any imputation on the only methods serviceable
in treating it.
Admitting as a provisional and practical postulate
the freedom of the human will, it might indeed seem to
be impossible, on the face of it, to bring within the
NATUEE AJsJ) LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 5
domain of stringent scientific methods any class of
materials largely conversant with the direct actions
and emotions of mankind. But there are certain cor-
rections which reduce the significance of any sceptical
conclusions which might be drawn.
In the first place, the more extensively and minutely
i^iistorical studies are carried on and the investigations
of travellers pursued and recorded, the more uniform
does human nature appear, and the more calculable are
the actions, sentiments, and emotions of large classes
of mankind, when the antecedents and surrounding con-
ditions are ascertained. So far as political enquiries
are concerned, it is more with classes, groups, and
assemblages of men, and with considerable stretches
of' time, than with any individual men at a given ^
moment that the investigator is occupied. Thus thee
historical method, in proportion as it is extensively
pursued, contains in itself its own correctives.
But in the second place, if the researches of his-
torians and the reports of travellers contain an endless
and boundless mass of facts which seem rather to
increase the list of human eccentricities than to reduce
it by discovering a dominant order and an integral unit
of progress and purpose, yet here again the problem of
finding a scientific form for the theory of Government
is on the whole simplified rather than otherwise. As
explorations of all sorts are multiplied and extend,
they take the place of the logical instrument of ex-
periment ; and the result of them is that a limited
number of propositions are evolved which admit of
being announced with a fair assurance of their uni-
versality. If the area of observation be limited, the
truths reached will, indeed, be proportionately restricted
6 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
in number, but within this area they will be none the
less valid.
Thus, in the science of Political Economy, it is not
universally true that, in all conditions of society, popu-
lation tends to increase out of proportion to the means
of subsistence ; for the effective desire of individual
self- enrichment constitutes in certain conditions a
reparative and compensating force. So in Law, it is
not everywhere true that a human being is, in a legal
sense, a person and not a thing ; or that laws proceed
from a consciously acting Political Authority ; or that
it is recognised as an axiom that taxation and repre-
sentation go together. The several propositions here
chosen by way of illustration from two of the component
sciences which, with others, go to constitute the com-
plete range of political studies, and help to convert those
studies into a separate science, are only partially and
relatively true at certain places and periods. But, within
these limits of time and place, their truth, and the truth
of all like propositions, is invariable and incontestable.
Thus if tlie^ composite nature of Politics impairs the
universality of the majority of the propositions with
which it is concerned, this only establishes the rela-'
tivity of these studies, and in no wise detracts from
their usefulness or supersedes the employment of those
rigorous logical methods which in other respects continue
to be applicable.
^-^. Another reason which accounts for the unscientific
aspect under which political studies usually present
themselves is that it very rarely happens, or has hap-
pened, that conscious attention to the^^true character of
Governmental problems, to their difficulties, and to the
modes of their solution, is aroused in any nation till
NATUEE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 7
long after a practical solution of some kind lias been
instinctively resorted to, and a considerable advance
in the art of administration achieved.
An exception might be supposed to exist in the
case of colonies and dependencies, at the first founda-
tion of which all the materials seem to be within
the conscious control of the parent or governing State.
But it is just on this very account that theoretical truths
have here their most hopeful platform, and are habitually
applied in practice to an extent which, because of un-
noticed but vitiating errors of calculation, is often
fraught with serions hazard. The Cornwallis settle-
ment in Bengal, the early land policy of the Australian
Colonies, and the attempted central taxation of the
American Colonies by the British Parliament, are all
instances of the over-hasty application, to materials
believed to be malleable, of firmly fixed political princi-
ples. The principles themselves, indeed, in all these
cases, needed re-examination and re-statement.
The obstacles to at once applying even the best-
established principles of Government in all conceivable
emergencies, so soon as conscious attention happens
to be awakened to the national needs, are sufficiently
obvious. It is not only that the principles them-
selves usually demand modification in view of the
circumstances of the people and of the day, but that
the greatest allowance must always be made in all
political reforms for the influence of fixed sentiments
and habits. It also may happen that bad institutions,
— such as a bad poor-law system, or, in the criminal
law, a falsely conceived relationship between crimes
and punishments, — may have generated a vast and
complex web of affiliated ideas, customs, institutions.
8 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
and laws, which can severally be neither defended in
principle nor yet rudely disdained and cast aside.
For not only do custom and habit enable a people, or
classes of a people, to work in long established grooves
with the smallest amount of friction and obstruction ;
but the mere fact of theJong existence of a familiar
usage so far fashions in its own image the mind, and
even the conscience, of a people, that a critical reformer
has a hard and unpopular task to perform in assaulting
even the most indefensible abuses. The large mass of
the people, if disused to political change of any but
the most cautious, slow, and tentative kind, have
their sentiments of loyalty and reverence outraged
by the sudden introduction of what is new and un-
familiar. Their mind has been trained and pruned
in such a way as to be unable to conceive, as a mere
intellectual notion, a better ordered world than that
in which they live. Where too great a disparity both
in sentiments and in intellect exists between the re-
former and the people, or even between different classes
of the people in the same community, it may show
that the times are not yet ripe for changes recom-
mended by deference to the claims of logic and of
justice.
Instances in point are supplied by the difficulties
experienced by the British Indian Government in dealing
with such patently immoral institutions as polygamy ;
by the attachment of the Scotch to a law of mamage
which notoriously facilitates the most cruel of frauds ;
and by the obstacles in all countries to any com-
prehensive reconstruction of the systems of land-tenure
and inheritance, and of civil, and still more of crimi-
nal, procedure. These last-mentioned institutions have
NATUEE AXD LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 9
seldom been radically altered in any country by any
process short of revolution, however persuasive the
voice of right, of reason, and of utility, in favour of
change. So vast is the number of individual persons
interested in these classes of matters, so well habituated
are they, and consequently so deei)ly attached, to the
recognised forms, usages, or even gestures, customarily
in use, — many of which" are of a public nature and are
daily witnessed by all men, — that any vital re-con-
struction seems little short of sacrilege, and the most
conclusive reasons in favour of.it are scarcely compre-
hensible.
-^3^' It is needless to point out that the conception of
Politics as a Science is much affected by the imperfec-
tions of Politics as a practical Art. It is not only
by reason of the existence of ineradicable institutions
and ideas that the scientific development of political
studies is hampered and delayed. There is another
reason of a still more commanding importance which
operates in the same direction with a stiU more signal
force. It is that, at any given moment, when the legis-
lator, or administrator, would otherwise most desire to
govern with due regard to well-established principles
dictated by abstract political science, he is imperatively
urged on to the front, and impelled into action, by the
pressing necessity of instantly choosing between a
limited number of possible alternative courses. Most
of all is this the case in what are sometimes called
constitutionally-governed coufitries, — that is, countries
in which representative institutions have reached a
tolerable degree of advancement, and political know-
ledge and interest are widely diffused. In these circum-
stances a spontaneous organisation of political leaders
10 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
and their respective followers into parties for tlie pur-
pose of uniform and combined action is sure to have
taken place.
The result is, that an artificial effort will be made,
at each critical occurrence which seems to call for the
intervention of the Government, to narrow the possible
courses of action to a very few immediately intelligible
expedients, recommended rather by their rough con-
formity to some pre-existing schemes or ideals in favour
with the different contending parties than by their in-
trinsic harmony with scientific requirements. No doubt
the party leader who is himself imbued with a scientific
spirit, and is personally disposed to do as little violence
as possible to his cultured instincts, will do his utmost
to bring all his measures into the shape which his
logical and historical training, applied to all the cir-
cumstances of the special case, leads him to desire. But
action at once and without farther delay is unavoidable.
A decision can only be deferred at the cost either
of letting go the opportunity for providing a remedy
of some sort for a possibly crying abuse ; or of openly
confessing impotency ; or of surrendering to others a
leadership which, with all its demerits, is probably
believed to be, on the whole, fraught with good rather
than with evil. Thus the peremptoriness of political
opportunities, and the necessity of instant action, with-
stand, in a country with free representative institutions,
every effort to impart to political action through a
long period a comprehensive, consistent, and scientific
cha-racter.
It is no wonder if the same class of facts re-acts on
the intellectual conception of the position of Politics as
a subject of study and of knowledge.
NATUKE AXD LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 11
The topic is naturally relegated to the region of
caprice and accident, or to that of tentative experiment
and spasmodic contrivance. This intellectual conse-
quence is intensified by the fact that all Governments,
— and not least those known at the present day as the
freest and, on the whole, the soundest, — are habitually
made the arena of purely ambitious contention, of
selfislL aspiration, and even of corrupt conspiracies
against the public well-being. The wider the terri-
torial area of any particular Government, and the more
complicated and extensive its essential mechanism,
the more opportunity there is for the exhibition of
personal or, at the most, of local self seeking. So
far as this prevails. Politics become degraded into a
mere vulgar struggle for money, office, or power. All
actual reference to scientific considerations is excluded.
The tone of public thought and sentiment becomes
proportionately infected, and all the claims which
might otherwise be asserted on behalf of Politics to
take its place by the side of other sciences dealing with
such moral elements as the human Will meet with a
sceptical repudiation.
Where free representative institutions are not
found, and absolutism of one type or another prevails,
the way is more open for a deliberate choice of the
policy to be pursued in any sudden emergency. Such
a case has presented itself, again and again, on the
occurrence of famines in British India. Could such a
casualty occur without being long foreseen in a country
enjoying a popular constitution, the question of reme-
dies would be instantly debated in every kind of public
assembly, and by all the organs of public opinion, with a
12 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
ferment of party zeal which would daily gain in heat and
vehemence, and would impel statesmen to select with
over much precipitation between the limited number of
remedial measures which enjoyed, for one cause or
another, the popular favour.
The legislation demanded in the case of a failure ot
the potato-crop in Ireland has more than once illus-
trated this position. One party advocates the institution
of public works, of a purely wasteful or superfluous
kind, on an enormous scale ; another is in favour of in-
discriminate outdoor relief; a third recommei^ds, with
the late Lord George Bentinck, the construction at the
public cost of railways, with the purpose at once of
employing labour on a large scale and of distributing
food. However much a judicious statesman may be
opposed to all these views, yet for fear of being reduced
to nullity, and of having to give place to opponents,
he can only connect his own name with, and invite
the adhesion of his followers to, what seems on the
whole the least objectionable of the popular alter-
natives. The utmost he can do is to combine different
courses in such a way as that some special evil of one
may neutralise some greater evil of another, and to
introduce modifications which may escape general atten-
tion, but which none the less go some way, at least, to
qualify the mischievous operation of the scheme, a pro-
fessed adoption of which cannot be evaded.
It will depend, of course, very largely on the con-
stitutional circumstances of the country how far, even
in the case of a pressing emergency, the art of politics
may be made to comply with the requirements of
scientifically ascertained laws. Where a large and
promiscuous population has to be satisfied or must be
NATUEE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 13
appealed to by statesmen for political support, the
measures must be instantly intelligible and not too far
removed in their conception from the average ken of
mankind as represented then and there. The ulterior
objects proposed must not belong to a too distant
future : the pursuit of them must not involve what
seem to most people excessive or disproportionate
sacrifices : they must easily and obviously connect
themselves with the common wants and feelings of the
many at the moment, rather than with the (seemingly)
problemtt-tical aspirations of a few in the indefinite
future.
The case is different where popular government has
not yet established itself, and where, in consequence,
none of the above obstacles, even at a critical juncture
calling for the immediate intervention of the legislator
or administrator, are presented. But the exemption of
the statesman or ruler from the checks of popular
control of a constitutional kind by no means ensures
a deference to purely scientific demands. Timidity,
rashness, prejudice, personal rivalries, and the still
less worthy influences of calculating self-interest or of
a narrow ambition, dwarf and vitiate a policy not less
surely than do the impediments due to popular ignor-
ance and incompetence. The statesman, in the one
case as in the other, is bound to act, — and this too with-
out delay ; and, though a scientific resolution cannot
be excluded, yet, from one cause or another, the tempta-
tions to deviate to this or that side are numerous and
urgent. There have indeed been statesmen who have
so far impressed their own personality on their policy,
and communicated their views and aspirations to the
bulk of the governing population that, at special
14 TIIE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
exigencies, the public confidence previously won has
enabled them vto dictate a course scarcely comprehended
by the people at large. Such a position was occupied
on certain occasions by Count Cavour in Italy, Presi-
dents Lincoln and Grant in the United States, even to
some extent by Prince Bismarck in Germany, to a still
greater extent by M. Thiers in France, conspicuously
by the Duke of Marlborough for a time in England,
and in modern times by Sir E. Peel, Lord Palmerston,
and Mr. Gladstone.
So also in Governments not controlled by repre-
sentative institutions, — such as those of almost all the
States of Europe except England, up to very recent
days, — there have always been found exceptional rulers
who, in spite of all temptations to indulge selfish,
prepossessions in favour of ease or aggrandisement,
have availed themselves of the peculiar felicity of
their situation to /pursue a consistent and far-sighted
policy, undisturbed by all casual occurrences or mis-
adventures. To this class have belonged many well-
known administrators of British India and of the Crown
Colonies of Great Britain, as well as certain absolute
sovereigns in ancient and modern times.
It appears, then, that not only does the imminent
necessity for immediate action present serious obstacles
to the pursuit of a policy founded on the teachings of
critical observation and a wide-reaching experience —
that is, on science, — but the mere fact that statesmen
are constantly impelled to act at once in directions
which very imperfectly correspond to their own con-
ceptions of what is really best throws a shadow of
doubt and uncertainty over the scientific character
of the studies concerned. It is felt, not unreason-
NATUEE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OP POLITICS. 15
ablv, that if those who are most concerned to be
acquainted with the best methods of political re-
search- forbear to turn these methods to account at the
moment of the utmost need, this is at least as likely
to result from the inherently imperfect and illogical
nature of the branch of knowledge in question as from
any other cause. To this comprehensive scepticism
some of the classes of facts above adverted to may be
held to supply an answer. The unscientific character
of a policy adopted at any crisis has often been an
exact measure of the amount of external pressure
applied through the competition of factions, or through
the impetuosity of a populace only jaded into an
unwonted attention to political affairs by exceptional
events. Where this pressure is not at hand, rulers
still may, indeed, through unworthy influences and
motives, prefer the worse to the better way; but
enough instances of the persistent maintenance of a
deliberately adopted policy in the face of the most
seductive allurements to fluctuation have been exhibited
to show that it cannot be fairly alleged that politics
must necessarily be unscientific because few in the real
business of life have time, or liberty, or tenacity of
purpose, sufficient to withstand the impetuous torrent
of popular zeal generated by sudden crises or catas-
trophes.
Probably the most real and enduring objection to the
claims of Politics to assume the rank of a true science
is the confessedly immature and imperfectly developed
character of the component or preparatory studies,
apart from which, in their combination with each
other, the study of Politics cannot be pursued. It has
16 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
already been noticed that the complex and composite
nature of political studies is of itself a presumption
against the facility, if not against the possibility, of
ever imparting to those studies the rigorous certainty
essential to Science. But this presumption is greatly
increased by the fact that in such broad but indis-
pensable preparatory studies — confessedly of a scientific
aspect — as Ethics, Economics, and Jurisprudence, there
are to be found only the very smallest number of un-
contro verted propositions. And even as to the logical
methods applicable in each branch of knowledge no
generally assented-to decisions have yet been accepted.
There is thus afforded to the sceptically-minded a
wide opening for treating as unscientific a study which,
like that of Politics, must be built up on conclusions
yet to be established in those other regions of know-
ledge, but none of which are as yet established with a
certainty which is beyond debate. Nevertheless, if it
be admitted that those component studies are capable
of being placed on a strictly scientific foundation, and
only wait for longer time and attention to assume
scientific exactness, at least as much may be claimed
for Politics, and the composite study may advance in
logical perfection at an equal rate with the elementary
studies.
The general result of these considerations is that
there are a variety of solid reasons which account not
only for the reputation acquired by Politics of being an
inherently unscientific study, but also for the study
itself having advanced only a very short way towards
scientific completeness. But most or all of these
reasons have been seen to be of a kind which hold out
NATUBE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 17
a good promise for tlie future, and thereby afford an
ample encouragement to the use of a strictly logical
method in political investigations, and to the attempt
to create a scientific structure of ever-increasing com-
pleteness in this region as well as in others more
familiarly associated with the name of Science.
A science need not be built on universal, nor even
upon general, propositions ; and partial, particular, or
probable premises may justify conclusions, drawn with
logical coiTectness, which may be a firm basis for
action. Where truths are by their nature restricted in
time and place, or where evidence is yet lacking to
demonstrate their actual generality, the assemblage of
such truths will carry with it a fragmentary and hypo-
thetical character which may to some seem incompatible
with the rigid demands of Science. But where the in-
vestigator himself proceeds in strict accordance with the
severest logical requirements, conducting his ratioci-
nation with the utmost precision, and distinguishing at
all points the possible or probable from the certain, the
universal or general from the particular, and proof from
plausibility or mere conjecture, it matters little what
name is given to the branch of enquiry concerned. It
lacks no one of the essential elements and recommen-
dations of the best and earliest-established of the
physical sciences. Its terms are submitted to the same
process of definition, its subject-matter to a like arrange-
ment into groups and classes, genera and species, and
the resulting propositions are reached by a course of
reasoning as logically irrefutable.
There are, indeed, certain plain indications that the
study of Politics is already, even by practical states-
c
18 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
men, being placed on a platform of far higher scientific
exactness than ever before.
One of these indications is the large and dis-
criminating use made of statistics. The collection and
due use of statistics belong to very modern times ; and
owing to popular prejudices and social obstacles — such,
for instance, as still exist in England with regard to
the collection of agricultural and religious statistics —
they have not yet received anything like the extension
of which they are capable. Nevertheless, it has become
the fashion for all the more advanced Governments to
rival each other in the breadth, fullness, arrangement,
and clearness of the numerical information they obtain
on. all the groups of national facts which are suscep-
tible of being tabulated in a systematic shape. These
tables of statistics are periodically furnished by the
Government, not only for purposes of contemplated
legislation, but independently of all thought of imme-
diate use. The fallacious use to which purely numeri-
cal facts can be put, with only too seductive a show of
plausibility, is beginning to be fully acknowledged and
guarded against. But the assurance that the regis-
tered number of births, deaths, and marriages, within
a given period and area, as well as the periodical
records of crime and disease, and, even more obviously,
the tabulated increase or decrease of commerce, shipping,
and manufactures of different sorts, may serve to point
to the presence of general laws — that is, of permanent
sequences of cause and effect — is a sufficient justification
of the labour and expense involved in obtaining the
severally-relevant statistics. The comparison between
the numerical results obtained at one time and place
and another, and between those presented in different
NATUEE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 19
countries, is becoming a political metliod increasing in
prevalence and repute. In many quarters, indeed, tlie
value of purely numerical estimates has been much
exaggerated, and its peculiar liability to error, when
made a basis of political reasoning, has been too much
ignored. But when its limits of application are duly
recognised, and care is taken to distinguish legal and
political causes from those which are purely ethical
or sociological, the study and use of statistics must be
regarded as a most valuable ally, and an unmistakable
proof of the scientific character of political studies.
Akin to the token which the enlarged use of statistics
affords of the growing recognition of Politics as a
true_s^ience, is the ever increasing disposition, at the
present day, to await, at any political crisis, whether
legislative or administrative, the result of a patient
examination of evidence as to the state of the facts and
the previous history of the question.
It is now the practice in the more advanced countries
to take, in the path of serious political change, no step
which seems to be other than the next step onward in
a course which has become habitual, without first nomi-
nating, by one process or another, competent persons
to conduct a critical examination and to deliberate
and report upon the matter. The most searching
powers are often entrusted to this body of persons to
enable them to inform themselves not only as to all
the interests, in their several proportions, to be affected
by the new policy, but as to the history of the general
policy pursued in the past, and occasionally even as
to the practice in other countries.
It often, indeed, happens that after a laborious
investigation, lasting for months or even for years, the
c 2
20 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
popular interest in the once-advocated policy is fonnd
to be exhausted, or diverted into new directions, and
the thought of new legislation is abandoned, and a
voluminous, costly, and invaluable report cast on one
side. Such are among the inevitable accidents which
retard the progress of Government.
But v^hat is of importance to notice in this place is
that the growing disposition to consult past and sur-
rounding facts before inaugurating change belongs to
the strictly scientific habit of mind; and if it is true
that much laborious investigation seems for the time
to be thrown away, yet it seldom happens that com-
plicated and far-reaching changes are encountered with-
out the assistance of a previous impartial and deliberate
enquiry of the kind here adverted to. The scientific
method, in Politics as elsewhere, is slov^ly and surely
getting the better of the empiric.
It will serve to throw some light oii. the scientific
aspect of political stu(iies if some attention is bestowed
on the several writers who, at different periods and in
different countries, have endeavoured to elucidate the
subject by formal treatises. These: treatises — so far as
they have survived — are not numerous, — a phenomenon
which of itself is some indication that a theoretical
handling of the problems of Government is not a popular
occupation either for authors or readers. But whether
this be so or not, so far as past literary experience goes,
it certainly seems to be the case that the reflective or
self-conscious condition of mind which alone admits of
theoretical dissertations on Politics, as well as on other
matters, is itself the product of a combination of par-
tially accidental circumstances. For instance, no such
treatise has ever appeared in the entire absence of press-
NATURE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 21
ing political problems, everywhere reckoned to be at
once difficult and important. Nor have such vs^ritings
emerged in countries depressed under the hand of a
simple and irresistible despotism ; nor, again, in times
and places disturbed bj the actual presence of revolu-
tion, or even of violent and systematic change.
Such treatises, indeed, are the expression of far
more than the casual opinions of an individual specu-
lator. They are the outcome of the national needs and
idstincts. They often register the conclusions of more
or less distinctly organised schools of thought. Their
language can generally be traced, either in the way of
cause or of efiPect, in the political oratory, diplomatic
and state documents, written laws, or popular litera-
ture of the hour. They thus act as the most precious,
because the most unconscious, sort of historical monu-
ments.
For the present purpose, however, they are mainly
noticeable, first as substantiating the truth that there
is a veritable Science of Politics, and then as illustrating
the special difficulties which the cultivation of that
science has to contend with.
It is worth while to make a selection, however arbi
trary, of the leading political writers who in ancient and
modern times have treated the subject in a systematic-,
way, and to determine how far the shortcomings of
these treatises were due to fortuitous circumstances,
and what was the contribution made by each in succes-
sion to the elaboration of a true Science of Politics.
The writers on Politics who on these grounds may
be fitly enumerated are the following :
1. Plato and Aristotle.
2. Cicero, Plutarch, and the historical writers of
the early Koman Empire.
as THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
3. Machiavelli ; Hooker; Bacon.
4. The Schools of the English devolution. — The
Declaration of Rights ; Hobbes ; Locke ; Burke.
5. The School of the American War of Inde-
pendence. — The Declaration of Independence; the
Federalist.
6. The School of the French Revolution. — Mon-
tesquieu ; the Declaration of the Rights of Man :
Thomas Paine.
7.. The Positivist School. — Auguste Comte.
8. The English Utilitarians. — Bentham ; the Mills ;
John Austin ; Sir G. C. Lewis.
1. The warmest admirers of Plato will not claim for
his ' Republic,' or — if it be genuine, as Mr. Grote, at
least, concludes it to be — his ' Laws,' the character of
a treatise on Political Science. Plato indeed availed
himself of the political phenomena everywhere con-
spicuously present before the eyes and minds of his
readers, and of the active spirit of political curiosity
which those phenomena generated. In the ' Laws '
directly political objects would seem to be the end
in view; but even here the main notion is that of
advice or aspiration, and not that of research or exact
demonstration ; and the objects in view relate to indi-
vidual reforms rather than to systematic construction
or re-construction. Indeed, Plato's writings, though
not without their suggestiveness on many points of
great importance to the statesman — such as education
and the mutual relation of classes — belong properly to
the literary department of ' Utopias.' Sir G. C. Lewis,
in his 'Methcvds of Observation and Reasoning on
Politics,' has devoted a special section to the con-
AEISTOTLE. 23
fiideration of this subject ; and the invention of such
political ideas is sometimes of real logical service, by
furnishing a comprehensive framework for the joining
together of a number of hypotheses. But while aspira-
tions, counsels, and hypotheses no doubt hold a place
in political discussion, they are, at the most, only the
complements of the science, and not its essence.
To Aristotle and his political treatises, — especially
to the lost one, which dealt with the constitutions of
nearly 200 Greek cities, — a very different kind of im-
portance attaches. The backward condition of the
physical sciences in his day prevented Aristotle, — as,
even in comparatively modern times, it prevented
Bacon, — from rigidly appljdng inductive methods to
ethical enquiries. Nevertheless, the comprehensiveness
of application which belonged to these methods was
fully apprehended by the earlier philosopher ; and he
set an example of inexhaustible value in the courage
and consistency of purpose with which he followed out
true methods to what he concluded to be their legiti-
mate results. There were several reasons, however,
which rendered the political investigations of Aristotle
rather tentative and partial in their results than final
and conclusive.
It is true that, by A.ristotle's time, not only had a
vast number of Grecian communities passed through,
externally at least, all the main vicissitudes which sepa^
rate absolute despotism from democracy of as liberal
a type as was possible in those ages, but also there
were conspicuously presented to every thoughtful mind
the alternative constitutions of the Kingdom of Macedon
and of the Empires of the East. The recently termi-
24 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
nated struggle between Athens and Sparta had, while
it lasted (as appears abundantly in Thucydides), stimu-
lated incessant comparisons between the very different
institutions of the rival States ; and the orations of the
great orators had, at a later date, accustomed the
Grecian mind to calculate what would be gained and
what lost by submission to the claims and encroach-
ments of Philip of Macedon. Furthermore, it was,
of course, vastly in Aristotle's favour that deductive
logic and the practice of dialectic, in Plato's hands and,
more systematically, in his own, had very recently
undergone an unprecedented expansion; and that he
himself had, by his physical investigations and accu-
mulated collections and recorded observations of all
sorts, laid the indispensable basis of an inductive logic
capable of an unlimited reach of application.
Thus the way was undoubtedly well prepared for
the construction of a genuine Science of Politics ; and
it was inevitable that Aristotle, after applying his
newly systematised critical method to the simpler
relationships of man as a membor of society, should
proceed to employ an equally rigid method of enquiry
to the relationships of man as a subject of Government
and a member of the complex organism entitled a
State. But Aristotle must have been prevented from
exhibiting the Science of Politics in an adequately
finished form by certain distinct obstacles even had the
habit of applying strict logical methods to ethical
topics been then as familiar as it has of late been made
by the increased attention bestowed on physical studies
as a sequel to the vast discoveries and inventions of
modern times.
(1.) In the first place, the diffused existence and
GREECE IN ARISTOTLE'S TIME. 25
public recognition of slavery must have gone far to
confuse the minds of even the clearest thinkers, and to
prevent them from discriminating how far this insti-
tution was a casual result of certain fluctuating causes,
and how far it was a necessary, permanent, and universal
characteristic of human society. The consequence of
this confusion or doubt must have been to impair the
clearness of vision with which the scientific observer
would contemplate all problems relating to personal
liberty, and even, to speak more generally, all human
rights of a purely moral kind. It will be seen later
on that each of the leading political revolutions which
have subsequently taken place has, by bringing into
relief the fact of some class of human rights being
Labitiially violated, given a renewed impetus to the
study of theoretic Politics, and brought about some
important accession to the Science in its systematic
form.
(2.) In the second place, the size of the States of
Greece, — even when it reached beyond the confines of a
single city, — was so small, that even under the most
popular Government the need for representation, in the
modern sense, was scarcely felt. Not only in Attica,
were all males of full age out of every city entitled to
attend the public assembly and bound to serve in rota^
tion as jurymen in the Courts of Law, but so large a pre-
ponderance of the numerous members of the Assembly
and of the Jury panels were close at hand and could
attend in person, that the main difficulty of modern
politics, occasioned by vastness of territory and de-
centralisation, was not appreciated to an extent which
called for scientific recognition. Representation, indeed,
in the form of agency, can be traced in many iustitu-
26 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
tions, as for instance in the Amphictjonic Council, in
the management of certain international festivals, and
in the conduct of federative alliances. But the mere
fact of occasional recourse being had to the machinery
of representation differs widely from the habitual use
of representation as the main instrumentality for the
support of the very fabric of Government. It was not
till the doctrines of human equality and of individual
right had to be deferred to, in connexion with extended
areas of territory and an equable diffusion of territory,
that the subject could take the place in all political
enquiries which it occupies at this date. It needed, in
fact, the experience supplied by the enormous breadth
of the Roman Empire, by the organisation of the Chris-
tian Church, and by the essential character and usages
of Feudalism, to prepare the world to attribute to the
problems of representation their true place in any
scheme of scientific Politics.
(8.) In the third place, the economic conditions of
the States in the midst of which Aristotle lived, upon
which alone his political experience must needs have
been founded, were such as to exclude the consideration
of the problems which, for statesmen in the present
day, are at once the most important and the most
arduous of those they have to grapple with. This class
of problems relates to providing for a vast pauper popu-
lation ; to adjusting the principle of political equality
to the fact of an unequal distribution of wealth ; and,
in a word, to maintaining the unity and integrity of the
State amidst the dislocating and centrifugal influences
of an intense struggle for existence at a variety of
points, and especially at the extremities, of the body
C(>rporate.
NATUEE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS. 27
In tlie political communities known to Aristotle, it
was not possible that — apart from the slave class —
wealth should be as unequally distributed as in modern
times; and from all that is known of those com-
munities it appears that the corresponding political
problems did not press upon the attention of statesmen.
No doubt there were great differences of wealth inci-
dent to the various professions, trades, and industrial
occupations ; and there was abundant opportunity, by
saving money, or by accumulating it as capital and
investing it productively, to anticipate the modern
distinctions between the leisured and luxurious citizen
and the citizen actively engaged in producing or
manipulating wealth. To what extent the accumu-
lation of capital through the medium of banks, com-
panies, loan societies, and the like, was possible in the
ancient world is an interesting question which belongs
to the department of antiquarian or, at least, historical
research. But, making the ntmost allowance for the
presence of monetary and circulating expedients the
true character and extent of which we can only
conjecture, it is impossible that anything can have
found place in the older world corresponding to the
scale on which capital is, in modern States, concen-
trated, accumulated, and assiduously transferred from
investment to investment.
That no parallel .in these respects exists between
the circumstances of ancient and modern States is
sufficiently proved by a mere glance at the enormous
monetary transactions which the industrial, commercial,
and even military enterprises of modern times pre-
suppose. The spent capital commemorated in gigantic
national debts; the past and current expenditure on
28 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
railway and telegraph communication ; the contri-
butions to joint-stock adventures for every class of
engineering and mercantile undertaking; as well as
the enormous amount of corporate property, circulating
or hoarded, represented by the shipping trade and by
international exports and imports ; not to mention the
national resources diverted, in all the leading States, to
the organisation, in peace as well as in war, of the Army
and Navy ; — these are a series of economical pheno-
mena some of which, almost within the memory of
living men, have reached inordinate proportions, and
each of which has no equivalent before the sixteenth or
seventeenth century of the present era.
But it is not the mere existence of such facts,
or their portentous magnitude, which constitutes the
difference between the political materials of the modern
and the ancient world. The real difference is that in
modern States population keeps increasing fully in pro-
portion to, — and, in some States, in a degree out of all
proportion to — the growth of wealth, while no natural
machinery exists either for ensuring an equable dis-
tribution of the new wealth, or even for preventing it
from being massed together in a very few hands. It
requires the utmost administrative sagacity and energy
as well as legislative inventiveness on the part of
statesmen to remedy the consequences of this unequal
diffusion of vast wealth, and, as far as may be, to pro-
mote a more equal diffusion. Questions relating to
taxation, pauperism, inheritance and succession, entails,
mercantile partnerships, bankruptcy, and free trade,
have all to be handled in view of bhese pressing require-
ments ; and nothing but the sudden spring and develop-
ment of manufactures, together with the ever fresh
GREECE IN ARISTOTLE'S TIME. 29
occupation of territory in America and the Australian
Colonies, could have prevented the occurrence of disas-
trous famines, and revolutions, and other like adver-
sities, which it is the main purpose of the statesman to
keep at a distance.
In Aristotle's time wealth was, undoubtedly, un-
equally diffused, and checks to population, both natural
and artificial, abounded. But it was not till the New
World had been discovered, mechanical contrivances
inordinately expanded, public and international credit
established, and innumerable devices for providing
media of exchange invented, that the corresponding
political problems could have come to light, or at
least have attained the prominence they now have.
(4.) In the fourth place, the scattered extent of terri-
tory subject to the leading modern States has of itself
given rise to two classes of political problems of the
highest degree of importance, and yet of a distinctly
novel kind. These problems relate to Local Government
and to the Government of Dependencies. It needs no
comment to show the importance of both these topics,
the place they both occupy in modern legislative dis-
cussions and administrative schemes, and the absence
of anything which can fairly be said to correspond to
them in the political world open to the observation
of Aristotle.
To Aristotle, the primary if not the absorbing topic
was the form of Government. It is to be noted that
the smaller the political community in numerical
extent the more pressing, — in appearance if not in
reality, — is this consideration; because, the relative
proportion of the actual administrators to the numbers
of the population being greater as the aggregate mass
30 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
of the population is smaller, the -question as to the
most fitting number of administrators is a more sig-
nificant and pressing one. Where the disproportion
between the administrators and the numbers of the
population is very great, as in the leading modern
States, it matters less whether the number of the ad-
ministrators be great or small. In this way one element,
at least, of calculation in estimating the value of forms
of Government has lost the importance it possessed in
Aristotle's day. At the present time, — as will be seen
later on, — it is impossible to oppose, with the sharpness
of distinction which Greek experience admitted of, the
monarchical to the oligarchical or, again, to the
democratical form of government. Modern experience
has shown that tyranny and absolutism are not
incompatible with the forms of democratical govern-
ment; and that under monarchical forms political and
personal freedom may find adequate protection. It is
discovered that new constitutional devices of a kind
undreamed of in Aristotle's day, and which may be
applied under any external form of government, are
needed to withstand the inroads of injustice, corruption,
and anarchy.
In this way, again, the Science of Politics could
not have been elaborated by Aristotle, with all his
logical perspicacity, his knowledge, and his prescience,
simply for want of materials out of which to form it.
Greek experience was widely diversified, but always in
a narrow field and in the midst of exceptional and
transient conditions. Greek communities were small,
with a large slave population, the means of subsistence
being easily supplied, and the main political problem
being that of the rival advantages of placing the supreme
{
NATUEE AND LIMITS OF THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 31
power in the hands of one, of a few, or of many pur-
porting ostensibly to be identical with all.
2. The next epoch in the history of Political Science
is that of the historical, philosophical, and ethical writers
of the last days of the Eoman Republic and the early
years of the Roman Empire. To this class belong such
writers as Cicero, Plutarch, Tacitus, Suetonius, and
(incidentally) the Jurists of the times of the Antonines.
It is more difficult to characterise the political
speculation of this age than that of the age of Aris-
totle, because no single representative treatise, — not
excepting Cicero's lately recovered work on the
' Republic,' — occupies any such place as the ' Politics '
of Aristotle. But this very silence and absence of
speculative writers on politics is in the highest degree
instructive. In the world of the Roman Empire there
could be no question of constitutional change otherwise
than through the avenue of revolution. All policy was
concerned with keeping things as they were ; that is,
with defending the frontiers of the Empire, preventing
organised revolution in the army or anarchy in the
provinces, keeping in restraint the horde of slaves of
many nationalities, providing food for the metropolis,
and establishing satisfactory relations between the
reigning Emperor and those who were, or might prove,
competitors for his throne. For years together the
only acts of policy strictly so called, — excepting the
extension of the rights of citizenship by Caracalla, —
related to comprehensive improvements in the system
of administration, such as took place successively
under Augustus, Constantine, Diocletian, and finally
Justinian.
32 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
This abeyance of political objects wbich is the
characteristic of the Empire was compatible with a
professedly high standard of political ethics, with a
rigid regard for, and logical perception of, individual
legal claims, and with sound and ingeniously contrived
methods of provincial administration. But there was,
at heart, a radical discrepancy between the principles
of personal morality which, in connexion with novel
theories of man's nature and destiny, were disclosing
themselves in some parts of the Empire, and the
universal oppression under which the slaves and the
provincials were all, in a greater or less degree, suffer-
ing. It would have been the first aim of a genuine
Political Science to trace how far these evils were
connected with the existing system of government, or
how far they could be removed by political reforms.
But no such Science was forthcoming, or could be
forthcoming. The only practical choice was between
absolutism and anarchy ; and such thinkers and writers
as appeared were only free to express themselves nnder
the cloak of satiric poems, cynical history, and critical
biographies of the heroes of old.
It would be untrue, however, to conclude that
the time of the transition from a republican to an
imperial system of government, and of the establishment
of the Empire, contributed nothing to advance the
theoretical treatment of Politics. In many ways the
reverse was the case ; and, under a variety of disguises,
and assisted by the rapid development in some directions
of the Art of Politics, the corresponding Science was
making achievements for which the modern world con-
tinues to be, in an increasing rather than in a diminishing
degree, a debtor.
THE ROMAN EMPIEE. 33
The difficulties of administration as applied over an
almost unlimited area ; the problems presented by the
necessity of preserving order and contentment as well
as, if it might be, promoting prosperity among subjects
of divers nationalities, creeds, and political antecedents ;
the arduous questions relating to taxation and military
service, as well as those due to the need for organising
agriculture and land-tenure in a way likely to favour
production and prevent famines ; were all obviously
present, if not to the mind of the Emperor himself, at
least to that of his more competent advisers, on whom
the safety and tranquillity of the Empire depended from
moment to moment. Add to this that the silent effect
of the even and generally impartial administration of
justice, based on an inimitable system of equitable
private right — a system developed with a logical pre-
cision which scarcely knows a parallel — was constantly
discovering the nature and the necessity of stable poli-
tical institutions. Municipal creations and arrange-
ments, again, were relieving the local organs from the
pressure of the central mass ; and it was only when the
central authority unduly encroached, by way of taxation
and enforced services of all sorts, on the local bodies,
that the dissolution of the Empire was threatened by
causes quite independent of external aggression.
It is not only that, through the experience of the
political vicissitudes which the history of the fortunes
of the Roman Empire supplies, political knowledge has
been increased and rendered serviceable for the instruc-
tion of future ages, but a more scientific view of the
conditions of all good government was inevitably im-
pressing itself on the thought of mankind. During
these ages, indeed, it happened that most of the conscious
D
34 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
intellectual energy of tlie world was absorbed in Christian
controversy and speculation; and the very nature of
the prevalent governmental absolutism was inconsistent
Avith an indulgence in unrestricted political discussion.
But even from a political point of view the thought of
the age was not wholly wasted. Politics were almost
inextricably involved in the very language employed,
in the sentiments entertained, and in the reasoning
adduced, in the course of the more prevalent avocations
and studies. Even the Fathers of the Church, while
contrasting the secular society around with the new
moral kingdom the claims of which they were engaged
in recommending, talked political science without know-
ing it. The Emperors, in the Eecitals prefixed to their
laws, confessed the nature of the two-fold problems
presented by the Church and the exigencies of their
enormous State. The lawyers, in their most technical
language on private right, could not avoid admitting or
rejecting dominant political theories. In fact, though
the period was one of political being and suffering
rather than of conscious thinking, yet an incubating
process was going on which, after the confusions and
the sleep of ages, was destined to produce a not un-
worthy progeny.
3. Historical investigation has long ago eradicated
the notion that the ages which intervened between the
fall of Eome and the fall of Constantinople could only
be denoted by such images as sleep and death. But so
much, nevertheless, is true, that it w^as not before the
definite reconstruction of Europe after the shock of the
collision between the tribes of the North and the Empire
of the South that Political Science could recover its place
THE CHKISTIAiN CHUECH. 35
in the consciousness of mankind. The notion of
territorial sovereignty was partly introduced and partly
reinforced by three contemporaneous institutions or
influences : — the Church, succeeding to the territorial
claims of the Imperial Government at Rome ; the Muni-
cipalities, which survived the ruin of what was more
brittle or ephemeral than themselves, and persisted in
maintaining a well-understood relation between public
office and corporate property ; and Feudalism, — inclining
either to a mere military device or a mere form of
tenure, according as it borrowed more from a Teutonic
or a Roman source. These institutions, operating in
the generation of fresh facts, and as influences on the
minds and imagination of men, preserved a clear field
for a system of territorial government the limitation
of which was determined by geographical, linguistic,
military, and even mere diplomatic and dynastic causes.
The history of the Holy Roman Empire, espe-
cially in its relation to the Church of Rome, is the
history of the way in which the process of delimitation
between State and State was carried out in detail, in
subservience to the preponderant idea that the German
Empire was a true perpetuation of the Roman Empire
and that there was only one State, as there was only
one Church, in the Western world. If it was the Church
which, in concert with other institutions, had preserved
the territorial element in the existence of the State, it
was again the same Church, which, in a reflex way and
by the reaction it called forth on every side against its
own usurpations, helped to sharpen and define the
notion of the political integrity and independence of a
true State. The mercantile cities of Northern Italy
were among the first to draw distinct political advantage
D 2
36 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
from the rivalries between the Church and the Empire ;
and while the theoretical battle of Investments was
being fought, as it were, in the gorgeous but unreal
cloud-world of Popes and Emperors, the genuine notions
of political right, duty, independence, self-government,
representation, and corporate action were being noise-
lessly but triumphantly evolved by the tradesmen,
manufacturers, and merchants of the Italian republics.
The writings of Machiavelli, both as a patriotic
historian and as a scientific politician, are significant of
this new and memorable epoch at its culminating point.
In fact, the great author seems almost conscious himself
that he is called to prescribe for an era of decline. No
one knew better than he that it was not by fraudulent
diplomacy or astute craftiness that Florence had attained
her incomparable renown. He no doubt felt that the
era of private liberty and of political independence for
Italian cities had really passed away ; and that only by
personal adroitness in the ruler could the enemies of
his country, whether French or Roman, be temporarily
kept at a distance. Therefore the Political Science of
Machiavelli must be sought in his History of his own
city ; his Political Art in his ' Prince.'
It must be observed that the conscious prosecution
of political studies in Northern Italy in the fifteenth
century was due to more general causes than the ap-
pearance of a race of educated statesmen, called into
existence by an oligarchical constitution under repub-
lican forms — a race of which Machiavelli was the most
conspicuous type. There were, indeed, contemporary
statesmen of no mean calibre in England and in
France ; there were free self-governing cities scattered
throughout every part of the Western world, and the
MACHIAVELLI. 37
Hanseatic League was scarcely distinguisliable in any
particular from a sovereign and independent State.
But in Italy alone all the conditions converged for the
study of Politics according to deductive and inductive
methods. These conditions were, the variety of ex-
perience which the fortunes of all the Italian republics
supplied ; the close neighl)ourhood to, and assiduous
contact with. States differently governed ; the legal and
historical studies fostered by the great Italian Univer-
sities ; the incessant diplomatic activity which charac-
terised the relations of the Republic with Foreign
Powers ; and lastly, the political reflectiveness kept in
constant use by the internal and never ceasing conflicts
between the popular and the oligarchical parties in the
towns.
The disruption of Feudalism, in the case of all the
countries in which it had prevailed, was attended by a
breach in the long subsisting relations between the
King, the Aristocracy, and the People. It was of the
essence of Feudalism to unite these persons and classes
together in the well-understood and familiar relations
comprised in reciprocal services and in the tenure or
the occupation of the soil. As Feudalism collapsed,
these relations were disturbed or destroyed. In some
countries, as in France, the King profited at the expense
of the nobles and the people ; in other countries, as in
Germany, the subordinate feudal lords profited at the
expense of their feudal superiors ; while in England the
people at one time, by the help of the King, prevailed
against the nobles, and at another time, by the help of
the nobles, prevailed against the King. There needed a
new fusion of classes, or rather, a new ground of political
33 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
union, to take the place of obsolete facts and a decaying
faith. And, so soon as revolution against the subsisting
order was threatened, political theory came to the aid
of society, and the doctrines of Divine Right on the one
hand, and of the Social Contract on the other, were
brandished with all the energy which belongs to an era
of active social change.
Sir Thomas More's Utopia occupies the same kind
of place in reference to later political speculation in
England that Plato's ' Republic ' occupied towards the
' Politics ' of Aristotle. Like the earlier poem of ' Piers
Ploughman,' the Utopia traced certain confessed evils
to their easily recognised causes, and, with more or
less outspoken freedom, demanded reform. But such
utterances are rather of the nature of bitter laments or
pious aspirations, dictated by the spectacle of social
collapse, than a comprehensive and patient survey of
the whole political field, such as belongs to science.
The struggles of Elizabeth's reign between the
secular State and the mutually-opposed religious parties,
which were endeavouring to divert to their own pur-
l)Oses the national forces, prepared the ground for a
thorough theoretical discussion of one great department
of Politics, the relation of the State to the religious
beliefs of its component members. The treatise of
Hooker on ' Ecclesiastical Polity ' marks not merely an
important stage iu national literature, but also a freshly
discovered capacity in English thought to refer legal
and political institutions to their necessary origin in
human and common social needs. The transition
from an age of mere complaint, remonstrance, and
recrimination, to an age of argument based on admitted
premises of the most general kind was, in truth.
HOOKER. 39
effected by the practical intelligence urgently called for
to settle all the constitutional and ecclesiastical ques-
tions of Elizabeth's day. Among these questions, even
that of the Queen's title to the throne was involved,
and still more that of her leading prerogatives.
The recent and still progressing reformation of reli-
gion, the increasingly rapid dissolution of the ancient
social ties which bound class to class, the dawning of a
new literary era, the speculative and adventurous spirit
due to the novel prospects opening to commerce and
discovery in the New World, formed a cluster of pheno-
mena which were too distinct and portentous not to
have their reflection in the mirror of Politics and to
supply legislative and administrative problems of a
wholly new order of importance. One and another of
these problems was courageously grappled with at once
— such as the poor-law system, the law relating to
fraudulent debtors, the constitutional aspect of mono-
polies, and, more especially, the relations of the State
in its secular character, as well as those of the National
Church, to independent religious communities within
the realm and to Churches having their centre of
loyalty and allegiance outside it.
The discussion of these problems was, for the most
part, conducted in a piecemeal way, with reference
either to the pressing necessities of the moment or to
what were believed to be well-established and long prac-
tised usages of the English Government. But, as in all
great crises, when competent statesmen are at the head
of affairs, the practice went beyond any known prece-
dents, and new principles were evolved under the guise of
a more logical development of old ones. Thus Hooker's
great work not only went far to ascertain the past and
40 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
existing relations, civil and religious, of a State Church
to schismatic persons and corporations, but furnished a
fresh starting-point for the conduct of the controversy
in future times. So with Jeremy Taylor's ' Liberty of
Prophesying.' The question is argued in view of a prac-
tical emergency. The basis of the right of free speech
is laid in what are believed to be admitted Biblical,
ecclesiastical, and constitutional principles. But in
this open citation of implicit dogmas there was con-
tained far more than a mere registration of prevalent
ideas. The wise and erudite author was compelled by
the exigencies of argument to trespass beyond the
strict limits justified by his own authorities ; and the
consequence was that the ' Liberty of Prophesying '
w^as in fact an anachronism, only to become adapted to
the times when principles identically the same were
re-asserted by Milton in his ' Areopagitica,' or at a still
later date, by Mr. John Stuart Mill in his essay on
' Liberty.'
^ In the meantime Francis Bacon was laying the
foundations of a true inductive method of reasoning,
and heralding the brilliant future which lay before it.
For the moment, indeed, the physical sciences were
alone comprehended in the philosopher's ken. But the
method announced admitted of no limitation in the
subject-matter, except such as must come from a con-
fined experience or defective means and instruments of
observation. As to Politics, there were the further
obstacles supplied by long fixed usage, and the general
objections to all theorising which might dispose man-
kind for easily entertaining projects of political change.
But the appeal to strict logical methods made by Bacon,
in every branch of enquiry which dealt with matters
BACON. 41
cognisable by the material senses, must have ushered in
sooner or later a novel and organic reconstruction oi
political and ethical theories. The partial speculations*' .1^5
of such men as Hooker and Jeremy Taylor co-operated
in the same direction, while the remarkable events and
needs of the hour prompted men's minds to demand u
central basis of thought for their mainstay and con-
solation amidst changes of incalculable magnitude.
Thus, the impulse to strictly scientific investigation
once being given, and the political and constitutional
questions astir being of a kind to arouse all the best
thought of the day, it needed but the situation, the
theoretical assumptions, and the conduct of the Stuart
Kings, to call forth the political philosophy of the early
part of the seventeenth century.
The leading political topic which dwarfed all others
was that of the Prerogative of the Crown. Even so early
as the reign of Edward lY., Chancellor Fortescue had
been led by current events to discuss in his treatises
' De Laudibus Legum Anglise ' and ' De Monarchia,' the
attributes of the English King, and his subjection to the
law of the land, in contradistinction to the Imperial
Sovereign as crntemplated by the Civil Law. But, in
that early day, speculative political thought was not ad-
vanced enough to admit of the enunciation of principles
broader than the partially settled maxims of the English
Constitution. By the time of the Stuarts the political
as well as the speculative world had undergone a
notable transformation. For the purposes of the Courts
of Law it was sufficient to argue from acknowledged
usages and decided cases that the King had or had not a
right of raising money without the assent of Parliament,
of maintaining a standing army, of granting mono-
42 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
polies, of suspending Acts of Parliament bj proclamation,
and of inflicting fines and imprisonment by the instru-
mentality of Courts not known to the Common Law.
But when such questions accumulate, it is a sign that
more is in debate than mere controversies of uncertain
right. Men's minds must rest in some intelligible
theory which can either bring into mutual harmony ex-
isting facts or can introduce new facts capable of being
placed on an unassailable foundation. It has been seen
that through the experience, political and intellectual,
of the reigns of the Tudors, men's minds were ripe for
a purely theoretical solution of pending controversies ;
and the main representative of the new era was
Hobbes.
4. Hobbes' intrinsic merit, in respect of the history
of Political Science, was that, in contrast with all his
eminent English predecessors who had handled special
departments of Politics in a logical spirit, he addressed
himself to discover and propound principles of the
most comprehensive kinds, from which all doctrines
then recognised as needful might be deductively in-
ferred. The principles adduced b}^ Hobbes were not
barren truisms founded on a rancorous despondency or
a pious optimism. They were based on a careful and
accurate survey of the whole field of Government ; and
every portion of the mechanism of Government, and
each of its essential functions were regarded in the
light of the central and dominating idea. Thus the
foundations of a veritable political Science were for the
first time surely laid ; and if the superstructure has not
followed as rapidly as might have been hoped, it has
been only because it needed the fresh discoveries result-
HOBBES, GROTIUS, SELDEN. 43
ing from the later revolntionary movements in England,
America, and France, to furnish the materials requisite
for an adequate scientijBc development.
It must be noticed, too, that in other directions and
bj other agencies the elements of a true political
science vrere coming into relief during the reigns of
Elizabeth and the Stuarts. The incidents of English
maritime adventure led to assumptions in the narrow
seas which, whatever their value — as contested by
Denmark and Holland, at least — went far to sub-
stantiate the notions of territorial sovereignty and of
national independence. The untenable assumptions of
extra-territorial maritime rights, defended by Selden and
justly resisted by Grotius, drove the public conscience
to criticise the nature of the relationship between State
and State for some other purposes than (as heretofore)
those of war alone. In the same way, the peculiar
dynastic relations of James I. to the still distinct
kingdoms of Scotland and England raised a congeries of
legal questions bearing on the nationality of citizens of
the two countries before and after the King's accession
to the English throne. These questions, though primarily
only of constitutional import, tended to popularise and
enforce political doctrines as to the true and necessary
situation of the citizen in the State to which he belongs.
Thus a series of influences were converging to
bring every separate portion of the political machinery
under critical review, not merely in order to test its
condition and efficiency, but to determine its place and
order in the whole system, and thereby to estimate the
circumstances and wants of any and every State
generically, as subjected to definite conditions, and not
merely those of England at that time.
44 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
There were certain special circumstances which
conduced to impart to all the acts and events of the
English Ee volution (covering, under this term, the
whole of the period between the accession of Charles I.
and that of William III.) a peculiarly legal character.
Among these circumstances may be noted the habit of
theological controversy which was abroad ; the eminent
lawyers of the stamp of Clarendon and Selden who
took so prominent a part in the purely constitutional
struggle ; the secondary influences of an expiring
Feudalism which had at the first been based upon
the strictly legal relationships implied in reciprocity of
tenure and service ; and the fact that the revolution
began in Parliament and not outside it, — which in-
volved a precise technical assignment of the points of
difference between the Crown and the Parliament, such
as expressed itself in the Petition of Right, in the
Grand Remonstrance, and, finally, in the Declaration
of Rights.
This straining after legal forms and legal justifi-
cation is conspicuous throughout the whole history
even of the Commonwealth, and was congenial to the
minds of all the principal actors. It was thus not un-
natural, even when the re-settlement under the Houses
cf Orange and Hanover had finally taken place, for the
apologists of the Revolution to cast their arguments
rather in a pedantically legal than a liberally political
mould. In fact, the position of the Whigs of the
Revolution (as Burke abundantly showed, in his
'Appeal from the New Whigs to the Old,' and else-
where) was characteristically legal; and in this they
differed both from their more emotional opponents, the
High Church devotees of the excluded dynasty, and
LOCKE AXD THE S0CL4L CONTEACT. 45
from tlie non-conformist radicals who were prepared to
accept, — in a generation or two if not at that time, —
the broadest interpretation of the maxim Salus Rei-
puhlicce suprema Lex.
Filmer's defence of the Patriarchal basis of
Monarchy, and Locke's repudiation of that basis bj
reference to a legal and subsisting contract between
a monarch and his subjects, both rested, in the last
analj^sis, on a gratuitous legal postulate : namely, that
fathers have a legal claim to obedience on the part of
their children, and that all agreements must be kept
on both sides, or that breach on one side justifies
breach on the other.
It has been repeatedly pointed out, of late years,
how insufB-cient were these legal metaphors to support
the weight of argument cast upon them. Neverthe-
less, their prevalence from the times of Locke to those
of Blackstone, and in such various hands as those of
Hume, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Burke, is a remark-
able proof of the ease with which men's imagination —
partly through indolence and partly through inadver-
tence—accommodates itself to legal imagery. A similar
and illustrative caution is supplied by the history, at
one epoch after another, of the evolution of Christian
doctrine.
The notion of a ' Social Contract ' was unfortunate
in every aspect, historical, ethical, and even legal ; and
its only virtue was that it served as a convenient formula
to express important and neglected truths. Historically,
it postulated a primitive but imaginary condition of
society in which a people and their designated rulers
stood face to face with each other, and, after fairly con-
templating all the circumstances, and the nature of the
46 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
acts promised on each side, without misunderstanding",
fear, or fraud, bound themselves and their descendants
to all time. Ethically and legally there could be no
more reason for keeping a contract than there is for
loyalty on the part of the subjects, and good govern-
ment on the part of the King, in the absence of any
express or understood promises. Thus the notion of a
contract, fictitious in itself, added nothing to the fact of
obligation on either side, w^hile it led to political con-
fusion by withdrawing people's minds from the real
grounds and moral foundation on which the reciprocal
duties of the Governor and the Governed rest.
5. The American Eevolution which resulted in the
birth of the United States, while it contained many
new political elements, had in it much in common with
the previous revolution in England. This is especially
manifested in the appeal made at the outset, and again
and again in public documents of constitutional signi-
ficance, to legal principles supposed to be inherent in
the English Constitution and to which it was alleged
that the English Government, by imposing a Par-
liamentary tax on the Colonies, was unfaithful. But
for a period of some two hundred years the thirteen
Colonies had been achieving, each for itself, an in-
dependent political existence, by the help of their
original charters, (which embodied many of the most
cherished but hitherto unwritten doctrines of the
English Constitution, in the same form in which they
subsequently re-appeared in the Constitution of the
United States,) of the English Common Law, and of
their own administrative system, acting in harmony
with the English Parliament and the Government at
THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 47
liome. Thus, when the moment of revolution came,
the legal points at issue between the Colonies and
the British Parliament were only a part of the main
question. Another equally significant question was how
far, and in what way, the Colonies could co-operate
among themselves so as to present a united front, not
only for purposes of physical resistance at the moment
but for those of permanent political organisation.
There had been temporary confederations of several
of the Colonies for definite purposes on several occa-
sions during the previous hundred years. But these
coalitions implied no more than mutual temporary con-
cessions for the purpose of securing joint and consistent
action. So soon as a durable project was entertained
of severing all the Colonies from their connection with a
strong State bent on holding them fast, — or, as seemed
likely, on recovering them at the earliest opportunity —
some principles of conciliation must needs have been
discovered which could go deeper than the disintegrating
differences which accidentally separated, or tended to
separate. Colony from Colony. The enthusiasm of the
revolutionary war helped towards the acceptance and
diffusion of such principles, though it was not without
repeated trials and failures, — some of them only recently
enacted and redressed, — that they became translated
into a new Constitutional structure. Thus the broad
and emphatic truisms of the Declaration of Independence
must be read side by side with the new written Consti-
tution in its successive forms, and are, in fact, its truest
commentary, — especially when illustrated by the consti-
tutional charters of the several Colonies. Among the
greatest additions made to political experience by the
American revolution, and recorded in the Constitution,
48 THE SCIEXCE OF POLITICS.
/are the doctrines, first, that a competent judicial
authority is the proper and final test of the constitu-
tional validity of a new law ; and secondly, that every
people, when deliberately and solemnly appealed to,
is competent to revise to any extent its own system of
Government.
At the time of the outburst of the American war,
revolution implied federation , and federation implied
revolution. The mode in which federation was alone
possible in the circumstances of the American Colonies
supplied a series of arduous problems, for the theo-
retical as well as practical solution of which there
existed or arose a class of statesmen who, taken
altogether, have been for political sagacity and acumen
without parallel in political history. If the writers in
the ' Federalist ' and their worthy successors, who have
critically examined and expounded every clause and
almost every phrase and term in the American Con-
stitution, have failed to construct a Science of Politics,
it must be remembered that it was not their purpose to
do so. Properly enough, they wrote for the emergencies
and needs of their own country ; though it happens
that according as, in the progress of civilisation, good
institutions become increasingly prevalent, the con-
ditions of good government tend to become identical
everywhere, and he who writes for any one State writes
for all.
It is certain that the lessons to be learnt from the
American school of politicians, especially in respect to
the working of institutions on a Federal basis and
scattered over an enormous breadth of territory, are by
no means exhausted. Indeed, there is no Government
the experience of which is more constantly cited in
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 49
illiistraticn of every species of political theory, and about
the true nature and bearing* of Avhich more misappre-
hensions are afloat.
6. It might have been expected that such a cata-
clysm as the first French revolution, directly affecting^
as it did, the fortunes of so many countries and Govern-
ments, would have had a conspicuous influence on the
theoretical handling of all political topics. It needs
but to read Burke's ' Eeflections,' and to contrast them
with Thomas Paine's more brilliant reply, to estimate
the changed point of political vision effected by the
events in France. Eousseau and Voltaire, and the school
of the Encyclopedists generally, are usually referred
to as having prepared men's minds for the Eevolution
and facilitated its course. It is rather the case that
the appearance of this class of thinkers and writers
was the first step in the Eevolution itself. When onee
conscious thought was turned upon the institutions of
the old Eegirae, they must have been peremptorily
condemned. The ultimate revolt was successful, not
merely because the whole people suffered and public
justice was set at nought, but because the political
institutions were one and all so rotten at the core that
there was no rallying point round which the defenders
of things as they were could assemble themselves to
save the Constitution. There were, no doubt, a great
number and variety of keenly appreciated interests;
but there was no common faith or loyalty. Thus the
fall of the Bastille surely betokened the fall of the
Monarchy ; and, because the Monarchy was the Con-
stitution, great was the fall of it.
Hence the most notable political mark of what may
60 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
be called the school of the French Ee volution has beei],
on tue one hand, an indifference to the teaching of
experience, and, on the other, an nndiie sanguineness
as to the mechanical influences of Constitutional forms.
This is the worst side of the picture. The best side is,
that the same school is eagerly receptive of schemes of
political improvement, hopeful of the possibilities of
human nature, and generally exempt from prejudice,
or prepossession with fixed ideas. The result is that
what is truly national in French politicians, having no
natural root to adhere to, is apt to be narrow, exclusive,
and selfish, though often concealed under a show of
cosmopolitanism ; while in American, and, it may be
said, in English politicians, what is national is a neces-
sary condition of all political thought, and therefore
implies no narrow-minded and irrational preference for
any particular country, but recognises as the first duty
of a State the obligation to contribute, with all other
States, towards a central and common aim, to the
accomplishment of which all human life tends.
The secondary and indirect influences of the French
Revolution on political thought and knowledge have
been more efficacious than the primary and direct.
English political speculation, since the Revolution of
1688, had been oscillating between a defence of what
were held to be the principles of the Revolution, —
which usually degenerated into a purely legal argu-
ment proceeding from some assumed premises, true or
not, — and vague dissertations on ideal forms of Govern-
ment, constructed without reference to the nature of
man as properly interpreted, or to the historical ante-
cedents of the only States on whose behalf such hypo-
thetical creations were devised. .The lessons of the
EFFECTS OF THE FRENCH EEVOLUTION. 51
French Revolution in its later stages, when consti ac-
tive work was called for to fill the place of what was
abolished, were serviceable to teach and drive home
the truths, that there is no one form of Government or
of political organisation which can at once be fitted to
everj people at any and everj period ; that when a
decided breach with the past has been made by a
nation, it needs a tedious and, usually, lengthened
experience for the people to become habituated to
fresh institutions and to obtain for themselves the
advantages of stable co5istitutional order; that, in
the case of an hereditary monarchy, the dynastical
pretensions of excluded members of the royal family
interpose special obstacles in the way of comprehensive
change, but that these obstacles decrease with the
lapse of time; and finally, that the most volcanic
upheaval of the outward structure and form of Govern-
ment may still leave the hidden vices of a centralised
administration, especially as conducted by a network
of police, just where they were.
These and similar lessons are, of course, only par^
tially taught at present, but the contagious influence of
popular institutions has been radiating to a wider and
wider circle throughout the present century, and espe-
cially since 1848. Even the most conservative and the
most despotically governed States, as Austria, Prussia,
and even Russia, have submitted to the process of
internal change which political events, wars, and legal
reforms — as facilitated by the difiPusion and popularity
of the Code Napoleon — have contributed to bring about,
A corresponding impulse has been given to the theo=
retical study of the chief departments of political
knowledge, such as Political Economy, abstract Juris-!
s2
52 _ THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
prudence, Social Ethics, and Constitutional as well as
International Law. The novel attention directed to
such studies as these is a sign and consequence of the
ferment in action as well as in theory which has per-
vaded European politics during the last thirty years ;
and the proximate causes of this ferment must be
sought for in the social and political disruption in
France at the close of the last century.
7. There has to be characterised one notable contri-
bution to the Science of Politics in the present century,
which in many respects recals the treatise of Aristotle,
though it has the advantage of that treatise in being
based on an additional experience, lasting over some
2000 years, of political vicissitudes, and in being con-
structed after the inductive method of reasoning in all
its possible extensions had attained complete develop-
ment.
M. Auguste Comte clearly descried two leading
truths, to which, as taken together and as tracked out
with all their consequences, no sufficient justice was
done by any previous writer. These truths were : —
the one, that the constructive politics of the future
must be based on the history of the past ; the other,
that political science was a composite study and pre-
supposed the complete apprehension of every other
branch of science, beginning with the physical, such
as astronomy, and ending with the moral, such as
ethics and sociology. It is in the collocation of these
two truths, and in the laborious and detailed illus-
tration of the mode in which the new method ought
to be conformed to, that M. Auguste Comte's charac-
teristic contribution to the Science of Politics consists.
AUGUSTS COxMTE. 53
There are, however, in his political treatises other fea-
tures little less important than these. There is written
on every line of them the assertion that the claims of
order and of progress can be reconciled by the use of
good political institutions ; but that these institutions
can only be made to work duly and produce their legi-
timate fruit by the use of a diffused system of educa-
tion and continual moral discipline reaching to all
classes of society and based on the most advanced
knowledge of the day. If M. Comte has failed to com-
plete the task he so grandly inaugurated, it has only
been because the work was too great for a single man
or for a single country. It is others, and not he, who
upon these foundations have built wood, hay, and
stubble.
M. Comte's Treatises are the latest contribution to
the Science of Politics in its true and comprehensive
form as a fully reasoned out department of knowledge.
But the present century, — especially the last half of
it, — has witnessed the production of certain tentative
and partial political systems which have had a notice-
able influence on public thought, and have for the most
part been useful contributions towards the erection of
an edifice more complete than themselves. To this
class of thinkers belong the schools of Mazzini, of the
Continental Socialists, and of the English Utilitarians.
The influence of all these schools has been deep
and extensive, and at present shows no signs of early
exhaustion. But in spite of the undoubted merits of
each one particular school, and notwithstanding the
valuable ethical protests and discoveries made by each,
they have been, universally, the products of violent
political reactions. They are the efflorescence of pass-
54 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
ing political circumstances, and not the ultimate fruit
of accumulated thought. Great and noble as were the
aspirations of Mazzini, republican institutions were for
him primarily a repudiation of Austrian and priestly
tyranny, and the expression of a belief in the doctrine
of a Divine calling for men and for nations, rather than
a scientific enquiry into facts either past or present. In
the same way the various modifications of Socialism
which have manifested themselves in Germany, Russia,
and France, are nothing more than partial and one-
sided protests against the unequal distribution of
wealth, the usurpations of privileged classes, the im-
postures of ecclesiastical ofiicials, or the administrative
cruelty which is so frequently the offspring of a highly
centralised system of Government, — whatever its name
and form. In its various phases and according to
special national conditions, what is known by the
generic name of Socialism appears as the enemy now
of private property, now of aristocratic and kingly
privilege, now of centralised administration, now of the
institutions of the Christian Church. Thus, while the
possibility, and the actual existence, of so highly
organised a remonstrance against prevalent ideas and
facts must needs be noticed and accounted for by the
scientific political inquirer, it cannot be said that
Socialism in itself constitutes an independent school
of scientific Politics.
8. The attitude of the English Utilitarians, being
more allied than that of the Socialist schools to the
position of logical and comprehensive reasoners, would
seem, in itself, favourable to the creation of a true school
of scientific thought. The men who have mainly repre-
ENGLISH UTILITARIANISM. 55
seuted the Utilitarian system in England, — of wliicli
more will be said in the chapter which deals with Ethics
in their bearing on Politics, — that is, Jeremy Bentham,
the two Mills, John Austin, George Cornewall Lewis,
and George Grote (the historian) — are a race of thinkers
who could not have failed to exercise a conspicuous
influence in the region of practical and of theoretical
politics, — to whatever school they might have inclined.
But, with respect to most of them, a vehement re-
actionary spirit has been more noticeable than a simple
and uncomplicated search for scientific truth. They
liave thus been usually indifferent to the necessity of
patient historical investigation, on the results of which
alone a sound inductive process could be based ; and
furthermore, have been antipathetic, if not hostile, to
every form of religious belief. Considering the place
that religious belief holds in the national affairs of
every existing State and has occupied in the evolution
of modern Christianised society and Government, it is
an obvious disqualification in a thinker or a school of
thought if there is an absence of all sympathy with, or
recognition of, the religious emotions of mankind.
Utilitarianism is by no means, in itself, bound up with
religious indifference, but, owing to intelligible causes,
the English school of Utilitarians have undoubtedly
manifested marked repugnance to the religious senti-
ment in all its phases. This indicates an unphiloso-
phical state of mind and has been a serious bar in the
way of the creation of an English school of Scientific
Politics.
56 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS
CHAPTER II.
POLITICAL TERMS.
The first step in establishing the scientific claims of a
department of knowledge is to show that its leading
f<jf «^ terms admit of being precisely explained and of having
their mean ing definitely fixed. What is or is not a
true ' definition' has been a matter of so much dispute,
if not of verbal quibbling, that it is safer to forego at
the outset all attempt to construct a list of definitions.
But it is of the utmost importance to use all terms
which repeatedly occur in the treatment of a Science
with all the attainable consistency, and to explain with
complete clearness the facts and ideas which the terms
denote.
There are some special reasons why language is
peculiarly subject in political speech and discussion to
flux and vacillation of import, and therefore, why the
processes of definition and explanation are peculiarly
difficult. In the first place, political terms are largely
in use among classes who either are habitually inexact
in their use of language or who have a positive motive,
— good, bad or indifterent, — to be inexact themselves
or to encourage inexactness in others. Popular speech
is at every moment handling the common words which
are, of necessity, pressed into the service of political
speculation and debate. These words therefore carry
POLITICAL TERMS. 57
with, tliera, wherever they go, the looseness and varia-
bility of meaning they contract in the market-place
and by the domestic fire- side.
Political science can never claim for itself a sepa-
rate terminology possessing only technical terms with
a fixed and unswerving meaning. These advantages
are monopolised by the physical sciences, especially
by those of a more recondite nature and which are
least distorted by the vulgar dialect. The studies of
Ethics, Law, and Politics are so near to human and
social life, in respect of their subject-matter, that they
incur the fate of having all their leading terms in-
fected by those current sentiments and prejudices
which impress themselves so deeply on the popular
words and conversational forms most in use. It is im-
possible wholly to rescue political terms from the quag-
mire of misuse into which they thus habitually fall. The
most that can be done is to ascertain the various mean-
ings or shades of meaning which an important term,
needed for scientific use, bears in the common speech of
the people, and to select one meaning or a limited num-
ber of meanings for scientific recognition. The next
step is to be consistent in adhering to this meaning or
meanings and to allow no fui-ther metaphorical or ana-
logical diversions.
But political terms do not merely suffer in fixity of
meaning from the abuses common to words in familiar
popular use. They are, furthermore, peculiarly exposed
to a special liability to abuse from the practice of rhe-
torical argument conducted either on the public plat-
form or in the popular legislature or in the columns of
the public journal. The terms republic, democracy, aristo-
cracy, centralisation, liberty, self-government, and the like
68 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
are all capable of a favourable or unfavourable use, and
it can only be on a fair examination of all the circum-
stances of the case to which they purport to apply that
the sense in v^hich they are employed in any special
case can be determined. It, unfortunately, is often for
the apparent and momentary interest of the speaker or
writer to wrest the meanings of political terms and to
hide from the hearer or reader one of its undoubted
significations, while forcing into undue prominence
another* This is done habitually in the case of all
excited speech or persuasive appeals, and political
terms such as right, freedom, equality, crime, government,
and the like are the first and most constant victims of
this form of abuse.
In the second place, political terms are liable to
distortion from a cause which is the opposite of
the one just described. For legal, diplomatic, and
certain administrative purposes, political terms are
often employed with an inflexible rigidity of meaning
which is at once diverse from their lax popular use and
also from the less rigid though definite signification
needed by the requirements of a true Political Science.
For instance, in a political discussion, orally conducted,
in reference to a proposed land-law, those who take
part in the debate will have repeated occasion to use
such words as land, tenure, landlord, tenant, rent, im-
provements, compensation, notice, letting, and hiring.
For the purposes of the discussion immediately in
hand it may be sufficient that the speakers all under-
stand each other, and it is desirable that no speaker
should be stringently confined to a pedantic exactness
in the use of his words. Something more precise is
demanded than in occasional talk, proportionate to the
POLITICAL TEEMS. 59
gravity of tlie issue and the presumable mental training
of the speakers ; but an over refined circumscription of
the use of common words vrould defeat its own purpose,
and would rather impede than advance the discovery of
truth and the reconciliation of opposed opinions.
But every one of the terms above adduced by
way of illustration has contracted a strict legal mean-
ing. Most of them have been imported into written
law ; and all of them have formed the subject-matter of
closely-reasoned arguments in Courts of Justice, and of
consequent judicial decisions. It happens too, often
enough, that the very persons who are called upon to
use these terms in political assemblies, in view of con-
templated legislation, are the same persons who in
Courts of Justice, — it may be the same day, — are
under the necessity of attributing to each of those
terms an import of the utmost attainable precision
and fixity. Thus it comes about that while the terms
of political science are peculiarly exposed to abuse
and vacillation through conversational laxity, they
are likewise exposed to the risk of ambiguities owing
to the simultaneous functions they perform in the tech-
nical language of law, diplomacy, and administration.
In the third place, political terms suffer in a peculiar
degree from a cause which is the enemy of all fixity of
meaning in terms, — incessant, though imperceptible,
changes in the nature of the things and facts which
they are used to denote. History is full of illustrations
of this phenomenon, and sometimes the consequence is
even widespread misunderstandings. This is especially
the case when the people of one country try to acquaint
themselves with the political condition, wants, and
controversies of another country.
60 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
For instance, the term constitutional is a peculiarly
modern product. It had no corresponding term in the
States of the Ancient World. It would seem to express
an outgrowth of the basis of reconciliation on which
it was possible for feudally opposed classes and persons
to live side by side. It is a matter of mere curious
research to attempt to fix the period in which the term
constitution was first habitually used in its modern
sense. But it was, undoubtedly, the contests, — always
conducted on an assumed basis of reciprocal right, —
between the English Commons and the Feudal Monarch,
with or without the mediation of the Peers of the
Realm, that first gave relevancy to the notion of a
State's constitution. What was in accordance with the
subsisting and well-understood relationship between
the classes of persons whose political claims against
each other were expressed in that relationship was con-
stitutional, — what violated or threatened to violate that
relationship was unconstitutional.
In the Ancient World, the notion of large classes
of persons having indefeasible moral rights as against
each other was wholly absent. There were interests,
and there might be temporary compacts ; and there
was always organised force ; but there was not, even
in democratical Athens and in republican or oligar-
chical Rome, at their best, a settled and publicly
confessed reconciliation of the mutually opposed and
conflicting claims of large classes of the population to
which the name constitution alone belongs. There was
a good substitute for a constitution in the fortunate
discovery or natural development of wise, equal, and
well distributed systems of Government in due subjec-
tion to popular scrutiny and control. But this result
POLITICAL TERMS. 61
was fortuitous and implicit, the transient exhibition of
an equilibrium of competing forces and not the stable
and consciously maintained platform for the adjustment
of antithetical moral claims. It was possible enough for
Aristotle to enumerate and describe all the subsistinor
forms of Government in the Greek cities. But had he
attempted to describe, with his inimitable capacity for
ethical analysis, the real foundations on which political
stability in the several States rested, the want of any-
thing corresponding to constitutional rights would have
been at once apparent. The mere prevalence of slavery,
— as was shown of late years in the case of the United
States, — must have either proscribed the notion of a
constitution or exhibited such palpable anomalies as to
bring about what might have been premature revolu-
tions.
The history of the word party, and, still more, that
of special party names, is a further instance of the
flux of political language through political events often
of a silent and scarcely perceptible kind. It may be
said, indeed, that such terms as these are in themselves
too inexact, and that they denote phenomena which
are in their nature too evanescent, for them ever to
become incorporated in a system of Politiettl Science.
But a recognition of the facts of which the organisation
into parties is an expression forms part of that general
political experience on which the truths of the science,
if there be one, are built up. Therefore in discussing,
say, the modern devices for facilitating popular repre-
sentation and rendering democratic institutions com-
patible with stability and unity of administration, an
analysis of the essential mechanism of party Govern-
ment must take place. But parties, though retaining
62 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
the names once stamped upon them, often undergo the
most complete transmutations. The 'Whig' in the
politics of the United States has little relation to the
modern Whig in England ; and the ' democrat' and
' republican ' on one side of the Atlantic are still less
akin to the 'democrat' and ' republican ' severally on
the other. Parties in the representative Assemblies of
the British Colonies are organised on entirely different
principles from those which have originated, and which
maintain in being, the political parties at home. The
parties, again, in the French, German, and Italian
Parliaments can only be understood by reference to
historical facts studied in view of the particular consti-
tutional organisation to which the facts relate.
What has here been said about ' party ' and ' consti-
tution ' might be further illustrated by reference to a
train of words such as Parliament, prerogative, Crown,
franchise, Church, State, which, — however definite in
meaning at a particular moment for a given State, —
must be investigated and defined afresh if the reasoning
be transferred to another State or to a different epoch.
The peculiar dangers and perplexities incident to
Political terminology have thus been adverted to.
It fortunately happens, however, that a distribution
can be made between the terms which are of more
general importance, as denoting facts of the highest
degree of universality and significance, and those of
less importance for scientific purposes, as denoting facts
peculiarly liable to change and diversity in their mani-
festations. As to this latter class of terms it is useless
in a scientific treatise to attempt any enumeration of
them. Such an enumeration could only be based on
THE TEEM STATE. 63
transient facts and phenomena, and at the best would
be only descriptive of what has existed or happens
now, in fact, to exist. As to these terms, the most that
can be done is to interpose cautions of the kind already
alluded to and founded on the intrinsic liability of all
this class of terms to flux and variability of meaning
brought about in the most subtle and unsuspected way.
But as to the other class of political terms of the most
universal kind, inasmuch as they denote conception^
not less general than Government itself it is possible
to attach to them an exact meaning which need experi-
ence no change with the progressive changed condition
of human affairs. There is needed only an exhibition
of the primary and essential composition of a State, in
its strictly political aspect, and all the necessary con-
ceptions, with the terms needed to express them, at
once come into relief.
1. State,
The most central notion in Political Science is that
of the State; and if it were once clearly ascertained
what is and what is not comprehended under this term,
many of the most harassing misunderstandings apper*
taining to the subject would be avoided. The notion
of the State as a distinct political unit is, in fact, a
product of purely accidental development, and on this
ground it might be doubted whether the notion is not in
itself too ephemeral and fluctuating to become the sub-
ject- matter of scientific reasoning. But it is the inherent
peculiarity of political phenomena that the experience
on which a knowledge of them rests has to be gathered
from a very circumscribed field, and that the mere
existence of any such field at all is a special attainment
64 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
of advancing civilisation. Thus the State in the stricter
modern signification of the term as a political integer,
differs at once from the Grecian city {ttoXls), the Roman
republic {respuhlica) and the German Feudal Empire
which attempted to reproduce the symbolic unity, the
titles, and the pretensions, of its great Roman type.
/^The modern notion of the State was, indeed, not
/brought into clear consciousness till a number of
I parallel States presented themselves side by side, and
each of them, by enforcing its own claims against one
and another of the rest, manifested to itself and to the
world its own personality, independence, and integral
unity. In this sense no one State existed before there
jvas a plurality of States. The invading barbarian tribes
settling upon the sharply marked out Roman provinces
developed the essential relationships of Feudalism.
These relationships comprised the hierarchical subordi-
nation of persons and classes, the recognition of terri-
torial ownership and conditions of occupation, and the
existence of a variety of qnasi-moral ties pervading the
family and other social groups and expressing themselves
in such terms as allegiance, fealty, loyalty, as well as in
their counterparts felony and treason. Thus inside the
nascent communities there were nurtured ideas, customs,
practices, institutions, and associated conceptions, all
tending to arrest the centrifugal impulses of a wandering
and purely military life, and to create two poles of
national existence — a king and a fixed territory.
But the only reason for insisting strictly on terri-
torial limits was the juxtaposition of a series of com-
peting and similarly organised societies, each of which
was engaged in appropriating to its own uses a deter-
minate portion of land. Agricultural needs, revenue
THE TEEM STATE. f,5
considerations, and the commercial advantages attach-
ing to special routes, harbours, and productive districts,
tended to impart emphasis to the practice of territorial
demarcation, as loosely and extensively inaugurated
by the provincial distribution of the Roman Empire.
Dialectical peculiarities and aflanities, race sympathies,
and instincts of fellowship generated by neighbourhood
and by the reciprocal ties of military command and
service, helped to bind together, for purposes both of
internal organisation and of resistance to external
pressure, the inhabitants of a clearly defined territorial
area. Add to these the influence of the ecclesiastical
institutions of Christendom, the local episcopacy and
presbytery, the representative synods and councils,
the territorial bases, small and great, of Church ad-
ministration and service, and the functions of inter-
national arbitrator gradually assumed by the Bishop of
Rome.
There was nothing wanting to the complete birth
of the modem State but the final dissolution of the
antiquated feudal tie between State and State ex-
pressed in the evanescence of the Holy Roman Empire,
and the formation of a new principle of centrali-
sation within the State itself, brought about by the
constitutional action and reaction between a modern
monarch and his subjects. The State, in the modern
acceptation of the term, carries with it the ideas of
territorial limitation of population past, present, and
to come, and of organisation for purposes of Govern-
ment. Thus a series of afl&liated ideas and terms at
once come to the surface, such as Government, Law,
Legislation, Administrative, Executive, Right, Prerogative,
Liberty,
66 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
It rniglit be asked why the accidental re-arrangements
of the countries of Europe which followed on the fall or
transmutation of the Roman Empire should dictate, for
ever, the notion of a true State. To this it may be
replied that the Geographical area to which the Science
of Politics extends at present is limited — as will be seen
farther on — to the countries of Europe and of North
America and to those countries which are directly sub-
jected to the influence and dominating control of Europe
and the United States. Thus it is not saying too much
to allege that, for all purposes of practical politics and,
therefore, of that Science on which all sound practice
must rest, the State is that integral unity which has been
discovered by the accidents of European development.
It might further be argued that the definition or
explanation of the term State, which has just been pro-
pounded, is no mere accidental product of a casual
development, but encloses a permanent and necessary
conception. The nations of Europe would seem to have
by no means as yet completed the process of their
transformation, and the novel claims in favour of so-
called ' nationality ' point to much further re-construc-
tion still going on and yet to come. But it is to be
noticed that all the changes are in one and the same
direction, — that of defining a national area of a size
large enough to promote and admit of all the economical
and constitutional re-actions needed for the adequate
evolution of human powers and relationships, but not
large enough to swallow up all individual and national
idiosyncrasies in an over-centralised dominion. Where
the limit of the true State is to be fixed must be matter
of experimental struggle rather than of philosophic
vaticination.
THE TERM G OVER XM EXT. 67
It is scarcely necessary to advert to the abuse of
the term State both in the popular dialect and, less
excusably, in the speech of professed politicians or
political orators. Thus the State, at one moment, means
the Governing authority as opposed to the governed ;
at another, the secular authorities, legislative and
executive, as opposed to the ecclesiastical. Sometimes
the State is contrasted with the existing or temporary
mechanism for governing the State, that is, with what
is called the Government. At other times the State
impKes the body politic, that is, the nation regarded as
a subject of Government ; and this last meaning is
most in accord with the results of the historical analysis
jnst concluded, though serious omissions in the fulLa^ld
proper connotation of the term, — as in respect of terri-
torial limits, and of continuous identity in point of
time, — are not avoided. Lastly, there is the special
meaning of the term appropriate to the constitution of
the United States of North America, and the technical
meaning known to International Law, according to
which the State is an entity having certain recognisable
predicates, such as independence of other entities like
itself, and the power of selt- government iu respect of
determining upon and controlling its own internal'
organisation.
2. Government.
The history of the European State has been seen to
presuppose the fact of Government. Had the tribes
which overran the provinces of the Roman Empire been
essentially anarchical, or had the result of their irruption
been to produce limitless and lasting anarchy, no true
States could have arisen. There could have been no
F 2
68 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
demarcation of national territory; no national self-
consciousness based on well-preserved customs com-
memorative of the past and on more and more luminous
anticipations of the future ; no cherishing of the dis-
located relics of Roman law, municipal institutions, and
administrative discipline. But habits of Government,
however rude, were well formed among the tribes before
invasions and a variety of favourable ■ circumstances
conspired to rivet and develop these habits, while the
amalsramation of native and Roman inhabitants of the
newly occupied lands was being effected.
These habits of Government imply far more than a
mere actual subjection of a multitude to the will and
physical control of one or of a few. An actual subjection
such as this may co-exist with all the elements of dis-
union and of mutual repulsion ready to disclose them-
selves at the first chance opportunity. Habitual deference
to the commands of an authority elevated above the
heads of the populace is a result of slow growth, and,
usually, of arduous struggles and disappointing retro-
gressions. It grows out of tardily formed incrustations
of religious ritual, social manners, military usages, and
family sentiments. It is enforced by joint enterprises,
military and civil, on an ever widening scale of magni-
tude, and is recommended by more and more prevailing
considerations of economic advantage, and, at a later
stage, of international rivalry. This habit of submission
to orderly Government, when once formed, becomes its
own chief cause. The practice of unconscious obedience
to law begets desire for law, impatience of anarchy,'
and indignation against casual breakers of the public
peace.
The demand for Government simultaneously callg
THE TEEM LAW 69
forth, first, a ruling class, and afterwards a profession
of politicians in the highest sense of this sometimes
abused term. The phenomenon of Government is only
to be accounted for by supposing the presence of a
number of contributory circumstances. It is not enouf^h,
with Hobbes, to assume that it is the mere product of
usurpation a nd violenc e, or, at least, of mere superiority
of physical strength; nor, with Filmer, to deduce it
from no more complex an origin than the analogies of
parentage ; nor, again, with Locke or even Blackstone,
to base it on legal arrangements formally entered into
with each other by the governors and the governed.
The phenomenon is rather a product of a congeries of
favourable conditions, including, indeed, some or all of
those which were once accepted as solely sufficient
explanations, but by no means confined to them.
3. Laiv,
Though the phenomenon of Law is intimately bound
up with that of Government, yet modern criticism and
research have gone far to establish the existence of
important differences between the two orders of ideas.
For instance, antiquarian investigations into the con-
dition of primitive societies have brought to light almost
unsuspected stages of existence in which LaAV may be
said to have existed without Government, while nothing
is more familiar than the fact that in all countries a
settled Government subsists for many ages before the
conscious manufacture of Law. But both in the one
case and in the other, — that is, whether there is, strictly
speaking, no Government at all and no true State, or
whether Government has merely not yet advanced to
the legislative or law-making stage, all the essential
70 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
characteristics of law maj be present. All the supple-
mentary aid which Government can gi^e is to ascertain
and fix the rules of law actually in force, to lend its
physical aid to the maintenance of their authority,
and, as occasion suggests, to modify, amend, and even
aimul the rules themselves.
When it is remembered that the formulated usages
which take the form of law aflPect every part of the
social framework at its most sensitive points, — as, for in-
stance, the family relationships, the ownership of land
and of all other things, the business transactions of the
shop and the market place, — it ceases to be a wonder
that a new Government, suddenly introduced, by con-
quest, cession, or alleged right of discovery, into a
countr}^ already possessing stable institutions, can do
little, for years to come, to change those institutions,
and rarely has the chance of introducing radically new
ones.
Some conquering nations have understood these
truths by instinct. Others have learnt them by failure
and suffering. Alexander and the Ptolemies vindicated
them with notable success in their administration of
Egypt. To a large extent the Romans acted upon them
in provincial administration, at all events in intention ;
and to that extent they were, on the whole, in the best
days of the Empire, successful in their provincial
government. The Northern invaders of the Roman
Empire pursued a similar policy, as the invaluable so-
called Barbaric Codes, prepared for the Roman subjects
of the conquered provinces, testify, and with a success
demonstrated by the rapid development of a new
national life on the ruins of the old. The Arabs in
their conquests generally pursued a like policy, while
THE TEKM LAJV 71
the trmraphs of their religion as well as of their arms
brought about, in an incrediblj short space of time,
a total moral and legal reconstruction of society in
those countries which they succeeded in permanently
occupying.
The English in India have found it to be one of
their main difficulties to understand the prevalent
legal rules, especially in regard to inheritance and the
occupation of land ; the more so as these rules differ
widely from village to village, and still more widely from
province to province. The obstacles to having any
uniform rules, whether framed from a comparison of
all the chief existing groups of regulations and usages,
or on some new principle recommended by general ex-
pediency, and not out of harmony with current facts and
ideas, have proved hitherto all bat insuperable. Never-
theless, way has been made in the direction of settled
and uniform law congenial to the habits of the people,
by the institution of central Courts of Justice, by special
land legislation for particular districts, and by codifying
such parts of the existing law in an amended form as^
from time to time, it has seemed possible to codify.
It need not be said that in Ireland the English
pursued a policy exactly the opposite of that adopted in
India ; and the results have been such as are only too
notorious and might almost seem to be irreparable.
The force of those spontaneous usages, which operate
as nascent law in primitive communities, is much
intensified and concentrated by the co-existence of a
variety of religious sanctions. It has often been noticed
that in early society religious and secular ordinances of
all sorts are inextricably mixed together. Not only in
ascertaininer the forms of marriage and the modes of
72 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
discliargiiig purely religious obligations, but in the pro-
tection of boundaries ; in the use of the oath in judicial
enquiries ; and in the solemn rites which accompany the
more notable legal acts, especially in respect of inherit-
ance, the intervention of a priesthood is conspicuously
called for. Besides this, no certain line of distinction
is drawn between sins, crimes, and civil injuries ; and
consequently the whole forces of the growing society are
directed towards repressing each and all of them with
impartial zeal and generating an habitual tone of
thought and opinion unfavourable to transgression.
It is this tone of thought and opinion which the
Government secures on its side when it forbears to inno-
vate, except by slow and tentative degrees, on the fixed
habits and dispositions of the people. It is impossible
to over-estimate the force of custom in human affairs,
and the serviceableness of its potency when rightly
turned to account. To defer to the actual prevalence of
certain classes of ideas, rules, and institutions, is by no
means to organise stagnation and immobility. It is
only to recognise that men must be governed in ac-
cordance with the laws of their nature at a given time
and place ; and that much of this nature is the product
of inherited habits and accumulated associations of all
sorts. These habits and associations may be slowly
and gradually deflected into new directions and re-
fashioned afresh. It is the province of a wise Govern-
ment to bring this about, and here and there, especially
in respect of cruel and inhuman practices, it may be
necessary to prune with a strong and firm hand. But
as a rule it is prudent to employ custom as the ally
of Government rather than to challenge it as its foe.
The large bulk of a nation's laws has thus its origin
THE TERM LAW. 73
in customs which have, as it were, spontaneo-usly come ^
into existence and been maintained in force, partly by
the mere facility of obeying the -promptings of habit,
partly by the influence of public opinion exerledin favour
of wha.t is familiar and consecrated by long use, and
partly by the felt convenience of having settled rules,,
institutions, and practices, to which the mass of the
community may be expected at all times to conform. But
though these customary rules and usages iiot only
contain the germ of all future law but are identical in
spirit and matter with the most important portions of;
that law, yet it is convenient to confine the use of ther-:
term law to those rules which attain commanding
validity only when the State can be looked upon
as fully developed in all its essential departments.
Before this epoch of the complete evolution of the State
it may, indeed, happen that many of the phenomena of
law are present, as though by anticipation, in an un-
mistakable guise.
For instance, a regular practice of recurring to
Courts of Arbitration, more or less adequately and
permanently organised, may subsist, and the award
of the Court may be carried out by the exertion of
some amount of social force. There may also be
a skilled class of professional men, usually belonging
to a priestly caste, who will be held possessed of ex-
clusive competency to decide disputed points in the
detailed application of recognised rules, or to draw
out of some mysterious repository a hitherto un-
recognised or forgotten rule or custom believed to be
appropriate to a new case in hand, or to determine the
equitable claims of rival disputants who each rely on
Bome admitted custom as telling in their favour. But
\r
74 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
in such a condition of society, there is, as yet, no central
authority, supreme over all the community, -which,
in however imperfect and inchoate a form, may be said
to wield the forces of the whole community and to re-
present its will. In other words, there is no Govern-
ment in the political sense, no State, and no true
Laiv. TiH^iVcj^ ]}^^ f^^tj tho r|ptm'1pf] PTprpRsiVn of the
will of the State published through its originator, the
Government, — that is, the Supreme Political Authority
of the day. Thus, however closely related is early law
to highly developed custom, yet they must not be
confused together, and cannot be so confused without
loss of distinctness in political thought.
It is possible that, owing to foreign conquest, in-
ternal discord or revolution, or mere weakness in the
political institutions, an assemblage of laws may, at a
particular moment, be imposed on a people who are
unprepared for them by preceding customs, or who are,
on other grounds, persistently averse to them. In such
a case there will be a more or less conscious and open
struggle maintained between the genius, spirit, and
mental and moral necessities, of the people, and the mere
physical power, expressing itself by law, of the ruler.
If no compromise is arrived at by a gradual process of
mutual concessions, the only two alternative solutions
are, either that the State is dissolved into lasting
anarchy and barbarism, or else a certain amount of civic
order is maintained, — possibly through the influence
of a continuing religious unity, — while an enduring
opposition is kept up between the people and the
Government which is incompatible with all political and
sociul progress and constantly threatens revolutions and
Bpasmodic changes in the personality of the rulers.
THE TERM LAJV. 75
Instances of all these classes of consequences, whicli
follow from attempting to impose laws out of harmony
with the previous usages and the temperament of *the
people, are abundantly supplied by history, though the
influence of religion and of priestly castes or func-
tionaries has often gone far to counteract or modify
purely political causes and to enhance the difficulty of
an exact analysis.
It is impossible to exaggerate the mediating in-
fluence of the early Christian Church in promoting
at once national distinctness and international unity
among the new States which arose from the settlement
of the Teutonic invading tribes in the provinces of the
Roman Empire. This was effectual not only through the
hierarchical and territorial organisation of the Church
but through the body of common rules, ordinances,
practices, and ritual, which laid hold of the bulk of the
people at the most susceptible part of their being, and
in an incredibly short space of time took the place of
all purely secular rules and customs, however ancient
and fervently cherished by the popular imagination.
It was the good fortune of the Arab conquerors
that religious proselytism went hand in hand with
military conquest; and the permanence of these con-
sequences may largely be accounted for in this way.
The victories of the Ottoman Turks further illustrate
the force which a military adventurer possesses when
he carries with him a religious law either already pro-
fessed in the invaded countries or which he is prepared
to impose as paramount over all other law. Similar
illustrations might be found in the history of the
Thirty-years' war in Germany.
It may be feared that, while the religious im-
76 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
partiality of tlie Englisli in India has won tliem a
character for toleration and justice, the process of
governing and civilising the whole country has been
impeded and delayed by the want of a more open, if
not more intolerant, profession of the religious creed,
and observance of the religious law, prevalent among
the English people at home.
When once it is settled that Law, in the true sense,
can only be found in the perfected, or at least fully
created, State, and that Law and Government imply
each other, it is obvious that it is of no consequence
whether Law be written or unwritten, so far as its
essential nature is concerned. It necessarily happens,
indeed, that the spontaneous customs of which early
law consists, or out of which it is generated, do not
admit of being written down even in an unsystematic
form. This may be due to the absence of literary
methods and habits, to the unsymmetrical and ir-
regular form of the rules themselves, or to conscious
reticence on the part of a learned or priestly class who,
in pursuit of some end or other, — beneficent or the re-
verse, — deem it to be inexpedient to communicate to the
public more of the customs than from time to time are
called for by the exigencies of pending controversies.
Primitive codes, such as the XII Tables at Rome, the
Laws of Moses, the Capitularies and Codes of Charle-
magne and his successors in different countries, by no
means mark only a stage of insurrection against the
assumptions of a priestly caste. They may indeed
denote such a stage, but only as a part of a broader
phenomenon.
The essential features of fully developed law, as con-
WEITTEN AND UNWEITTEN LAW. 77
trasted with primitive custom, are that it should for
the most part be uniform for all the members of the
State ; that it should be certain, that is, not susceptible
of ambiguous and variable interpretations according to
the caprice of irresponsible persons ; and that its ad-
ministration should be public, or at least conducted in
a method which shall bear searching and even unfriendly
public criticism. To substitute such uniform, certain,
and generally intelligible, rules for fragmentary and
doubtful customs is the obvious interest of every in-
dependent ruler who has a clear view of the task of
Government which lies before him ; and it is a policy
which must recommend itself to all statesmen in the
nascent community who are bent on bringing about as
S23eedily as possible that national unity and consolida-
tion on which the hopes of order and of progress
repose.
It may happen that, even in a highly advanced
State, a large portion of the law may for ages continue
unwritten ; and this may proceed from very opposite
causes. Thus there are no indications of a systematised
written law in Ancient Egypt, from the earliest times
known to us till it became a Roman province ; but
there are plenty of indications from early papyri and
inscriptions that even before the time of Rameses II.,
in (say) the fifteenth century B.C., the land laws, the
laws of inheritance, family law, criminal law and con-
stitutional law, and even the rudiments of a law of
Nations, had reached a high degree of development.
In Greece, besides the legendary legislation of such
statesmen as Lycurgus, Draco and Solon, and the
Utopia of Plato's ' Laws,' there are no signs, amidst
all the exuberant intellectual activity, of any attempt
78 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
to recast tlie national laws and express them in an
exact and systematic form. So, in all the feudal
States of modern Europe, even in England, it is only
within the last century or century and a half that
any determined attempts have been made to republish
the customary law in a written and clearly intelligible
form.
The reasons which delay the reduction of laws to
writing are different in different countries, as is mani-
fest from the very opposite circumstances of the coun-
tries in which the laws have been left for ages uncodified
and unwritten. Aaiong the reasons for maintaining
the law in an oral and unsystematic shape was, un-
doubtedly, the dominant influence of a professional or
priestly class, the conservators and interpreters of the
national customs, who alone possessed an amount of
leisure and education sufficient for the purpose of
mastering the whole of the treasured rules and practices
and for deliberately determining where and how they
apply, in detail, to new and particular cases of fact.
The influence of the priestly colleges in Egypfc ; of
the Parliaments in France, especially that of Paris ; of
the Judges in England, — who were a direct emanation
of the Norman King's feudal court, and were supported
at an early stage by a compactly organised legal pro-
fession, — was of this overbearing kind ; and while, in
each case, it tended to keep the law stable and uniform,
and perhaps rendered it plastic in its application to
individual cases, it made it difficult of reform in com-
pliance with the public needs.
In England as distinguished from other countries
the mischief of legal immobility was corrected, partly
by the growth of a secondary system of supplementary
WEITTEX AND UNWEITTEN LAW. 79
la.w known as ' Eqnitj,' and partly by the early develop-
ment of positive written law.
In Eome the delay in reducing the laws to writing
■was due, at all events after the date of the XII Tables,
to a different canse from that explained above ; and the
absence of any body of written laws in Greece may
probably be explained in the same way as the like
phenomenon at Rome.
Both in Rome and in Greece, in their best days,
from a political point of view, the national intellect
only laid hold of law on the side of procedure. It was
in the actual contests of the Forum and of the Dicas-
teries that the main public interest vras aroused, and
on these that the broadest amount of scientific zeal
was concentrated. In Rome, indeed, in the latter days
of the Republic, though the interpretation and appli-
cation of well settled rules of law in the interest of
friends, clients, and pupils, had become the refined
pursuit of the wealthy man of culture, yet this implied
no widely extended and enlightened care for legal
knowledge. The public appetite for acquaintance with
the law, even if excited, was constantly appeased by
the fortunate device, — afterwards to some extent re-
produced in the Court of Chancery in England,— of an
assiduous modification of the written and unwritten
law through the medium of the Praetor's Edict. By his
Edict and his peremptory remedies, the Praetor always
presented law before the minds of the people as stable
and yet not inflexible from age to age ; and by supple-
menting unwritten traditions with tentative written
rules he withdrew attention from the composite and
unsystematic character of the whole body of law.
Simultaneously the political activity of the hour in
80 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
Rome, as also in Greece, habituated the people to look
to persons, and to pressing political measures and exi-
gencies, rather than to abstract logical principles and
to the conclusions to be drawn from them. There is
an essential incompatibility between a legal and a poli-
tical age, as between an individual legal and political
mind. It was not until the overpowering pressure of
the Empire at Eome, and of the Macedonian ascendency
in Grreece, had paralysed all genuine political activity in
both States that the popular and the scientific mind
was at leisure to follow purely logical and speculative
pursuits. The appearance of such a treatise as the
' Institutes ' of Gaius, — which is only a specimen acci-
dentally preserved of countless other similar produc-
tions dealing, after a logically arranged method, with
the whole or parts of the law, — and of systematic com-
pilations of Imperial enactments, marks the advent of
an era of codification which reached its culmmation in
Justinian's time. In Greece the liberated scientific —
and indeed the popular — thought betook itself rather
to philosophy than to la,w, though, in the Logic of
Aristotle, which was the last and not the least precious
fruit of the Greek mind, that identical tendency is con-
spicuous which in Rome and Constantinople took the
form of legal reasoning and systematisation.
Apart, however, from the consideration of the cir-
cumstances which favour the conservation of long estab-
lished unwritten law generated by primeval custom,
the task of re- casting the whole body of national law,
written and unwritten, in the systematic shape of a
formulated series of positive enactments, without in-
juriously innovating on fixed rules and institutions, is
so difficult that it is no wonder that it has, in fact.
CODIFICATION. 81
never been proceeded with except under some extra-
ordinary and powerful impulse. For a long time,
indeed, the whole body of law is so small, — that is,
in its express rules and comprehensive principles, —
that there is no sufficient reason for undertakingf a
difficult, hazardous, and thankless task. As the law
grows in quantity through the internal development
which comes from fresh incrustations of industrial and
mercantile customs, and from successive interpretative
decisions of Courts of Justice, and through direct legis-
lation, the task of systematic reconstruction becomes
at once increasingly difficult and increasingly neces-
sary.
But the minds of lawyers are trained in the law in
the form in which it came to them, and therefore they
naturally shrink from encountering a change which
must be most favourable to the young, who have least
to unlearn. They are also abundantly occupied in
solving the practical questions which hourly present
themselves, and so cannot be expected to affi^rd much
time to engage in projects which seem to them specu-
lative and idealistic. On all these accounts, nothing
short of urgent political necessity has hitherto produced
a total transcription of unwritten into written law.
The pressure may proceed from a despotic sovereign,
or from a resolute people, or from statesmen acting in
the face of circumstances which cannot be evaded.
Thus Justinian only brought to a head a process
of comprehensive codification which the distribution
and re-combination of the provinces of the Empire
between Diocletian's time and his own, the decom-
posing influence of the ecclesiastical institutions as
they became constantly more dominant, and the judi-
G
^2 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
cial re-organisation of the Empire effected hy him-
self rendered inevitable. Julius Caesar seems to have
contemplated a like task, though his aims were prob-
ably no other than those of Frederick the Great,
namely those of making the internal order and unity
reflect the external harmony achieved by his arms and
policy.
Napoleon I., by Codification, only carried out what
had been recognised among the earliest projects of the
Revolutionary leaders as one of the most pressing re-
quirements of the Eepublic. The abolition of the relics
of feudalism, — especially in the land laws, — the total
reconstruction on a humane and rational basis of the
criminal law, and the amalgamating into a common
system the usages prevalent in the two classes of pro-
vinces governed respectively by Feudal usage and by
Roman Law, were all considerations which, in the eyes
even of a superficial statesman, made the task of
Codification a necessary sequel of the Revolution.
Napoleon may have the credit of recognising this to
the full, and no doubt his military and organising
habits of mind disposed him to follow the same course
as those congenial to Julius Csesar and Frederick the
Great of Prussia. That Napoleon used the opportunity
of comprehensive legislation to introduce such enact-
ments on Divorce and Succession as would favour the
dynastic interests of himself and his family detracts
from his moral honesty, but it is no disparagement to
his intellectual credit that he perceived one of the most
urgent political wants of the day and did his utmost to
supply it.
The circumstances of the English in India have been
such as to make an entire reconstruction of the preva-
CODIFICATION IN INDIA. 83
lent legal systems an ever increasing political necessity
in proportion as new States were incorporated and
central Courts of Justice were from time to time insti-
tuted. The local village customs, the dominant in-
fluence of Mahoramedan and Brahminic law, especially
in matters of inheritance and succession, the so-called
' Eegulations ' issued by the officials of the English
Government, and the occasional legislation of a compre-
hensive kind by the British Indian Government or by
the British Parliament, formed a congeries of laws which
rendered the administration of Justice by central Courts,
especially of Appeal, a matter of almost insuperable
difficulty, and yet which only reflected the alternative
anarchy or tyranny that confusion of laws must entail
among the population.
It has taken a long time, amid political and mili-
tary distractions, to reduce even special departments of
the law into an organised form not inharmonious with
the principles of reason and humanity believed to
characterise English Law at home. But the task is
rapidly being accomplished. Anyway the Anglo-Indian
experience is a good illustration of the bearing of poli-
tical exigencies on the question of converting unwritten
into written law.
Codification has of late years progressed with great
rapidity in Canada and the United States of America.
It might have been anticipated that fewer obstacles to
radical legal change would be encountered among a
people whose ancestors had, within very recent times,
migrated as colonists from another country and brought
their law with them in the detached and insulated
form of Royal Charters, and such maxims of the Eng-
lish unwritten law or statutes as were, in the language
G 2
84 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
of Courts of Justice, alone held applicable to them !n
their new circumstances.
So violent a change of attitude towards the bulk of
the national law in use at home could not but prepare
the colonists and their descendants for legal and consti-
tutional modifications according as public convenience
might from time to time suggest. Similar agencies in
the Spanish and French Settlements, which ultimately
gravitated, bj the force of pacific arrangements or con-
quest, to the side either of the United States or of the
Dominion of Canada, produced like results, manifesting
themselves in an easy disposition to amend the law and
even to reconstruct its form from the foundation.
The excellent Codes of Louisiana, the partly adopted
and partly projected Codes of the State of New York,
and the Canadian Codes, incorporating in some cases
the old pre-re volution French Law with the modern
English and Colonial legislative enactments, are speci-
mens of the superior facility for legal reconstruction
which is likely to be found in Colonial settlements
as contrasted with the obstacles encountered in long
established societies.
' As to the employment of the term Law, it has
been debated whether it should be extended so as to
include all commands whatever, express or implied,
proceeding, at a given time, from the supreme Poli-
tical Authority then dominant, and, therefore, to all
intents and purposes representing and personating the
State ; or whether it should be restricted to such of
these commands as are designed to meet something
more than a merely temporary emergency, and have
some generality in their character, as being addressed
to classes of persons or as relating to classes of acts
WHAT IS A TRUE LAW. 85
commanded or forbidden, or concerned with classes of
occasions which are generically described in the terms
of the law. It has been said that in the case of a mere
single act commanded or forbidden by a Legislature,
there lacks the permanence, generality, and in some
way the dignity, which are of the essence of a true
law.
The real distinction is probably to be sought be-
tween the enacting Legislative Authority all whose
commands of all sorts are true laws, and the Execu-
tive Authority which, though acting in accordance
with law, does not make law, but only carries out
the will of the Legislature by doing acts of practical
Government. Some of these acts often include the
issuing of bodies of rules which are not distinguishable
from partial Codes of Law. Such are the by-laws of
Railway Companies in England as approved by the
Privy Council, — which, for some purposes, is a portion
of the Executive Government, — and Police or Municipal
regulations made by the Chief of the Police or a Mayor
and Corporation in accordance with special Acts of Par-
liament. But though these by-laws, rules, and regula-
tions have all the aspect of true laws, and by virtue
of the subordinate legislative powers under which they
are made have all the effect and operation of true laws,
they are, from the point of view of the authority
immediately enacting them, merely Executive Acts.
When a portion of the Legislature, such as the Eng-
lish House of Commons, has customary powers conceded
to it for making rules in defence of its own rights,
dignity, and authority, and for enforcing compliance by
punishing offenders, either within or outside of its own
body, by fine and imprisonment, its regulations are true
laws in respect of their form and cogency, and in virtue
86 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
of the delegated authority by means of which they are
made. But, from the point of view of the actual enact-
ing authority, they are merely Executive acts, and the
House of Commons is, for these purposes, treated as a
branch of the Executive Authority, and is endowed with
powers appropriate to the due exercise of its functions.
In those cases in which, by the Constitution of the
United States, the Senate is empowered, in concert with
the President, to do certain purely executive acts, — as
to conclude a treaty of peace, or to appoint a foreign
ambassador, — the form of these acts may include issuing
bodies of rules and regulations binding on all American
citizens. But they are only true laws because they
are made by a delegated and subordinate Authority
dependent on -fche Legislature, — that is, on Congress as
a whole. On the face of them, however much they may
bear the semblance of law and have all the effect and
operation of law, they are only executive acts.
The opposite phenomenon is manifested so often as
the whole Legislature, acting in its corporate capacity,
and with the use of the same solemn forms which are
observed when it enacts laws, does isolated acts of an
executive kind having none of the generality and per-
manence usually associated with the term law. This
takes place when a gift of houses or lands is made to a
successful general as an heirloom in his family, or
when a public ceremonial is decreed, or a grant of
money in relief of some private or public disaster
awarded, out of the public funds. To the same class of
acts would belong the sudden suspension of the common
law, or of some general statute, to prevent the crew
and cargo of some particular ship believed to carry
infection being disembarked at a certain port, or at any
TEEMS LEGISLATIVE AND EXECUTIVE. 87
port, for a certain time. Here again, a state of things
converse to that adverted to above exists. In outward
form all these acts are of an executive nature. They
are occasional, temporary, almost spasmodic, and seem
to have none of the sort of relation to the permanent
consciousness of the people, and to their natural expec-
tations, w^hich is the usual characteristic of unmistak-
able law.
Nevertheless these acts are all true laws, and
nothing is gained by not calling them so. They
formally emanate from a genuine, and the only genuine,
legislative authority. They are commands addressed
not only to the persons directly within the purview of
the policy resorted to, but to all persons whatever on
whom they impose fresh duties. Such persons are not
only those whose rights are restricted by the enlarge-
ment of the rights of the other person in whose favour
the command is issued, but all those judicial and lower
executive officials who are bound to take cognisance
of the command and to secure general obedience to it
exactly as to the most unquestionable legal enactments.
Thus, in distinguishing between a law and an executive
act, it is rather the ordaining authority than the pur-
port, contents, or form, of the rule that has to be kept
in view. This leads at once to a consideration of the
terms Legislative and Executive,
4. Legislative and Executive,
In early times there is Law and there is an Executive
Authority ; but either (to put it one way) there is no
Legislative Authority, or (to put it another way) the
Legislative and Executive Authority are indistinguish-
able. A Legislative Authority is an Authority en-
88 THE SCIExVCE OF POLITICS.
gaged in making or altering or repealing laws. But
in the earliest form of national society the laws, or re-
cognised usages, of the people are either so immovable
that none but a rash and suicidal conqueror ventures to
innovate upon them; or else are so uncertain, con-
fused, heterogeneous, and disordered, that the despotic
will of that conqueror supplies the only approaches to
any settled rule or order. It may be, indeed, — especially
as society advances, — ihat a sort of fixed condition of
compromise is attained, and a steady line of demarcation
drawn, between the laws which shall be regarded as
unalterable and those which may be changed or abo-
lished at the ruler's will. Of this state of things
in which the germs of a true political constitution are
manifested, specimens were exhibited during the era of
the earlier Feudal Monarchies of Europe, and, still
more remarkably, in the relations of the Secular Head
of the Holy Roman Empire towards his ecclesiastical
subjects.
The natural rise of a true Legislative Authority
may be not improperly illustrated by the mode in
which the English Eeudal sovereignty, — with purely
executive powers, controlled by the vassals and terri-
torial magnates, and in the presence of a fixed body of
customary law, — step by step bifurcated into a legis-
lative and an executive authority, of one of which
authorities the monarch was a component portion, and
of the other of which he was the chief representative.
It was notorious that the change was brought about by
the incidental dependence of the monarch, for military
services and supplies, first, on his immediate vassals,
and afterwards on chosen representatives of town and
rural interests throughout the country.
RISE OF A LEGISLATI^rE AUTHORITY. 89
The feudal vassals, and subsequently the deputies of
the people, made the redress of practical grievances the
conditio sine qua non of submitting to taxation for the
king's foreign enterprises. But the form v\^hich the
petition for the redress of these grievances took was
the better observance, by the king and his officials, of
the terms of some long standing and well recognised
compact appertaining to popular or feudal rights ; or
else of some charter granted by the king or his pre-
decessors; or of some ancient laws,— possibly mythical
in their origin, and, at any rate, of uncertain but
vaguely beneficial import, — such as the ' Laws of
Edward the Confessor.' When the king granted peti-
tions of this sort, there was no true legislation in the
fullest sense because there was no intentional or actual
change of the law. But the effect undoubtedly was not
only to give fresh securities for the recognition of the
law by the king and his officials, but, by bringing some
of the terms of a partly forgotten and neglected law
into fresh prominence, to re-enact the law, and thereby,
in fact, to inaugurate a true process of legislation.
This process was sometimes carried one stage further,
in the case of obstinate abuses, — as in the reign of
Richard II., — by appointing a Commission charged with
the function of administering the Government, and,
within limits more or less clearly defined, of super-
intending the execution of the laws hitherto violated.
This act of creating an executive authority is a true
legislative act, inasmuch as it imposes new duties,
confers new rights, and introduces new rules or ordi-
nances. The Legislative Authority progressively con-
tinues to assume its true functions, and it is not long
before it begins to criticise the whole existing legal
90 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
system, and boldly to abolish laws wbich seem bad, to
reform those which are inadequate to their end, and to
enact new laws intended to meet the wants of the day.
In this course of inchoate legislation it may happen
that a king, like Edward I., may co-operate with the
reforming spirit or even take the initiative in broaching
novelties. And it is probable enough that in early
essays in Legislation, as in the times of Edward III.,
Eichard II., Henry YIII., and even of Elizabeth,
serious economical, ethical, and political misadventures
may be encountered in entering on yet untried paths.
But the important point is that the Legislative Autho-
rity thus becomes conscious of its own powers, responsi-
bilities, and distinctness from the Executive Authority
as personated by the King.
Where an enei'getic and independent Legislative
Authority in an extreme political emergency goes the
length of abolishing the monarch, or the monarchy, as
in the case of Charles I. and James IL, — to take no
earlier instances, — the Legislative Authority, divorced
momentarily even from the monarch himself, becomes
conscious of a still more exceptional amount of inde-
pendence and responsibility. Exerting a new-found
capacity of action it takes upon itself to re-cast,
within limits defined only by the popular sentiment of
the hour, the legal outlines of the Constitution itself, and
to emphasise laws and distinct rules of Governmental
action in relation to the people, for which only a
friendly imagination can find a precedent in the past.
Such a legal reconstruction was effectually achieved by
the Long Parliament, by the first Parliaments after the
Restoration, and by the later Parliaments of William III.
The above account might be regarded as only the
RISE OF A LEGISLATIVE AUTHORITY. 91
accidental historical development of the Legislative
Authority, in relation to the Executive, in one particular
country, and therefore as containing no materials, or
only casually suggestive ones for the establishment
of scientific truths. But a closer examination will
show that, just as Feudalism itself is only an illustra-
tive exhibition of a normal and recurrent stage of
social and political growth, — in which the military
leader establishes definite terms of relationship and of
reciprocal service between himself and his companions
in arms, and of which the occupation of conquered
territory is at once the medium and, as it were, the
Sacramental register, — so the escape from Feudalism
proved in England by the growth of a genuine Legis-
lative Authority, in opposition to the Executive still re-
presented by the monarch, is a world-wide phenomenon
simply made more conspicuous in England by the slow,
steady, and uninterrupted manifestation of every one of
the links in the chain of development.
In other countries the process has only been accom-
plished after hundreds of years of political stagnation,
or after periods of anarchy or after the social chaos
produced by religious corruption. Revolutions have at
such times vindicated the popular claim not to be left
behind in the political race, and have not only wrought
definite constitutional and legal reforms but have called
into being a Legislative Authority after the fashion of
countries fortunate enough to have had a more tranquil
career of internal progress.
Such has been eminently the case of France, where,
for ages, the only protests in favour of a constitutional
Legislative Authority were the often ineffectual refusals
to register the king's decrees on the part of the Parlia-
92 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
inent of Paris, which had degenerated into a mere pro-
fessional body of advocates. The king might indeed,
bj appearing in person and holding a lit de justice, con-
trive to supersede this popular or, at least, professional
interference. But it was an advantage to public liberty
that legislation proper was, presumptively, and ac-
cording to the vulgar apprehension, shared between the
feudal monarch and other Constitutional authorities,
although by an act of apparent and exceptional usurpa-
tion the monarch might for the occasion re absorb the
legislative power and rule alone. As in early England,
so in France on the verge of her great Revolution, it was
the urgent want of money that precipitated a recurrence
to the people by summoning their representatives as
Estates of the Realm ; and the first stage of the Revolu-
tion was nothing more than a somewhat violent transfer
of the Legislative Authority, from the king alone to the
king and his constitutional partners.
The history of the growth of a Legislative Authority
in Germany is somewhat different ; but this difference
is mainly due to the peculiar federal constitution of the
German Empire and not to any dissimilarity in the
principles involved.
It must be remembered that the Councils and
Synods of the Church were visible examples of quasi-
representative Assemblies co-operating with a spiritual
potentate who was recognised, for many purposes, as
supreme and absolute, yet they held themselves entitled
to modify, repeal, or enact rules for the government of
the Church as an organised society : as a judicial body
they pronounced sentence on alleged infringers of ex-
isting rules as well as determined the meaning or appli-
cation of ambiguous rules : and, more generally, they
THE LEGISLATIVE AUTHORITY IN GER^IANY. 93
mediated between what was believed to be the eternal
framework and constitution of the Church and the
imperative demands of a progressive secular society
which surrounded, and yet was included in, the Church.
These Councils and Synods v^ere not only habitually
regarded with almost superstitious veneration even at
the very time when their decrees were dissented from
and their authority practically repudiated, but their acts
were accomplished in the sight of all men, and the eflPect
of these acts was to bring them incessantly into collision
with the Civil Power.
The result was that throughout the Holy Roman
Empire, including the large mass of what are now the
leading States of Northern and Central Europe, the civil
constitution of the several States tended to imitate and
reproduce the type of Government which was not only
familiar but obviously reasonable and convenient. The
Emperor came through perpetual contact to be the
correlative of the Pope even rather than the typical
semblance of the Eoman Emperor of old. The Diet
of the Empire similarly reproduced the Ecclesiastical
Assemblies; while the Electors of the Empire in ap-
pointing the head of the Executive enacted in the
corresponding sphere the part of the chief Ecclesiastical
officials. Tn these functions of the Diet and of the
Electors the conception of true legislative tasks was
included ; though, from the essential infirmity of the
Federal constitution, the performance of these tasks
was restricted to the choice and limited control of the
Executive Authority ; to making a few desultory pro-
visions for the peace of the Empire ; and to maintaining
a sufficient friendly accord between the secular and
religious authorities. The actual amendment of the
94 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
customary private law prevalent in tlie different States
was either entirely neglected or left to the local legis-
lative authorities which were contemporaneously grow-
ing up, slowly enough, on all sides.
And here it may be noted that, even in England, it
is only within the present century that the private civil
law and the criminal law have been boldly grappled with
by the Legislative Authority. Before this period all the
energy of that Authority was addressed to those parts
of the law which directly or indirectly affected the
political rights of the people. The old feudal land law,
in its essential character, the law governing indus-
trial and mercantile contracts, the law of personal
relationships, and the bulk of the criminal law, were
only reformed within living memory by the slow action
cf popular custom and judicial interpretation, — not to
say by judicial collusions.
In contrast to the process of the rise of a Legisla-
tive, as distinguished from an Executive, Authority on
the dissolution of Feudalism, may be taken the case
of the establishment of a Legislative Authority in
the Roman Republic and Empire. In the earliest
strictly historical times the consuls, prsetors, quaes-
tors, sediles, and the rest, including afterwards the
tribunes, represent a strong and all but omnipotent
Executive. The only checks on absolutism were the
constitution itself, so far as there was one, and the
Civil Law. The Senate and the various Comitia were,
at the outset and for ages afterwards, only a machinery
for electing the different members of the Executive, for
deciding matters relating to Foreign affairs, and for pass-
ing measures of comprehensive legislation only in respect
of political rights or, what was nearly akin to them.
THE LEGISLATI\nE AUTHOEITY IN EOME. 95
of claims to share in the occupation of the national
soil. When the Coinitia were really and effectively
called upon to engage in the task of radical legal
reform of a comprehensive nature, it was always at
some crisis of the national fortunes when some influen-
tial citizen came to the head of affairs and, by the
weight of his character or even of his political power,
overcame the inertness of the unwieldy masses and the
scruples of oligarchical coteries.
Such were the circumstances of the legislation of
the Gracchi, of Sulla, and of Julius Csesar. The vigorous
and independent legislation of Augustus, still confined
within the formal precincts of republican ideas, was
a medium between the legislative efforts of repub-
lican reformers and the despotic constitutions, decrees,
rescripts, mandates, and pragmatic sanctions of his
Imperial successors a few generations later. The full
legislative effect given to resolutions of the Senate
marks an intermediate stage in the process of Imperial
absorption of legislative powers.
The only correction to this abuse and usurpation lay
in the necessary constitution of the Empire itself, in
which the complicated organisation of the civil service
required by the enormous area of Government led to
such a natural distribution of powers that the Em-
peror's legislative, judicial, and administrative functions
were, in fact, severally exercised by tolerably inde-
pendent, though bureaucratic officials. The secrecy
and consequent absence of all responsibility to public
opinion was only one of the glaring defects of such
a political constitution.
Thus the instance of Eome, like that of France in
the course of the political vicissitudes she has undergone
96 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
since the first Revolution, exhibits not only the natural
process of elaborating a Legislative Authority by the
side of the Executive, but the reverse process of re-
absorption of the Legislative by the Executive Autho-
rity, — a clanger to which v^ould-be democratic Govern-
ments are notoriously exposed, at the hands often of the
military officials of the State. The ordinary legislative
machinery of Athens was succumbing to one Executive
chief or cabal after another before Philip of Macedon
took upon him to personate all the powers of the
State ; while Sparta is a memorable instance of a
State which successfully held on its own narrow course,
and maintained its parsimonious existence, by ignoring
frora first to last the functions of Legislation, and
throwing all the weight of Government on the shoulders
of a captiously watched Executive.
Here and there, indeed, there are to be found in-
stances of what at first sight seems to be an even and
steady process of growth, from the first, of an Executive
and Legislative Authority, side by side, with ascer-
tained relations to each other, and with vigilantly
guarded principles of apportionment. Such may be
taken to be the primitive rural cantons of Uri and
Appenzell in Switzerland in which the whole popula-
tion, to the amount (says a recent traveller ^) of 8000
people in the last mentioned canton, meet on a certain
day of the year, and choose the Executive officers for
the year, and do acts of legislation, by adopting or
rejecting any proposal for legal reform which may be
brought before them.
In cases such as this there is undoubtedly witnessed
a fine and, no doubt, primitive balance between the
* The Shores and Cities of the Boden-Seoy hy S. J. Capper.
THE LEGISLATIVE AND THE EXECUTIVE AUTHOEITY. 97
Legislative and the Executive which only accidental
circumstances of an exceptionally favourable kind could
have made possible. But even there it would be found
on closer inspection that the very roughness of the
constitutional mechanism, and the multitudinousness
of the legislative body, excludes (as was the case with
the popular comitia in the last days of the Eoman Ee-
public) the consideration of any proposal which cannot
be formulated in such a way as to admit only of two
alternative courses, adoption or rejection, simple and
entire. This necessity is a consequence not only of the
numbers, but of the heterogeneousness, inconstancy,
and political unfamiliarity of a mass of people of all
ranks and conditions, meeting together no oftener than
once a year. This of itself excludes the bulk of the
Legislation required by an advancing country for pre-
scribing rules to the Executive, for supervising and
checking its course, for correcting accidental abuses in
the current execution of the Law, and for applying
amendments to Laws which are either becoming ob-
solete, or which, from one cause or another, no longer
approve themselves to the public mind or conscience.
When it is remembered how unsuitable are the
primitive democratic assemblies alluded to for even
moderate legislative tasks like these, it is evident that
they are Legislative Authorities in little more than
name, though, inasmuch as they choose the Executive,
and can potentially alter the whole law, they do truly
constitute such Authorities. In modern Switzerland
the paramount authority of the Federal Government
renders these local institutions mainly interesting as
historical fossils and as political illustrations.
H
\iH THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
In what lias been said, at some length, of the nature
and growth of the Legislative Authority, there has
been incidentally disclosed the meaning of the term
Executive and the scope of the conception which the
term is used to express. The Executive Authority and
the Legislative Authority together compose the whole
Supreme Political Authority which in any State always
has, theoretically, absolute power over all members of
the State for all purposes whatsoever, and which in
fact also has it except in case of Revolution, of
approximate Revolution, or of serious civic discord.
There is, at any given moment, no theoretical limit to
the powers latent in this Authority. The only prac-
tical limit is set by the chances of Revolution or of a
supercession of the existing Supreme Authority by a
new one in case of popular disaffection.
/ This Supreme Authority may consist of one person
or of several ; and if of several, they may either be
precisely determined and have definite relations to each
other, — as in the case of the English King or Queen,
the members of the House of Lords in their corporate
capacity, and the members of the House of Commons,
similarly in their corporate capacity ; or the Supreme
Authority may consist of an indefinite number of
persons accurately, but not precisely, determined,— -as
in the case of that number of persons in the United
States of America, who throughout the several States
are required to co-operate in order to effect a change
in a constitutional Law.
It has already been seen that the Supreme Autho-
rity at the first is of simple and homogeneous structure,
and exerts its powers of Government solely by a series
of executive Acts. A Legislative Authority concerned
, THE TEEM EXECUTIVE. 99
witli prescribing rules of action for the Government,
and amending the customary usages in force among
the people, slowly grows up within the precincts of the
Supreme Authority, and the result is a sort of distri-
bution of organs and of functions recalling the gradual
composition and internal differentiation of the higher
classes of organised bodies.
What shall be the final relationship between the
Legislative Authority so developed and the Executive
Authority which it vigilantly watches, and on which it
has encroached, is one of the most arduous problems
of constitutional Statesmanship, and one to which
modern ingenuity, — as will be seen hereafter in dis-
cussing the Constitution of a State, — is mainly directed.
At the time of founding the Constitution of the
Dnited States, there was no question on which more able
and acute speculation was expended than the relationship
between the Legislative and the Executive Authority;'
and the final solution adopted of a Supreme Court of
Justice, independent of the Legislative Authority, and
a President elected by the people independently of
Congress, absolute for Executive purposes during a four
years' term of office, is an experiment as to the success
of which well-founded doubts have in the course of
time suggested themselves, as will be seen later on.
Sometimes the term Executive, which strictly means
an Authority which puts the laws in force, is opposed
to the term Administrative, which implies the perform-
ance of every other sort of immediate Governmental
act, such as collecting taxes, organising and directing
the Army, l^avy, and Police, supervising trade, loco-
motion, postal communication, and carrying out in
' See the writers in +he Federalist generallv
100 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
detail legislative measures for promoting public Lealth,
education, morality, and general contentment ; such as
in Imperial Rome demanded public shows and a dis-
tribution of food on cheap t^rms to large classes of the
population.
But the term Administrative is, — especially in
scientific and constitutional treatises, — less used than
Executive ; and the distinction is not very convenient,
inasmuch as there is a large class of subordinate
oflBcials, — such as the English ' policemen,' — who have
an assemblage of multifarious duties cast upon them
connected with the revenue, and with the preservation
of public order and decorum, which are almost as im-
portant as their task of apprehending offenders and
facilitating the administration of Justice. In the same
way the functions of certain of the higher English
Judges, — who co-operate with the Crown in the Ex-
chequer to appoint Sheriffs of Counties, — are adminis-
trative rather than, according to the distinction in
question, executive. On the whole it is best to use one
term. Executive, to express the portion of the Supreme
Authority which is not Legislative in the full and true
sense, and only to oppose Executive to Administrative,
when, for a special purpose, it is necessary to consider
apart from all other functions the function of ensuring
obedience, in detail, to the L'lw as it is.
5. Bight, Prerogative,
Jurists have often attempted to analyse the ideas
which enter into the notion designated by the term
Right. Some such term appears in the political ter-
minology of all advanced States. The term usually
connotes, in one country and period, some idea or ideas
TIIE TEEM EmHT.' IQl
wliicli do not elsewhere present themselves. Thus
in the Egyptian language, as commemorated by the
hieroglyphic al writing of the earliest dynasties, the
same syllabic gronp of signs indicates the notions of
justice, truth, moral righteousness, and political law,
though one and another of these distinct notions are
also expressed by special groups. In Greece the terms
^LKTi and v6/jL09 share between them the notions expressed
in Rome, according to a slightly different distribution,
by jus and lex. The Greek vo/jlos covers the meaning of
positive enactment chiefly conveyed by lex, but it also
covers some of the meaning of settled constitutional
morality conveyed by jus. But in the Latin jus there
is an element of abstract morality which is only to be
found in vojjlos in its sense of primitive distribution.
The German recht and the French droit are nearly
coextensive in signification with each other and with
the Latin jus. The English word right does not in-
clude the technical legal meaning of recht, droit, and
jus, that is, it does not mean a body of purely legal
rules ; and the English term is far more loose and
unsettled on its ethical side. It is, in fact, only in the
sense of a claim recognisable either b}^ the State, by
abstract morality, or by conventional sentiment that it
squares pretty exactly with one of the meanings of the
corresponding term in the Latin, German, and French
languages.
From this terminological enquiry it appears that
the best consolidated States have found the need of
appropriate terms for the several distinct notions, first,
of settled and generally binding law, whether as based
on positive legislation or on judicially enforced custom ;
secondly, of long established usage, binding on the
102 TIIE SCIi:NCE OF POLITICS.
leg'islative and executive Authorities, and even on the
indefinite mass of persons to whom those Authorities
are responsible and owe their existence ; thirdly, of indi-
vidual claims founded upon such law or such established
usage. The English term right, so far as it has a defi-
nite meaning for political purposes, expresses the third
of these notions, that is, the claim of a private person or
an assemblage of private persons, accorded either by law
or by well-understood usage, which, whether grounded on
absolute morality or on conventional public sentiment,
has all the force of law, and even more than this force,
being anterior and superior to it, though it may need
the intervention or even the enactment of positive law
to give it practical effect.
When the claim expressed by the term right is based
on strict law, the purport and limits of the claim share
that precise exactness which belongs strictly only to
law. A claim being accorded to one person at the ex-
pense of another or others, one of the most prominent
functions of Courts of Justice is that of ascertaining
what is the measure of concession which the law has
granted in favour of one litigant in derogation of the
general claims to unrestricted action enjoyed by an-
other. Thus the claim in question may be described
as a ^ power,' but as exercisable onl}^ through the use
of certain definite instruments. It is thus only ana-
logical, at the most, to a physical force or to material
machiner3^ It matters not whether it can or cannot
be described as existing for the benefit of the person
exercising the claim. If it is not for his benefit,
directly or indirectly, he can forbear to exercise it.
Thus even a trustee or guardian has rights, the direct
advantage of the exercise of which is wholly restricted
TIIE TERM RIGHT. 103
to other persons ; but, inasmuch as the rights may have
to be exercised by the trustee or guardian in order to
fulfil his personal responsibility to a Court of Justice,
the existence of the rights might be described as being
indirectly advantageous to him.
The more politically important signification of the
term, right is that which attaches to it when the claim
indicated by it is based on what in England is known
as constitutional usage. But the term is undoubtedly
used, for political purposes, in a wider and less exact
sense than this. It has, on some memorable historical
occasions, been employed as co-extensive with a claim
based on abstract morality, that is, on such notions of
morality as prevail at the day. It is also used in cur-
rent political controversy in an intermediate sense, as
indicating a claim more precise and more readily as-
certained than any that merely ethical considerations
could suggest, and yet less distinctly formulated than
a claim founded on the actual or traditional constitu-
tion of the country.
The American ' Declaration of Independence,' and
the French 'Declaration of the Rights of Man,' abound
in ethical assumptions purporting to be the foundation
of political claims w^hich, ^whether justifiable or not as
scientific propositions, — are (as Bentham pointed out
in detail,) far too vague and undefined to form part of
the constitutional morality of any State whatever. The
English ' Bill of Rights,' containing as it did a series of
propositions in the closest relation to actual historical
facts and documents, maybe contrasted favourably with
the corresponding French and American proclamations.
Not indeed that these latter served their immediate
purpose less efiectually because of their vague and
104 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
unrestricted language. On the contrarj^ as Coleridge
pointed out, nothing is so popular, and, therefore, at
some periods so perilous, as comprehensive doctrines
conveyed in the briefest of phrases. Thej often, never-
theless, have a truth of their own, and correspond to
some true and irrepressible instinct or aspiration which
they rouse into energy, however impotent they may be
to direct or restrain it. This subject, however, more
properly belongs to the theory of Kevolutions.
Much ambiguity in the conduct of political con-
troversy ensues from the common confusion of the
various uses of the term right. Thus it was for some
time a question in the English Courts to what extent,
if any, the status of slavery was recognised by the Law
of England. It was, after careful judicial reasoning,
decided towards the end of the eighteenth century (in
Sommersett's case) that a slave, if brought to an English
port, had a right to recover and maintain his freedom.
At the same time no such right was admitted as to the
port of an English Colony. But in the first quarter of
the nineteenth century it was argued on all sides that
slaves in British Colonies had a right to their freedom, in
the sense of a right to have freedom conferred upon them
by law. In the third quarter of the same century it be-
came a matter of burning political controversy in America
how far the right of a slave to his freedom was a legal
right ; or, if it were not so, whether it had only ceased
to be so through an initial violence to the constitution,
and so was still a constitutional though not a legal right ;
or if it were neither a legal nor a constitutional right,
whether it were not an abstract moral right, which no law
nor constitution could outrage consistently with the con-
tinued welfare, stability, or even existence of the State.
THE TEEM PREROGATIVE. 105
Similar ambiguities in the use of the term right have
notably presented themselves in controversies on the
suffrage, on the tenure of land, and in respect of some
of the finer shades of exemption from any personal
degradation used as a mode of criminal punishment.
Questions as to what are a person's rights, — human,
constitutional, legal, or merely conventional, — have, of
late, entered largely into discussions on claims to
appropriate the soil of a country, on claims to vote at
parliamentary or municipal elections, and on claims to
absolute immunity from cruel or so-called derogatory
punishments.
The term prerogative is closely parallel to right as
being based on established constitutional usage; though,
in England at least, its employment as a political term is
restricted to expressing the constitutional claims of the
Sovereign. But, owing to the course of development of
the English Constitution by which the limitation of
the personal authority of the Sovereign has been only
gradually achieved by slow marches from point to point,
the term prerogative covers, at present, the constitutional
rights of the Sovereign as one of the Estates of the
Realm and as the chief executive Authority, — which
rights are exercisable only in certain definite channels,
by the aid of ministerial agents responsible to Parlia-
ment, — and also those indefinite and dignified personal
claims of the Sovereign which the progress of Consti-
tutional Government has not yet invaded. To this last
class, of purely personal claims, belongs the important
one of deciding in the last resort between one candidate
and another for the post of Prime Minister, when each
candidate has, presumably, equal chances of command-
106 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
ing the confidence of the Legislature. A similar, but
aiore disputable, claim is that of dismissing, without
cause assigned, a Minister who renders hiaiself per-
sonally obnoxious, though probably a capricious use of
this prerogative would lead to its limitation. The pre-
rogatives concerned with precedents of all sorts are,
in a political sense, too trivial to need being further
particularised, even for the sake of terminological illus
tration.
107
CHAPTER III.
POLITICAL REASOXma.
In the course of the investigation into the scientific
claims of Political enquiries, it appeared that one ob-
stacle to the successful assertion of those claims was
the necessity for immediate action, by which even the
most speculative statesman is beset on every side. A
critical opportunity arrives, and the statesman must
act promptly or annihilate himself altogether. There
may be only a limited number of directions in which
action is possible ; and one of these directions must
be chosen ; and yet it may be one which is very far
from good in itself. The utmost that a sagacious
statesman can do is to anticipate such moments of
hurried action by giving a beneficial direction to the
general course of his conduct, and by persisting in it at
times when no passions are arouserl, when no strong
prejudices or antipathies have had time to consolidate
themselves, when no interests prejudicial to the general
good have become vested. The statesman's own personal
influence may also do much to awaken feelings favour-
able to his own preconceptions of a rational course of
policy, and, at the worst, he can bend into judicious
and modified lines determinate resolves which he cannot
break.
In this way it comes about that, provided political
108 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
phenomena admit of scientific arrangement and treat-
ment at all, the logically-disposed statesman will always
find opportunities for a course of action dictated by
purely scientific considerations. Nor is it true that
the democratic constitution of modern States, if more
favourable to rhetoric than to logic, is inimical to
scientific government. Mr. Grote was at great pains,
in his 'History of Greece,' to establish that, in spite of
the enormous play which rhetoric and oratory, un-
doubtedly, had with an Athenian audience, yet, on the
whole, a disposition was manifested on momentous
occasions to act on purely logical grounds, to reconsider
again and again hasty decisions, and to give a hearing
to all sides impartially before drawing a conclusion.
If, notwithstanding these instances, the Athenian people
were lacking often enough in practical wisdom, this
was only one among many proofs of the insufficiency
of their political constitution and the backwardness of
political science.
In the case of modern democratic Assemblies, it
would seem that the tendency of popular education,
the influence of the Press, and the pressure exercised
by the free right of public meeting and association, all
conduce to restrict increasingly the power exercised by
rhetoricians and demagogues. If the English House
of Commons is taken as the most aristocratic type of a
democratically constituted assembly, and the Lower
House of a British Colony, however denominated, as
the most democratic type of the same, it would be
found that, in both the one and the other, the most
convincing of all arguments are those drawn on the
spot from statistical considerations, or from evidence
Bifted by commissions or from the reports of recognised
POLITICAL KEASONING. 109
authorities on the subject under discussion. Mere
rhetoric, vokibilit}^, declamation, even passion and
party spirit, make a more and more feeble stand
against antagonists armed with such purely logical
weapons as these ; or, if a momentary victory is won,
the fruits of it are worthless, for it is inevitably
reversed at an early day, so soon as the outside
public has had time to master the issues and deliver its
judgment.
The place that pure reasoning is thus found to be
taking in the conduct of Government leads the way to
consider whether inductive or deductive methods of
reasoning are likely to be most prominent in this de-
partment of thought, and whether there are any pecu-
liarities in the extension of common logical processes
to the field of Politics which need special notice. Sir
George Cornewall Lewis, in his invaluable treatise on
* Methods of Observation and Eeasoning in Politics,'
has given an exhaustive statement of all that can be
said on this subject, and has illustrated it with the
wealth of his rare erudition. But the Tery complete
ness of this work renders it unsuitable for incorporation
in a treatise which, like this, professes to cover the
whole grourid of scientific Politics ; while, on the other
hand, it would be unjust to the learned critic to sever
his conclusions from his arguments and illustrations
in order to give a compendious enunciation of their
general results.
The distinction drawn between inductive and de-
ductive methods is rather of psychological than of prac-
tical importance. There is hardly any department of
scientific investigation, which has progressed beyond
its initial stages, where both methods are not inces-
110 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
sautly and alternately resorted to. In those sciences
which, by their nature, are the least stationary, it is
impossible to say, at any particular moment, which is
the most characteristic and prominent organ of search.
On the face of it, it would appear that the framing of
general or universal propositions is peculiarly alien to
the scientific temper in Politics. It might be said with
truth that here if anywhere dolus latet in generalihus.
The most erroneous theories and destructive fallacies
have, undoubtedly, proceeded from an attempt to in-
clude in some sweeping generalisations all the varied
conditions due to differences of time, place, and acci-
dent. But, because a logical method has been used
wrongly or inappropriately, this is no sufiicient argu-
ment against its being used at all. Nor does the mere
difficulty of using it rightly justify its neglect, or even
disentitle it to its rank as a primary instrument of
thought.
Nor, indeed, are the facts, when fairly examined,
adverse to the claims of deductive reasoning in Political
studies. The progressive advance of these studies, as
in the case of the physical sciences, has led to the
framing of an increasing number of general proposi-
tions of incontrovertible cogency. It is only necessary
to cite the broad doctrines that the end of Government
is the highest attainable good of the largest number of
people present and to come ; that, by way of corollary.
Government and Governmental institutions exist for the
advantage of the whole people, and not of the rulers
only or of any other limited section of the whole people ;
that the interference of Government with prices, wages,
contracts, or with the operations of industry generally,
is presumptively less conducive to national wealth than
DEDUCTIVE POLITICAL EEASONING-. Ill
(lie permission of unrestricted freedom, and, — if resorted
to at all, — can only be justified by some considerations of
an entirely different kind ; that striugent constitutional
precautions are needed against abuses by the Executive
Authority ; that criminal punishments must not be
cruel, vindictive, or only retaliatory, but should be
devised and imposed with the main end in view of
preventing the recurrence of offences, and be rendered,
as far as may be, compatible with the secondary end,
of promoting the personal amendment of the criminal ;
and that (by way of a final example) the chief Judicial
Authority should be rendered independent of the other
departments of the Executive Authority.
It may be said that the truth of these and such
like propositions is very far from being everywhere
accepted,— still less acted upon. It might be added
that, as to some of the propositions themselves, their
application must be restricted to certain countries
and conditions of society, that what may be true in
Western communities is only true under certain limita-
tions in the East, and that the propositions are even
reversed in different stages of the growth of the same
society. In fact the propositions themselves, it might
be argued in disparagement, are only valuable when
accompanied by all sorts of limiting qualifications and
hypothetical additions; or in other words, they are
true only so far as they cease to be propounded as
universal or even general.
But while to recal such imperfections in the gene-
rality of the propositions of Political Science is an
indispensable key to their true use, yet it is easy, for
rhetorical purposes, to exaggerate the real significance
of all such limitations. The generality of many poli-
112 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
tical propositions, of the kind above cited in illustra-
tion, is found to increase with every advance in political
improvement and with every extension of all the best
elements of what is known as civilisation. It is not so
much that the propositions are generally true, as that
they tend to become more and more indisputably
accepted as true. The limitations, on the other hand,
are becoming more and more partial and insignificant,
and are driven further and further into the background
of the argument. In fact, the conduct of political
controversy at present, whether in formally assembled
Chambers, in public but informal discussions, or in
private and select conversation, exhibits the increasing
prevalence of a growing series of general propositions
the truth of which is, for serious argumentative pur-
poses, held by disputants, on both or all sides, to be
beyond the reach of doubt.
It is an interesting exhibition of this fact to notice
the process at work on all sides, by which the general
premises of political syllogisms are being gradually
fashioned by a joint use of inductive and deductive
methods. Thus, by way of illustration, it is still
a most unsettled point in this country whether an
income tax is or is not a wise or justifiable source of
national income ; whether direct taxation has any con-
clusive advantage over all kinds of indirect taxation ;
whether the land of a country can or cannot be appro-
priated by private owners in the same way as money,
the fruits of the soil, and manufactured products ;
whether central or local control, or a combination of
both, is most applicable to such topics as police, poor
relief, sanitary improvements, and expenditure for
economical objects; and, lastly, whether the care of
THE EXPEEIMENTAL METHOD IN POLITICS. ll'S'^
such works as irrigation, locomotion, and postal and
telegraphic communication, belongs most fitly to the
State or to such private persons or associations as may-
choose to undertake them.
Some of these problems are more nearly approaching
solution and final settlement than others. In respect
of all of them, the primary instrument <if research is
the observation of the results of actual experiments in
a variety of countries, whether these experiments were
intentionally conducted among more or less rigorously
superintended surroundings, or were only the outcome
of fortuitous social conditions. The proper use of this
instrument implies the usual attention to the ' infirma-
tory ' circumstances which physical science has rendered
so familiar as impairing the value of observed facts.
Xt Mr. John Stuart Mill pointed out, in his ' Logic,*
the impossibility of conducting any real experiment in
Politics. For the conduct of any true experiment, not
only must all relevant circumstances be fully and accu-
rately known, but the elements of the enquiry must
admit of being altered, modified, multiplied, reduced,
and readjusted at will. It is obvious that, owing to the
element of human personality which is the leading fact
in all political problems, and to the extraordinary in-
fluence of the past, however recent, on the future, no
combination of circumstances can ever be repeated even
once, let alone often. And apart from the possibility
of repetition, with exactly estimated variations at will,
a true experiment is impossible. What is often called
an experiment in Politics, — as for instance the imposi-
tion of a novel tax, or the introduction of a constitu-
tional change in the Government of a Dependency, — is,
in fact, nothing but a slight and special extension of the
114 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
field of purely historical enquiry, and is liable to many
of its characteristic defects. Even the use of statistical
results is only a peculiarly precise and formal mode of
conducting the methods of search implied in reference
to History and to the reports of travellers in other coun-
tries. In all their forms, History and Travels are the
chief sources for the facts to which observation must
be directed for the purpose of founding general political
propositions.
In a remarkable chapter of the book already alluded
to. Sir G. C. Lewis has carefully scrutinised the claims
of History to serve as a source for the ascertainment of
Political truth ; and his remarks should be well studied
as, at the least, a complete statement of the perils
attending the mis-reading of History, and the common
sophistical arguments founded on distorted historical
facts. It is probably rather in the broader, than in the
narrower, survey of the historical field that political
truth is to be discovered ; and the comprehensive view
of the whole past, taken by such political philosophers
as Auguste Comte, is less liable to generate political
error than the examination of the working of any
single institution or group of institutions, in a par-
ticular country.
The wider causes of the political deterioration of
Rome, — such as the inadequacy of the aristocratic
Senate to represent, to control, or to resist, the ever
growing multitude of the Commons, and the operation
of the system of land tenure and of slaveholding, as
well as the concentration of wealth in the hands of a
few, — are unmistakable indications of permanent ten-
dencies in human affairs, and, when cautiously stated,
afford safe general premises for political reasoning.
PEEMISES OF POLITICAL REASONING. 115
But causes of tlie above nature, — while they are only
ascertained and understood and distinctly formulated
after a patient study of all the accessible authorities,
and, as matter of fact, are by no means beyond the reach
of controversy yet, — existed during some centuries, and
were, some of them, at last co-extensive in their action
with the Eoman Empire.
The general truth that a constitutional structure
which is defective for purposes of confederation and
the want of a spirit of cohesion are fatal to the political
existence of a number of small States, inhabited by the
same race, and having common interests and even
sympathies, is certainly illustrated and enforced by the
broad facts of the History of Greece and of the British
Colonies in America.
Similarly, the history of modern France may fairly
be held to establish the fact that, in proportion as civili-
sation and education become equally diffused, a purely
selfish system of Government, in the interests of a
narrow class, becomes impossible, and if a change is not
brought about by timely reform, revolutionary violence
will attend the first social pressure or disaster, whether
occasioned by famine, by war, or by casual excitement.
The same truth has been abundantly driven home by
the recent history of other European countries; and
England has enjoyed of late a fortunate pre-eminence
in illustrating the same truth, by showing that revolu-
tion can be prevented by anticipating too loud a popular
cry for reform, and by making concessions just in time
to save the appearance of their being extorted by force.
Such broad historical lessons go far to encourage
and direct the statesman, as well as to support him in
the advocacy of principles of action which may, at the
I 2
116 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
moment, be unpopular in the particular region in
which he has to work. But they are of too indefinite
and extensive a kind to be the basis of specific courses
of action, and therefore can hardly be abused for a
dangerous purpose. It is otherwise with those minute
historical parallels which often furnish the food of
adroit rhetoricians, and against which an imperfectly
informed audience cannot always be on its guard.
Because the Senate of Rome was, at one period, one
of the ablest administrative assemblies ever known, it
is argued that a narrow aristocratic Assembly (however
composed) is the indispensable complement of every
sound political constitution, and even has certain
transparent advantages over every other form of
Assembly. Again, because the same Senate of Rome
became oligarchical, despotic, and corrupt, therefore
every other second Chamber of an aristocratical kind,
has, and must ever have, identically the same character-
istics. Because it was proved to be impolitic to tax in
a certain way the thirteen American Colonies, therefore,
it is argued, no English dependencies, to the end of
time, ought to be required to bear their share of the
expenditure incurred for their defence. Or, on the
other hand, because the American colonies have pros-
pered through their separation, therefore no effort is to
be made by suitable economic settlements, — as between
the Australian or South African Colonies and the
mother country, — to retain the loyal adhesion of
Colonies. It is obvious, at once, that arguments such
as these are superficial and worthless in the extreme.
Nevertheless they constantly appear and reappear, not
only on platforms and in newspapers, but in the most
serious debates in Legislative Assemblies.
REASONING BASED ON REPORTS OF TRAVELLERS. 117
The spurious reasoning based on the reports of
travellers is almost more familiar than the perverse
misreading of History. In the latter part of the last
century, Montesquieu and Eousseau gave popularity to
all sorts of political theories, some true and most of
them false, by adducing alleged practices adopted in
imperfectly known communities. Rousseau, indeed,
enforced this line of argument by his panegyrics on a
State of Nature, in virtue of which he held social and
political conditions to be commendable in proportion
as they receded backward from the prevalent habits of
the civilised States of the West.
Such vagaries of the imagination, indeed, have no
place in the political reasoning of the present day.
But, in their place, a true comparative science, based
on attention to the rude usages of uncivilised com-
munities, has attained inordinate proportions as supplj'-
ing a wholly satisfactory clue to the nature of man and
of human society. The modern reports of travellers
differ from the old in being exact, full, diversified,
multiplied, and exposed to every mode of critical test.
They are prepared with the help of all the acumen
and statistical completeness habitual in purely physical
investigations.
The result is that what have been long regarded
as fundamental institutions of society are felt to
have their authority shaken, and their permanence
endangered. Monogamic marriage, the domestic affec-
tions, the spiritual equality of man and woman, the
advantages of free institutions, and even of personal
liberty, which have been long treated as axioms in
christianised States, are felt to be in a state of solution,
and to possess only a temporary and relative, — in place
118 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
of an eternal and absolute — value. Polygamic societies,
instead of being neglected as data of political thonglits
or condemned as merely retrograde anomalies, are
patiently investigated as important political experi-
ments, and even indulgently nurtured in order to
prolong the process of social vivisection. Wide-spread
religious systems, confessedly false and corrupting, are
not only protected, but encouraged and stimulated, on
the ground of their possibly having some permanent
affinity for certain races of mankind. Even cruel and
obviously barbarous rites are witnessed with toleration,
and are repressed with timidity, for fear of their con-
cealing some yet unrecognised elements of humanity
which, if left alone, will one day be appreciated and
tabulated.
All this speaks of a primary and transitory phase in
tlie true use for political purposes of the information
supplied by travellers. No doubt the practices of races
yet in their infancy, and uninfluenced by contact with
people more advanced than themselves, may throw
much light on the general nature of man in the earlier
stages of the transition from all but animalism to a
genuine humanity. The fault in the reasoning arises
when it is attempted to draw from any number of such
observations, however varied and scrutinised, conclu-
sions as to the nature and requirements of man in a
social and political condition. It may be that even yet
civilisation has not advanced far enough for any uni-
versal propositions to be laid down as to man's essential
nature and possibilities. But, because these are still
unknown, that is no sufficient reason for resorting to
a wholly fictitious process in order to put on the ap-
pearance of scientific inquiry. It is, of course, helpful,
COGNATE DEPAETMENTS OF THOUGHT. 119
ill prosecuting a research into the indispensable con-
ditions of man in society and under Government, to
know as much as possible about him under all other
conditions. But the most complete knowledge of him,
under these other conditions, must be used with the
greatest caution and self-restraint, in the course of con-
verting truths applicable to man in his closest alliance
with the animal, into truths applicable to him in that
state of which the main characteristic is that the
physical and animal nature of the individual man is
wholly and finally subordinated to the spiritual nature
of man as a member of a political society.
Besides the difficulty of framing general political
propositions arising from the obscurity and the com-
plexity of the subject-matter, whether past or present, to
which alone observation can extend, — there is another
logical difficulty, appertaining to the scientific treatment
of Politics, which is peculiar to the present age, and is
closely connected with some of the peculiar advantages
for the prosecution of rigorous political thought which
this age pre-eminently possesses. This difficulty relates
to the due use and co-ordination of general propositions
borrowed from other, but cognate, departments of
thought and research, such as Economics, Statistics,
Ethics, and Law. While, as has been more than once
observed already, it is a pledge of the growing com-
pleteness of political studies that these increasingly
f.xact topics are being imported into all serious political
controversies, it is none the less essential for their due
use, and for the purpose of saving them from early
obloquy and distrust, that the syllogistic reasoning
based upon the propositions to which they severally give
120 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
rise should be fairlj and strictly conducted. To the dis-
proportionate and extravagant prominence, from time
to time given to one and another economic or ethical pro-
position, — of undoubted truth within its own limits, —
may be traced some of the strangesb vagaries of modern
politics, and some prevalent delusions which, when once
they have obtained a hold, can hardly be dislodged.
To give a casual illustration of the danger here
adverted to, it is sufficient to notice the extraordinary
influence in the political world exercised by Malthus'
very moderate and temperately stated argument to the
effect that population tends to increase at a greater
ratio than the means of subsistence. Tiiis was a mixed
social, economic, and physical, fact, which might be
used in all sorts of ways by political reasoners. As it
happened, it has been almost exclusively used to en-
force the opinion that it should be the object of all
legislators, in all European countries at the least, to
repress, and not to encourage, the growth of population.
It is a recognised economical truth that the sub-
stitution of machinery for hand labour tends to in-
crease national wealth, to promote a rise in wages, to
multiply employments, and to benefit the labouring
class. But it is also true that the sudden introduction
of machinery on a large scale, into an industry con-
ducted by hand labour, is usually attended, at first,
by wide-spread distress and poverty. To build a
national policy — so far as policy is concerned — on the
first of these propositions, to the neglect of the second,
must lead to disastrous consequences, and often has
led to them during the present century, especially
through the administrative action of Government
itself, operating as an employer on the largest scale.
FALLACIES IN POLITICAL REASONma. 121
In an important cliapter of his 'Treatise on Morals
and Legislation,' Bentham discusses the element of
' Time and Place ' in Legislation ; and it is just in
neglecting this element that the most abusive employ-
ment of newly-fledged ethical and economical propo-
sitions takes place. The customary arguments for and
against 'Capital Punishment' illustrate this class of
logical perils. Thus it is admitted as a proposition of
legislative science that there are certain advantages and
certain disadvantages in retaliatory punishments. One
class of disputants dwell exclusively on the advantages,
and recommend capital punishment. Another class
dwell only on the disadvantages, and object to it. In
formal reasoning, the advantages and the disadvan-
tages ought to be stated together, and set over against
each other.
But even when this is done, there is still the question
of time and place. It may be well to teach savages
what death means, by a public instruction of the most
open and ceremonious kind. It may also be well to
teach a generally civilised people what a reverence for
life is, by abstaining from judicial homicide. The intro-
duction of private executions in England shows that
this last argument is acquiring force in the present age.
The argument against retaliatory punishments, in an
advanced state of society, is used against the resort to
flogging for any offences whatever, even of the most
brutal description. An argument in favour of such
punishments, as applied to the same offences, is urged
on the ground that the criminals and their associates
in such cases are tarrying behind the rest of society and
can only be affected by the ocular demonstration of the
connexion of wrongdoing with physical pain.
122 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
In all these and like cases, a certain amount of
attention to the several propositions affirmed is due;
but too much is often made of them through their
being isolated from other important rival propositions,
through their being stated in too unqualified a shape,
or through too much or too little credit being given to
the actual results of empirical experience under certain
vrell- ascertained conditions.
A pernicious example of delusive reasoning of this
sort is supplied in all those cases in which igno-
rant credulity assumes the aspect of a modest de-
ference to superior scientific attainments, believed to
be possessed by a limited class of specialists, in certain
lines of enquiry calling for an exceptional amount of
protracted study and mental absorption. This is par-
ticularly the case in the various departments of the
medical profession. And yet, the greater the amount
of studious absorption and undeviating devotion which
medical specialists are required to bestow on their
occupations, the greater are the time, thought, and
energy which they must withdraw from social and
political pursuits.
It is, then, no disparagement of medical practi-
tioners to assert that, prima facie, they are less likely,
- -though analogous cautions are needed in the case
of religious ministers, military and naval officers, philo-
sophical students, and the devotees of the physical
sciences generally, — to be wise political advisers than
persons more conversant with the broader fields of
human affairs. Nevertheless, in practice it is found
that a notorious logical confusion prevails, by which the
value of a purely physiological, medical, or sanitary,
^act is imported into an entirely different field, and
FALLACIES LN" POLITICAL EEASONIXa. 123
made tlie basis of instantaneous and reckless legisla-
tion. The fact in question may, in itself, be of great
importance, but it needs to be laid patiently side by
side with, other facts, relating to such matters as public
liberty, police administration, centralised or localised
authority, espionage. Government interference, and
perhaps public morality, before legislation can wisely
take place. The authority, however, of the specialist
in his own department is not discriminated from his
authority, or want of authority, as a political adviser,
and, in a moment of public apathy, facile legislation
takes place, which it may take years of effort to undo.
It would be useless to attempt even to indicate all
the kinds of false and abusive reasoning which creep
into political arguments and often lead to dangerous
practical consequences. Indeed it is the custom with
writers on Logic to draw some of their most effective
illustrations of fallacies and sophistries from the field
of Politics. Owing to the extraordinary but, at the
moment, unrecognised dominion which custom and
tradition exercise over the minds of each generation,
at any given time there are usually found to prevail a
number of unconsciously held political beliefs and pre-
mises having a wide-spread operation, the real force of
which can only with diflB.culty be estimated at another
time and under different circumstances.
Thus, towards the close of the English Civil War,
and at the Eestoration, much attention was drawn to
idealised political communities such as those portrayed
by Harrington, Hobbes, Algernon Sydney, and, less
distinctly, by Milton. It was generally felt that there
was some type of excellence in political construction
124 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
which could be followed with advantage hj all States,
and from which the best organised States only de-
flected.
Sir Henry Maine, in his ' Ancient Law,' pointed out
how, similarly, the fiction of a ' Social Contract ' became
a dominant idea in England and France from the middle
of the seventeenth to the end of the eighteenth century,
and was only displaced at last by the rise of the modem
Historical School. The earlier prevalence of the Patri-
archal and ' Divine Right ' theories of Government is
equally notorious. In Greece and Rome the existence
of slavery was taken as a political premise, as in the
later Roman Empire the duty of supporting the estab-
lishment of Christianity.
Burke's antipathy to the constitutional proceedings
of the early leaders of the French Revolution was mainly
based on a foregone conclusion that the English consti-
tution, as re-settled on the accession of William of
Orange, was the only admissible pattern for all States
whatever, in all times, and that the modes of conducting
the English Revolution of 1688, were the only tolerable
methods of political renovation, whatever were the social
circumstances, or however peculiar were the obstacles
to be encountered.
There are still plenty of examples, on all sides, of
the extraordinary hold taken on those who should be
self-possessed statesmen by theories antagonistic (if
exclusively applied) to all Government, to order and to
public liberty. These theories are seldom quite destitute
of truth, and, where they are used as standards of revolt
against tyrannical injustice and oppression, the elements
of truth in them are of service as rallying points to
a scattered and usually indifferent population. But
FALLACIES IX POLITICAL REASONING. 125
"when applied to political construction, they are value-
less or pernicious. They are even found, owing to the
one-sided exaggeration which accompanies them, to be
self-destructive.
The aspirant for a newly wrought material and
artificial equality annihilates the sources of production
by withdrawing the stimulus to accumulate capital,
and only substitutes general poverty for unevenly but
widely distributed wealth. The advocate of over-
Government only succeeds in his ends by sacrificing
personal freedom, by weakening private and public
energy, and by substituting machinery for life. The
advocate of doctrines which would restrict Government
to the mere functions of defending property and order
must account it a success when the convenience, the
health, the morality, and the prosperity, of the innu-
merable weak and poor are placed under the irrespon-
sible control of the limited number of strong and rich.
The absolute or divine claims of Kings, of special
Dynasties, of the People, of Majorities, of Constitutions,
and even of mobs, whether rich or poor, have all been
asserted, and are some of them still being asserted on
many sides with unhesitating assurance, and not with-
out practical and most unequivocal efi'ect. The only
remedy or preventive is to be found in applying sound
logical methods to the subject in hand, with as much
caution, patience, perseverance, and breadth as well as
depth of insight, as is now habitually used in the
pursuit of the physical sciences.
126 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
CHAPTER ly.
THE GEOGEAPHICAL AEEA OP MODERN POLITICS.
When principles of Government are to be laid down,
it is requisite to put some limit to the number of
countries which, at a particular moment, are to be
considered. Of course, if Politics is a science, its
principles are universal and permanent in their ap-
plicability ; and, for the purpose of drawing inductive
conclusions, no data supplied from observations con-
ducted anywhere can be shut out. But, though the
truths of the science are invariable and irreversible,
and must be collected from experience gathered in the
greatest possible variety of situations, it is a misleading
attempt at generalisation to hold all political commu-
nities of equal relevancy at a given moment for the
purpose of political investigation either theoretical
or practical.
There is a certain normal condition of a State
which renders it a hopeful object of sound political
manipulation, and which fits it in a peculiar degree
for the function of imparting political lessons. No
doubt the weakest, the youngest, the most senile,
the most decrepit. State has its momentary lessons
on Government to convey, and will benefit from the
application to it of wise rather than unwise constitu-
tional adjustment and legislative methods. But, con-
THE GEOGRAPHIC.il AREA OF MODERN POLITICS. 127
sidering tlie enormous width of the field if it be not
limited, and the impediments to exact observation, it is
important, in proportion to the difficulties of disen-
tangling what are relevant facts from what are irre-
levant ones, to select the most remunerative spots and
to concentrate attention on them, while temporarily
neglecting those societies which satisfy curiosity and
afford bases for purely ethnological researches rather
than shed any broad light on politics.
Such a selection is always unconsciously made in prac-
tice, though the grounds of it are neither acknowledged
nor apprehended. The progressive societies of the
Western World usually arrest political attention at the
expense of the whole of those of the Eastern, with a few
noticeable exceptions, such as Japan. Some countries,
such as India and (to some extent) even the Australian
Colonies and China, are regarded with political con-
cern, less for their own sakes than for the sake of their
indirect influence on the Governmental action pursued
in European countries. Some countries attract attention
for the sake of some special social experiment conducted
within their limits ; and when the experiment is believed
to be completed they cease to interest till some new
emergencies or "vicissitudes again force them into promi-
nence. Such was the case of Eussia during the recent
emancipation of the serfs ; of the several Australian
colonies again and again, on the successive occasions
of their trying fresh constitutions ; and of the United
States, in respect of one and another permanent or
provisional institution, such as of polygamy in Utah,
of slavery, of Federalism in its successive forms, and of
a series of constitutional variations from time to time
introduced or practised.
128 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
A State may either be too young and immature, or
too effete, or too much subjected to special arresting
influences, to be counted as a relevant subject of direct
political action. In the course of development from
the condition of a mere congeries of tribes, with only
occasional and most imperfect organisation, to the con-
dition of a true State, a number of social changes take
place which all tend one way, though the rate and
modes of progress admit of all sorts of variations. The
character of these metamorphic manifestations is of
course of the greatest interest to the social philosopher,
the psychologist, and the general historical student ;
and the revelations of the facts of man's nature ob-
tained by such investigations, after being properly sifted
and systematised, can often be turned to direct account
by the political enquirer. But, as concerned in the
movements of the political world, or as affording direct
political instruction, immature States have no place.
Where immaturity ceases and a true political life
begins cannot always be decisively determined. But
the recognition of such a boundary to the field of pro-
fitable enquiry goes some way to help in drawing the line
with practical accuracy in the particular cases to which
alone doubt can extend. The most perplexing cases
are those of colonial societies or other novel settlements
founded by politically advanced races. The shock of
change of place, the experience of new and often arduous
economical conditions, and the absence of all familiar
moral guidance and sanctions, place such societies and
settlements in something of the same position as wholly
immature tribal communities. Nevertheless, heredi-
tary acquirements, active intellectual advancement and
imported constitutional traditions distinguish an im-
THE GEOaEAPHICAL AEEA OE MODERN POLITICS. 129
migrant race, in some essential political features,
from an aboriginal people, spontaneously making a
tentative progress towards civilisation.
The political interest attaching to the Australian
colonies and to the newly settled districts in the Western
States of America is partly related to the peculiar and
transitory experiments in Government or Sociology that
are being conducted within their limits, and partly to
their importance as subordinate parts of the whole
political systems of England and the United States. It
satisfies something more than political curiosity to
ascertain from actual experiments (using this term in
the loose way against which a caution has already been
interposed) whether two legislative chambers or one
are most favourable to the free and secure working of
Colonial institutions ; whether a purely representative,
or a conjoint representative and nominative system of
legislative organisation is most appropriate for the like
ends ; whether internal Federation among groups of
colonies, or territories geographically connected, is
favourable to their own advantage or the advantage of
the rest of the world.
But such questions, important as they are in their
own degree and time and place, are of quite secondary
moment when compared with such a consideration as
whether England should follow a policy of binding the
colonies more closely to herself by some, perhaps yet
untried, constitutional machinery or should do her
utmost to precipitate their entire political independence ;
or with such another consideration as whether the
Federal system of tlie United States can resist the strain
of distance and of vast diversity of local interest which
threatens its self- defensive policy of centralisation.
e:
130 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
Thus, in estimating the geograpliical area of modem
Politics, it is necessary and expedient to exclude from
consideration the internal political manifestations of all
Colonies, dependencies, and remote settlements, in pro-
fessed subordination to an independent State. This
result further excludes the internal Government of
British India from direct political cognisance as a
matter of scientific reflection.
Owing either to some essential political institutions
being as yet unformed or interrupted by immigration,
a State may be in such a condition of stagnation as not
to figure at all as an integer in the political world.
This condition of stagnation may be due to mere immo-
bility of temperament superinduced by continuously
operating moral or religious causes, or to long-protracted
oppression by an alien Government, or to illiberal insti-
tutions which fetter the intellect of the people and
hamper the growth of national energy.
It is scarcely necessary to cite in illustration of such
conditions China even at the present moment ; Japan
up to the middle of this century ; the countries of
Middle-Age Europe when crushed beneath the military
domination of Rome and then when confined within
the tight leading-strings of the Feudal system. In
such cases, as before, the political situation is of the
highest importance, as supplying scientific instruction ;
but to countries so circumstanced no further direct
political interest extends.
It is of great importance to notice the earliest
unmistakable symptoms of independent political life.
Such symptoms have disclosed themselves of late years
even in China ; and the waking up of Eussia from a
Jong dormant condition marks another recent extension
THE GEOaRAPHICAL AEEA OF MODERN POLITICS. 131
of the field of scientific politics. The suppression cf
public liberty and of true political energy in the Asiatic
States of native India, and in the Asiatic States inter-
vening between the Ottoman, the Russian, and the
British, dominions, in the same way removes all those
States from the purview of Politics strictly so called.
A State may not only be immature and stagnant,
but may have reached a condition, which, by a metaphor
borrowed from the analogous region of individual human
life, is often designated as senile. There is a sort of
exhaustion of faculty, of invention, of national feeling,
of purpose, which certainly seems to represent the stage
of life in an individual man at which the body has ceased
to be an adequate instrument of the spirit's activity, —
even if that activity itself is not rendered temporarily
torpid by disuse. History is full of instances of such a
failure of national energies after a brilliant promise of
lengthened vitality ; and some modern States present
instances scarcely less unequivocal, though, as the drama
is not yet closed, it may be premature to distinguish
between the symptoms of disease and those of old age.
The historical cases of senile failure of States are
especially valuable as explaining some of the causes of
this decadence.
It is well known that Rome, during the last two
hundred years of the Republic, was suffering from
three political evils which all co-operated to arrest her
growth, and which, but for the corrective sequence of
events which resulted in the Empire, must have precipi-
tated her ruin, or rather antedated it by some hundreds
of years. These evils were the prevalence of slave labour,
with its attendant social, industrial, and economical
paralysis ; the misgovernment of the remoter provinces
K 2
132 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
constantly in course of being annexed ; and the inefficient
governmental institutions for preserving tlie balance of
powers in the State and for adequately representing
the actual distribution of the political forces.
These several cancers in the State conduced to the
gradual substitution of an aristocratic plutocracy for
all the organs of Government which had sufficed for
the earlier Eepublican period before the acquisition of
territory outside Italy, but which were becoming more
and more unsuitable to the strain put upon them.
Nothing but bold and even audacious reform, such as
the Gracchi conceived but were, by themselves, unable
to carry into permanent operation, could have revived
the expiring energies of the State. It was only through
paroxysms of civic violence that a series of leaders with
broad political views and the capacity of giving practical
effect to them were ultimately brought to the top.
Marius, Sulla, Julius Csesar, and Augustus repre-
sented an order of men suited to the times, but wholly
different from the heroes of the older Eepublic. With
all their several shortcomings and vices, private and
l^ublic, they probably all co-operated to galvanise into
life a State that had, by military successes, acquired an
Empire which, at that stage of the world, it was only
just possible to administer with justice or safety.
The conspicuous parallel to the later stages of degra-
dation in the Roman Empire is the present state of
the Ottoman Empire. This Empire, indeed, has behind
it none of the peculiar and exhilarating antecedents of
the early Roman Republic. But it had, — in common with
the later Republic and the earlier Empire, — the faculty
of conquest and the taste for indefinite territorial
annexation. Unlike Rome, however, Turkey never had
THE GEOGRAPHICAL AREA OF MODERN POLITICS. 133
institutions of ^vhicli the memoiial and typical repro-
ductions might throw a beneficial shadow. The un-
relieved picture of its past is that of aggression,
massacre, fanaticism, and licentiousness. The only
foundation of Empire was physical courage. The
result is that wherever the Ottoman power could effec-
tually extend itself, the provinces have been unfitted
for self-government. The only art in which they are
accomplished students is that of revolution.
The prolongation of political vitality in the central
Government was a dream of some sanguine English
statesmen, of whom Lord Palmerston was the most
conspicuous and the most influential, at the time of
the Crimean War. This visionary hope is now dispelled. -
The rapid decadence of Turkey is found to be due to
senility and not transient disease. The only relevant
political questions affecting her are as to the future
Government of the provinces in course of separation
from her one by one, and, in the interval while the
process of disintegration is yet uncompleted, as to the
amount and quality of the pressure from without which
can be brought to bear, in order to vindicate, in the
provinces still submitted to her, the barest claims of
humanity. The special cases of Egypt and of the
Turkish provinces in North Africa have a political
interest, not because they form, technically, part of the
Ottoman dominions, but either as affecting the mutual
relations of European States, or as disclosing some of
the phenomena of nascent States, acquiring a true
political character for the first time.
By this process of selection of States politically
important at the present time — either because they
134. THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
exhibit real and independent manifestations of genuine
political activity or because thej afford political in-
struction of a complete kind, — the area of thought and
observation is reduced to countries and populations of
a comparatively limited extent. Of course in any such
demarcation as is here attempted, where such subtle
grounds of distinction are admitted as alleged imma-
turity, torpidity, and final exhaustion, there must be
something arbitrary and inconclusive in drawing a
precise line. But, if once it is admitted that some such
line exists, and that its direction can be ascertained by
reference to established political principles, the dispute
as to whether a given State, of doubtful pretensions,
lies on one side or another of the line, is of very small
moment. When the occasion is presented, by a current
controversy or a pressing problem, for including that
State within the area of relevantly important political
communities, its claims are sure to be argued ah initio,
and no theoretical preconceptions as to its exclusion
from consideration would be allowed to prevail.
Nevertheless, it may be worth while to distribute
the politically relevant States into those of primary
importance, those of secondary importance, and those
of only occasional or hypothetical importance.
To the first of these classes belong, according to
the above mentioned principles of selection and dis-
tribution, all the Independent States of Europe, only
excepting the very recently emancipated Provinces of
Turkey, which are so far under European control and
protection that their destinies are determined in a great
measure by the mutual relations and policy of other
States over which they directly exercise a very insigni-
ficant influence. But, as to this exception, the line
THE GEOGKAPHICAL AEEA OF MODERN POLITICS. 13.5
can only be drawn uncertainh^ and while Greece is
clearly on the political side of the line, Servia, Rou-
mania, and the other provinces which have attained a
practical release from, or modification of, their vassalage
to the Ottoman Empire, are on the non-political side of
the same line.
The United States is a prominent member of the
class of States of primary political importance, and
Japan is effectually asserting her claims to a like posi-
tion. It might be a matter of indeterminable con-
troversy how far China, — overborne as her Government
is by Eussian, French, and English influences, and
internally oppressed by the immobility and decentralisa-
tion of her political system, — is becoming on a par
with Japan as a matter of political concern. China is
both old and young, progressive and stagnant. Pro-
bably a few years will decide the true place of China in
the political world. Its manifestations are too recent,
too confused, and too equivocal, to enable it at present
to rank side by side with the equably and freely de-
veloped State of Japan, and still less with the States of
Europe and the United States.
To the class of States of secondary political im-
portance belong all newly-formed but independent
States ; all mature, but quasi-dependent States ; and all
States, which, though (perhaps) in process of degrada-
tion and dissolution, are not yet advanced far enough
in the course of decline to cease to be objects of political
regard. The first of these groups contains such of
the recently emancipated provinces of the Ottoman
Empire as are not included, according to the above
mentioned tests, in the class of States of primary
importance; and States recently emerged from bar-
136 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
barism, such as certain islands in tlie Pacific Ocean,
especially the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands, and also
some of the organised political communities in the
interior of Africa. The second group, — that of mature
but quasi-dependent States, — includes Egypt and the
provinces of the Ottoman Empire on the Northern
Coast of Africa ; the native States of India ; and such
States as Affghanistan and Persia, which owe their
significance mainly to the neighbourhood of more im-
2)ortant States. The third group, of effete States, not
3'et quite exhausted, includes some of the political
communities in South America with a. Spanish or
Portuguese origin, and the Ottoman Empire.
To the class of States of occasional or hypothe-
tical importance belong those political communities
which may or may not be true ' States ' in the strict
meaning of the term given by International law, but
which, any way, from time to time exhibit such marked
political manifestations of an interesting kind, on so
large or so prominent a scale, that they cannot be left
out of account in defining the area of significant politics
as presented at any particular moment. The internal
Government of British India, though on one side of it
only a phase of English Politics, is, on another side of
it, rife with political problems and experiments, with
which England and the rest of the world generally have
only a very indirect concern. The same is true of the
political manifestations of the Australian Colonies, in
respect of constitutional adjustments, the occupation
of land, taxation, commercial tariffs, and immigration.
The United States of America, again, disclose, in the
internal and local Government of the component
members of the Union, a quantity of political expert-
THE GEOGRAPHICAL AREA OF MODERN POLITICS. 137
eiice which is none the less instructive and morally
impressive, as well as urgent, because the ' States ' of
the Union are, in one aspect of them, only subordinate
portions of a comprehensive whole.
On the same principle the constitutions accorded
from time to time by the Western Powers to special
provinces of the Ottoman Empire, such as Syria,
Eastern Bulgaria, and Crete, have attracted to them-
selves an amount of political attention wholly out of
proportion to the relations of the countries themselves
to the decrepit central Government on which they are
technically dependent. In the same way it has happened
that the Government of Dutch colonial settlements,
whether in Java or in the* Indian Ocean or in South
Africa, has presented distinct political problems of a
general interest which has far exceeded the concern
that would have been bestowed upon them in their
relations to the kingdom of Holland.
The object of these observations is to show that,
while it is necessary to classify the existing political
communities of the world, in order to ascertain their
relative political significance at any given moment, yet
that the line between States which are more and those
which are less important can only be drawn with hesi-
tation and difficulty, and never in such a way as to
exclude the possibility of controversy at all points.
Furthermore, the line is constantly shifting, and must
be incessantly retraced afresh. Sometimes the line
is violently displaced ; and the issue of a battle, the
sequel of a pestilence or famine, or even a mistake in
diplomacy, may have the effect of reducing to protraci^d
political insignificance a State lately the ' observed of
all observers.'
138 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
CHAPTER V
THE PEIMART ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL LIFE AND
ACTION.
It is not the mere suggestion of historical considera-
tions which enforces the notion that there is in every
political community a group of elements or factors
which are presupposed in the very existence of Govern-
ment, and on the due manipulation of which successful
Government depends.
A true State only comes into being when these
primordial components have attained a certain stage of
development ; and its vitality, at all stages of its growth,
is threatened whenever these components have their
integrity impaired, or are badly adjusted, or when they
spontaneously decay. That there are such indispensable
elements in the compositions of every State is admitted
in every political controversy that does not deal with a
purely ideal world, or Utopia, where the ingredients
and conditions can be created as well as handled at the
controversialists' will. Bat an attempt to enumerate
such elements for all conditions of society in all time
would give a delusive appearance of absoluteness to a
Science which must always continue relative to the
chraiging conditions of humanity and of social develop-
(in Aristotle's time, and even in the beginning of
PEIMARY ELEMENTS OE POLITICAL LIEE AND ACTION. 1 39
this century in America, slavery was treated, consciously
or -unconsciously, as a necessary and invariable con-
comitant sentiment of all political society, or of political
society in certain parts of the world. ; The mere lapse
of time, changes in ethical sentiment, and the shock
of events, have rendered this mode of thought at the
present day, even in America, an anachronism. Slavery
is universally denounced as, at the best, an accidental
and transitory institution which, instead of being an
essential constituent of human society, is, in all its
forms, its most formidable foe.
(Another fact, which up to late into this century has
worn the appearance of an immutable institution, is the
political subordination of women to men.] Though
ancient polities differed much from one amother in
the freedom allowed to women, and such charac-
teristic societies as those of Athens, Sparta, and Eome,
— let alone the earlier ones of Egypt and Palestine, —
distributed the functions of men and women each
according to its own customary prepossessions, yet they
one and all, it would seem (leaving, for the moment,
the still unsettled problem of Egyptian civilisation, at
certain stages, out of account), concurred in giving an
enormous political, legal, and social preponderance to
men over women. Mr. John Stuart Mill, following
the rational divination of Bentham, was the first, in
his ' Subjection of Women,' to explain this universal
preference, — not to say injustice, — by reference to the
historical advantage enjoyed by men through their pos-
session of that special sort of physical strength which,
in the earlier stages of society, is most conspicuously in
demand. Travellers among incipient communities have
one and all substantiated this view, and have shown
140 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
that, although there are not wanting examples of com-
munities in which women have a social preponderance
over men, yet in these cases it is the women and not
the men who, from superior muscular strength, courage,
agilitj, endurance, or numbers, bear the main brunt of
the conflict with nature and with competing races.
Mr. Mill's argument derives illustration and force
from the notorious fact that the less militant, feudal,
and physically contentious society becomes, the larger
is the space found for women's activity, and the more it
encroaches on the occupations traditionally reserved to
men. It also is admitted with less and less reluctance,
that even in estimating and comparing degrees of
physical strength, nervous energy; and elasticity or
adaptability, capacity for endurance, susceptibility to
the claims of unforeseen emergencies, are not only of
more importance in an advanced community than the
mere muscular strength which resists mechanical ob-
stacles, but that these qualities are found in average
women more abundantly than in average men. This
is found to be the case in spite of all the disparagement
which women have suffered owing to the dominating
tradition in favour of the superiority of the claims of
men. It can only be seen by gradually equalising, on a
large scale, the political condition and the general
occupations of men and women, to what diverse so-
cial functions they are respectively most adapted by
nature.
However this question may be ultimately decided,
it is now only relevant to notice that it is recognised,
as it never was recognised up to the beginning of this
century, as an open one. Not, indeed, that premature
efforts have not already been made to close it, by various
PRIMAEY ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL LIFE AND ACTION. 141
kinds of solutions more or less different from the old and
almost obsolete one. M. Comte's system lias elevated
women to a higher intellectual position in a social consti-
tution than has that of any other thinker, and if it with-
draws them from the task of practical administration,
it depresses lower than other political constructions
the position of all those conversant only with practical
arts, — including the art of Government. M. Comte,
however, emphasises far more than any other reformer
in this direction the final opposition in faculty of men
and women. Mr. Mill hardly admits any permanent or
essential opposition at all.
It is not necessary to give further illustrations of
the truth that while there are undoubtedly, in any given
State, at any given time, certain facts and institutions
which must be looked upon as primary and indispen-
sable, and as forming the material on which the states-
man is called to work, yet there are very few facts,
indeed, even of those bound up with the constitution
of man himself, which must be treated as unalterable
and irreversible.
For the purpose, however, of Political science as
capable of being studied at the present day and as
coextensive in its application, in different degrees, to
the geographical area already limited, it is possible to
assign certain main facts, conditions, or relationships,
which may be treated as permanent and as calling for
recognition by the statesman.
Without, perhaps, being exhaustive, the following
list certainly includes a large number of the facts, con-
ditions, and relationships, which, either independently
of each other, or in their combination, are at the very
root of political society.
142 the science of politics,
Persons.
Age.
Sex.
Physical conditions and liabilities.
Mental and emotional conditions (including reli-
gious proclivities).
Heredity.
Capacity for association.
Things.
Land.
Movables.
Sea, and Water generally.
Relationships.
Domestic.
Social.
Economical.
National.
Though, for strictly juridical, or even for some philo-
sophical, purposes each of these political elements must
be uivestigafced separately, there would be a falsity in
applying the same method of research when the object
is purely political. There is hardly a single one of
these elements which the politician can isolate, even
for a moment, from the rest and can contemplate alone,
and it is in a due combination of them, and in a sort
of perspective adjustment, that he exhibits his skill and
scientific attainments to most advantage.
The original, as well as the permanent, function of
Government is the exercise of such a control over the
relations of persons to one another in a State as may
bring those relations into accord with the requirements
of pure reason, may protect majorities and minorities
PRDIAEY ELE^IENTS OF POLITICAL LIFE AND ACTION. 143
from aggressive interruptions on the part of each other,
and may, by the help of the best economic organisation,
facilitate the mere mechanism of society in the pre-
sumed interest of all its members.
Of course, it is scarcely necessary to recur to history
and to current facts in order to demonstrate that
Governments have seldom confined themselves, even in
outward profession, to these limited functions, and that
even where they do so in outward show, the inherent
vagueness of any attempted detailed description of
these functions renders all sorts of extravagant pre-
tensions admissible and even plausible. But, it being
assumed that the functions of Government are, for
scientific purposes, of the broad nature above described,
it appears at once that it is with the relationships of
persons to each that Government is alone concerned.
These relationships are of various kinds ; and are either
absolute, in so far as they terminate in the persons
themselves who are the subjects of them, or sire relative,
in so far as they are concerned with objects, that is,
with material thingSj immovable and movable, outside
the persons themselves who are the subjects of the
relationship.
A leading fact to be noticed is that the relationships
controlled and formulated or even stimulated by Govern-
ment must be, in themselves, natural, — that is, in accord-
ance with the physical, moral, and mental constitution
of man as a social being. This constitution is deter-
mined (as Aristotle put it) not by what man is, at any
given time or in any given place, but by what he is
capable of becoming, and that in the most favourable cir-
cumstances ; that is what, in the absence of obstacles,
he tends to become. It is difficult to speak of a 'natural'
144 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICrJ.
constitution or ' natural ' order witliout committing a
petitio principii. It is so easy in speech to confuse
what is customary and perhaps in the highest degree
artificial, or what is the result of mere negl6ct and
immaturity, with what is ' natural' and necessary, that
the utmost precautions can hardly guard any state-
ment on the subject sufficiently to avoid fallacious
error.
Nevertheless, the researches of physical and psycho-
logical science seem to prove that man's physical con-
stitution is governed by definite and unalterable laws,
although the discovery of those laws is difficult in the
extreme, and the laws themselves are found to differ
within certain narrow limits in different times and
countries. What is true of man's purely physical con-
stitution seems to be proved more and more convincingly
to be true of man's moral constitution as a member of
society. The problem, indeed, of ascertaining the laws
which govern this normal condition becomes increasingly
difficult with every step upward in the scale of social
complexity and ethical obscurity. But the arduousness
of finding out and stating a law must be clearly dis-
tinguished from any doubt attaching to the fact that
there is or is not such a law.
It is of practical quite as much as of speculative im-
portance to recognise that human relationships, such as
daily experience on every side and the whole current of
past history shows them to be, are the independent frame-
work on which the politician works, and not due to his
own creative activity. In all affairs, human as well as
mechanical, it is easiest to work in the direction of least
resistance. The resistance is least where the common
appetites, the sentiments, the desires, the passions, of
PRIMARY ELEjVIENTS OF POLITICAL LIFE AND ACTION. 1 15
mankind rather co-operate than oppose. Government,
indeed, is found, historically, to grow out of some
preponderant impulse in favour of supporting existing
facts and institutions. But these very facts and insti-
tutions themselves are only the aggregate expression of
instincts, habits, propensities, operating through long
periods of time and by means of the intensifying force
of concert and of associations of all kinds hardened into
grooves. At the time that true Government of a
permanent kind has come into being, society is becoming
self-reflective. Not indeed that Government itself is a
creation of deliberate reason, and still less that its
reason is always in excess of the reason to be found
elsewhere in the society. All that can be said is that
it is from the very first the expression of the best and
most orderly dispositions to be found in the average
mass of the community. If it were not so, it could
only persevere for a time by virtue of physical force
exercised either by a foreign power or by the few over
the many. It could not live and still less grow and
develope.
The case is, however, otherwise. Though a primitive
Government is weak in the extreme, yet it subsists and
progresses only because, on the whole, it is the embodi-
ment of the new capacity and desires of the bulk of the
people for national organisation. Hence, not only is it
inexpedient for a Government to trifle with the fixed
and spontaneous practices and dispositions of the
people, but it is impossible for it to do so for long
together without committing an act of suicide. In
very early society, there is only the choice, but there is
the choice, between Government and a return to bar-
barism. In a later stage, as in that of early Greece,
L
146 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
political inventiveness has multiplied the niTtnL^^r of
alternatives. Thus Constitutions take their rise, and a
limited number of possible forms of Government, —
that is, the rule of one, of a few, of many, — are ad-
mitted as alternative ways of escape from a recurrence
to anarchy.
It is the great gain of the modern world that the
number of constitutional forms s^ems almost inex-
haustible, the possible modes of combination of Cham-
bers and schemes for representation being as large
as human ingenuity itself. Therefore the question
now never is nor can be whether the alternative of
anarchy is. to be selected, on any failure of Government
to do the work expected of it, but only what modifica-
tion in the existing form of Government is most
\irgently called for.
Not, indeed, that changes in the form of Govern-
ment are not still often enough revolutionary and
attended by a social catastrophe. But if the State has
any vitab'ty anywhere in it, such phenomena are only
transient. An instant competition takes place between
the advocates or personal representatives of the various
forms of Government between which, at the place and
time, a choice is seen to lie, and very little time is lost
before, at all events, an experimental Government is
in full exercise of supreme power.
It will thus be noted that from first to last, in spite
of all divergencies from its true end and aim, and of
all personal errors and crimes, every Government
which has lasted in any State has done so in virtue of
its aptly recognising and co-operating with the spon-
taneous dispositions of the great mass of the people.
It becomes, then, of the utmost importance for a legis-
TENUEE OF LANH 147
lator who, in conformity with the constitution of his
State, is bent on adapting to circumstances and needs
the general rules which bind the people to inform
himself what are the institutions and tendencies which,
at the moment, must be treated as essentially immu-
table. These institutions and tendencies may admit
of indefinite adjustment and improvement, and the
necessity for this may, by proper measures for diffusing
information, be made intelligible and even popular.
But to modify is not to abrogate, and any untimely
attempt to do the latter, will absorb, in a hopeless
effort, all the energy needed for the former.
A prominent instance of the function of Govern-
ment in controlling and developing, without ignoring,
an institution is supplied by the history, in all coun-
tries, of the Tenure of Land. It is only when a race
or aggregation of tribes becomes settled on a definite
territory that all the conditions can be satisfied on
which national life, in the true sense, depends. No
doubt there have been vast assemblages of races, such
as the Teutonic races, that in the fourth and fifth
centuries overran the territories of the Eoman Empire,
which have possessed a considerable amount of true
national organisation. But the want of fixity in their
occupation of the soil was a defect in their political
structure which could not be made up by the presence
of other elements, such as monarchy, public order,
and even national self -consciousness and cohesiveness.
The want of fixity interfered with the steady develop-
ment of family life, and of economical relationships
and enterprise, and with the treasuring up from one
age to another of the hereditary associations supplied
L 2
148 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
by place, scenery, and neighbourhood, on which po
many of the ingredients of national existence rely
for their proper nutriment. The growth of towns was
also rendered impossible ; and this might be taken as,
in itself, a fatal obstacle to national life and expansive-
ness.
Assuming then, that the occupation of a definite
territory is an inseparable factor in true political
existence, the question is presented, at the earliest
moment of national existence, — and has to be answered
again and again at successive crises in the later history
of the State, — upon what principles the distribution of
the soil is to take place.
The question of the distribution of land is, in fact,
only a part of the larger question relating to the general
distribution and use of all material things whatsoever.
Long before the true State is formed, and when first
the instincts of order and property are beginning to
assert themselves, rough rules and customs are evolved
for the use, acquisition, transfer, and even inheritance
or forfeiture, of such physical objects as are appreciated
at an early stage of society, but are not supplied in pro-
portion to an indefinite demand. But the regulations
existing for such purposes, interesting as they are as
an exhibition of primitive social usage and as illus-
trating the primordial stages of law, have little political
significance.
It is only when society becomes in a measure
settled, and when agriculture and the growth of towns
become characteristic phases of a fully formed, though
yet elementary, national life, that the rules for the
appropriation of physical objects, — and most of all of
the national soil, — become of ever increasing moment
TEXUKE OF LAND. 149
as purely political factors. So soon as merely preda-
tory and pastoral habits are relinquished, the com-
petition for land begins. It is instantly perceived that
even if, in one sense, there is enough land for the real
v^rants of each and all, yet that one piece of land differs
Irom another in its propinquity to the centre of the
national life, in its capacity for being cultivated and
improved, and in its possession of facilities for the con-
veyance of its produce to markets. Its quality, and, at
a little later stage, its scenic attractions, and hereditary
or other like sentimental associations, introduce new
grounds of distinction between one portion of land and
another.
Various social and leo^al incidents of a familiar sort
follow in the wake of these facts. Of these there have
been conspicuous illustrations in the emphatic enforce-
ment of class and plutocratic distinctions, brought
about through the medium of the enormous slave-
worked farms (latifundia), which so heavily weighted
the later Roman Republic ; the military ascendency and
minutely regulated gradation of classes which charac-
terised the Feudal system throughout Western Europe ;
and the phenomenon of rent which, with the attendant
institution of the relationship of landlord and tenant,
has had so profound an influence on the distribution of
classes in many countries of Europe, and most of all in
Great Britain and Ireland.
The occupation of land has, up to the present cen-
tury, proceeded very much by hazard, and has been
determined fir more by specious considerations of imme-
diate justice, and of the commanding claims of public
order from day to day, than by any deliberately con-
ceived policy. There have, however, during the last
}50 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
two centuries, been causes at work which have gradu-
ally changed the land question from one of law and
administration into one of a purely political order.
Such causes are the vast emigration movement
which, through the colonisation of the American Con-
tinent and Australasia, has been proceeding at a
constantly accelerated rate of activity. The effect of
this occupation of temporarily unlimited territory on
a vast scale has set free the statesmen of the coun-
tries primarily concerned to treat the question of land-
appropriation from a wholly new point of view. No
doubt the actual tenure of land in the United States of
America, in Canada, and in the Australasian Colonies,
has been determined very much by the accidental
circumstances in which the original settlement took
place. Sometimes, — as in the case of South Australia,
— a deliberate attempt was made from the first to
distribute the soil in such a way as to prevent too
rapid a dispersion of the holders of it, and to favour
rather than to impede the development of towns. In
other cases, as with some of the early American
Colonies, the purpose of a grant of land to a chartered
body of Colonists was the cultivation of some special
product for the home market. In some of these Colonies
the land was acquired by pacific arrangement with the
aboriginal inhabitants, for the purpose of supplying
the wants of a community already possessing a religious
and quasi-political organisation.
What distinguishes all these cases of the occupa-
tion on an extended scale of the soil of new countries,
is that the problem is felt from the first to be a large
political one, and not a oriere narrow legal one. No doubt
in most of the actual cases, all sorts of mistakes.
TENUEE OF LAND IN INDIA. 151
BelSshnesi, false policy, and reckless neglect of priceless
opportunities, have played their part. But still the rela-
tionships of citizens to each other, in respect of land,
were not determined by the accidental course of a slowly
developing civilisation, but by views entertained by
numbers of persons consorting with each other, having
consciously in view ulterior as well as present interests,
and having a practically unrestricted territory to deal
with. The question thus assumed political propor-
tions.
To a similar, though not identical, class of causes
of the recent development of the political aspects of
land ten are belongs the process of acquisition by England
of British India.
The result of the British acquisitions in India has
been (speaking generally) the displacement of the
older land-tenure system, as based on an organisation
of Village Communities, and the substitution, partly
of the landlord and tenant system existing in England,
partly of systems of peasant proprietorships, guaranteed
by settlement for a long but definite period, partly of
new and peculiar tenures, proved to be specially advan-
tageous to the cultivator of the land, and introduced
for the first time in compliance with the Eeports of
Commissions.
The policy of all these land systems has been
abundantly criticised ; and Sir H. S. Maine, especially
in his ' Village Communities,' after pointing out the
modes in which the British Government has anticipated
the natural decay of antiquated institutions, expresses
alarm at the social disintegration likely to be brought
about by the premature substitution of individual
for corporate ownership. Other objections have been
152 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
founded on the alleged interference with the rights of
private contract, with the rights engendered by pre-
vious Government settlements, and with such secondary
rights of money lenders and mortgagees as, through the
long operation of pauperising systems of tenure, had
grown up in profusion. Nevertheless the Government
has persisted in its course ; and land legislation in
India is now, as heretofore, conducted solely in defer-
ence to broad political, and scarcely at all in deference
to narrow legal, considerations.
A similar state of things is just being witnessed in
Ireland, though the immediate causes which have
wakened up the British Government to a political view
of the whole situation are different from what they
were in India. Both in India and in Ireland the proxi-
mate pauperisation of the bulk of a population mainly
agricultural supplied the needful impetus to a political
change of attitude. In Ireland, however, a long series
of acts of misgovernment had generated disaffection of
a serious kind, while the neighbourhood of England
rendered a change in the Irish land-tenure system an
evil omen to proprietors of land on the other side of a
narrow channel. In India, on the other hand, the
obstacles to reform due to prejudice, fixity of ideas,
race antipathies, and vested interests, though by no
means absent, yet were too scattered and intangible to
compete with the urgent necessity for developing the
country and for putting a stop to the recurrent famines.
In both countries one and the same result has been
brought about, — that of treating the tenure of land
from a political, and no longer only from a purely legal
and administrative, standpoint.
Events on the Continent of Europe, from the begin-
L/\2sD LAWS IN FE.iNCE, GERMANY, AND RUSSIA. 153
ning of this century, have tended in the same direction.
In Germany the system of land tenure, credited "with
the name of Stein (though the proportions of liis
leform have been exaggerated), was introduced as a
political cure for widespread evils, the relics of expiring
feudalism and of the social devastation caused first by
the Thirty Years' War and then by the military aggres-
siveness of Prussia. In France, the sudden break-up
of feudal and aristocratic institutions which had long
been an anachronism threw the great mass of the soil
of the country into the market, and made it share in
the purely political reformation by which, at the time
of the Eevolution and since, all the institutions of the
country have been recast. In Russia, within still more
recent times, by the abolition of villenage a most far-
reaching reconstruction of land tenure has been brought
about, the effects of which on the purely political des-
tinies of the country, while they must be extensive,
cannot yet be evaluated.
It is, then, admitted on aU hands, and has been
authenticated in one country after another in the most
distinct language, that the relations of citizens to one
another in respect of land is one of the most prominent
departments of Political Science. When once so much
is Confessed, it becomes necessary to examine how
different modes of distributing the soil of a country
md of providing for its acquisition, use, and transfer,
bear upon the political well-being of a country. A
number of problems are thus originated which can
only be solved in precise detail for each country, age,
and class of circumstances to which it is intended to
apply them. Certain leading principles are, however,
already ascertained, on a due apprehension of which
154 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
must depend any satisfactory solution of the problems
which may occur.
The principle of first importance is that the soil of
a country belongs to the whole population, present and
to come, and not to any limited part of it. Stated in
this way, the proposition is either a truism or is likely
to be denounced as flagrantly or absurdly untrue.
And, indexed, it is one of those propositions both the
direct aj0&rmative and the direct negative of which are
equally untrue, and which can best be stated in an
abbreviated form, solely in order to call attention to
the appendant qualifications. The best explanation of
the proposition is an historical one.
In the earlier stages of society the quantity of land
is, except in very rare circumstances, far out of pro-
portion to the simple wants of the population of which
the State is composed. By one method and another,
— of an accidental kind so far as political intention goes,
— the whole soil is gradually appropriated. Through
the continuous operation of customary usages, origina-
ting in convenience or in common sentiments, of judicial
decisions made in compliance with current notions of
abstract justice, and of occasional legislation taking
place from time to time in order to supply the short-
comings of Courts of Justice, rules are laid down for
the acquisition, use, and transfer, of the national soil.
But while this goes on, the population or its wants,
and generally both together, increase indefinitely, while
the land remains the same in quantity, and its capacity
of use only increases at a wholly disproportionate rate.
If this process were to go on vdthout limit, or
without being arbitrarily arrested, the portion of the
population which, through the competition for wealth,
ORIGIN OF LAND LAWS. 155
had been worsted in tlie social struggle, would be
excluded from the territory altogether. In countries
where excessive emigration is going on, this process is
already at work. It is however almost always impeded
at a much earlier stage. Gross apparent inequality of
fortune, widespread pauperism, unsatisfied ' hunger for
land,' and competition for a share in agricultural
profits, awaken the attention of the statesman to the
fact that land is a political instrument, which cannot
be treated like other physical things, — as capable of
being indefinitely created or reproduced through birth,
growth, or manufacture.
On further consideration, it is found that it is only
by an historical accident or series of accidents that the
national soil has been exclusively appropriated by a com-
paratively minute fraction of the population ; and that
it would be irrational and unjust to jeopardise the whole
future fortunes of the general community by conform-
ing, in deference to merely sentimental considerations
or to self-interested appeals from private persons, to a
state of things which, when analysed, is found to be
ethically indefensible. At the same time, the require-
ments of internal locomotion, the demand for public
works and structures, the increasingly recognised in-
terests of public health, recreation, education, and even
refinement, combine to press upon Government the
necessity of putting in, on behalf of the people as an
integral whole, novel and preponderating claims to a
share in the land already absorbed.
Still further reflection and observation teach that
the State has other ulterior interests, in respect of the
land, which far outvie the historical claims of the
actual proprietors. Some modes of tenure are found
156 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
more con iucive than others to good agricnltiire, to the
creation of an interest in public affairs, to the formation
of stability and continuity in common political thought,
and to the simplification of Local Government. It must
be the object of a judicious statesman to seize every
opportunity which may offer, to change the v^orse for
the better system of tenure, and the more broadly
statesmanlike habits of mind are diffused, the more
such changes are likely to be facilitated.
The way this characteristic modern view of the
conflicting interests of the whole community, and of
private proprietors, in respect of land formulates itself
is by asserting that the land is, or ought to be, national
property and not susceptible of being finally absorbed
by private persons and their hereditary representatives
from one generation to another. To maintain this
doctrine, and still more to enforce it by practical legis-
lation, naturally excites the strongest antipathies in a
variety of quarters, on the ground of its being redolent
of ' confiscation,' and of its implying an alleged
national breach of faith with existing proprietors.
The Feudal system, which was at the root ol the
land tenure in the most important countries of Wes-
tern Europe, reserved the dominant claims of the Feudal
monarch, who personified the State as paramount over
all derived estates, and ' allodial ' property became in
the highest degree exceptional. The progress of that
system, however, was first to transmute service into the
payment of rent, so far as the subordinate and derived
estates went; and, at the same time, through aris-
tocratic encroachments on the Crown, — or rather,
through a fresh division of functions between the
Crown on the one hand and its high Councillors and
PROGEESS OF LAND LEGISLATION. I57
officers on the other,— to reduce the significance, or
abolish the memory, of services due to the Crown.
It thus came about that the larger landed pro-
prietors stepped into the place of the Crown, so far
as its paramount ownership of the national land went,
while they have not inherited from the Crown, to-
gether with their estates, the corresponding political
obligations. Hence, in the countries where the Feudal
system has taken the deepest root and for the longest
time, — such as England and France, — the laws as
made by the nobility, or as being the surviving relics
of the system itself, especially favoured the larger pro-
prietors, and conduced to the accumulation of estates
in a very limited number of hands. At the same time
the moral claims of the cultivator, and of the actual
resident on the soil, had a far worse chance of being
eifectually asserted or borne in mind than might have
been the case had the tenure of land been left to follow
the more spontaneous development which took place
in territories which were longer under the shadow of
customary institutions protected by the waning force
of the Roman Empire, — such as Italy, Switzerland, and
the South of France.
Of course, when the charge of ' confiscation ' is
made against any contemplated re-assertion of national
against private claims, it must be remembered that
such a charge would only be justified if the perpetual
policy of a State in favour of deferring to the claims of
abstract Justice were really infringed. These claims,
undoubtedly, demand that reasonable expectations,
called into being by the State itself, should be satisfied
to the utmost extent possible, and, at least, never left
o:it of serious account.
158 ' THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
But when a question of abstract Justice presents
itself, a solution cannot be obtained by taking account
of the claims on one side and no account at all of
those on the other. If, through a series of political
accidents during a long period of time, any important
class of the community professes to have enjoyed
privileges or exclusive advantages, from which other
equally important classes have thereby been shut out,
the absolute claims of Justice itself demand that a
re-adjustment be effected with as little delay as pos-
sible, though, also, with the least possible economical
or moral loss to either of the competing classes of
claimants. In respect of new land-legislation, pecu-
niary compensation can usually go some length in
avoiding needless economical loss; though it may be
that the loss to certain sentiments of ownership may
be irreparable.
If it seems harsh that the burden of sudden reforms
should all fall on a single generation, it is also harsh,
in another way, that a single generation of taxpayers
should have to pay the price of compensation to the
vested interests violated. This inequality of pressure
in national burdens between one generation and another
is a necessary, though often vexatious, consequence, of
the continuity of State life, and it will always be the
aim of the wise and just statesman, by loans and
payment of loans and other financial devices, to dis-
tribute, as equally as may be, the burdens of the State
between one generation and others.
Besides the characteristics of the individual man
and woman, the fact of which is assumed in the
organisation of the State, there are relationships into
MAERIAGE. 159
which persons of both sexes and all ages equally enter,
which, through their internal coherence and external
links with each other form the material out of which
the State is moulded and consolidated. The groups
so constituted are Families having their foundation iu
Marriage.
The history of Marriage, as a political factor, is the
history of the gradual training of mankind out of a
condition in which a purely animal propensity pre-
dominates over a dormant social and moral instinct,
into a condition in which that propensity is completely
subordinated to complex human sentiments capable of
attaining the richest kinds of development. It is not
true that, even in the most primitive savagery, marriage
is wholly non-existent. History and the reports of
travellers lend no support to such a view, which is,
otherwise, opposed to the known constitution of man
as a gregarious being. But the mere witness for
marriage as something more than promiscuous cohabi-
tation is compatible, it would seem, with any amount of
degradation attending its early manifestations ; with any
number of varieties in the forms of conjugal combina-
tions of men and women ; with rites, ceremonies, and
usages of the most grotesque and often of the most appa-
rently irrational kind, and with every kind of confusion
and intermixture in the families which spring from
marriage relationships. The progress of society, and of
the State which is based on this progress and on the in-
stitutions which it implies, is marked by nothing more
distinct than the gradual evolution of a strict form
of monogamic marriage out of all its antecedent and
anticipatory manifestations.
It is still d'inied in some quarters, not wholly un-
160 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
deserving of attention, that monogamic marriage is to
be always and everywhere the final form which the mar-
riage relationship will assume in the perfectly developed
State. It would be unscientific, as has already been
repeatedly indicated, to lay down any absolute proposi-
tions about states of society indefinitely remote and on
which past experience of any sort could only throw an
uncertain light. But, inasmuch as the art of Govern-
ment calls for prevision before all else, and therefore
must rest upon Scientific experience and observation
conducted within appropriate limits, it is necessary, as
it is possible, to draw conclusions of some sort from the
past as to a future not indefinitely remote.
The result of the teaching of the past is to show
that though polygamic marriage is, in certain undeve-
loped stages of society, compatible with the existence of
a true State, yet that it is not compatible with the exist-
ence of an advanced State. There are only two notice-
able instances in which it might be claimed that poly-
gamous institutions are compatible with a high degree
of political progress. One is that of Judaism, which
the habitual study of the Bible has rendered the most
familiar and cherished of all historical precedents. The
other is that of Mohammedanism.
If the late Dr. Deutsch's theory be correct, — that
Mohammedanism is only Judaism adapted to the con-
ditions of Arabian life, — these two instances really
amount only to one. But, on a closer scrutiny, the ,
value of these instances of apparently successful poly-
gamy is largely reduced. Neither Judaism at its.bes^^,
nor Mohammedanism in its richest political and military
manifestations, has exhibited any but the most imma-
ture forms of true political life and organisation. The
MAERIAGE IN THE HEBREW STATE. IGl
monotheistic beliefs, the priestly institutions, and the
military necessities of Judaism, placed as it was, geo-
graphically, between Egypt, Syria, and Assyria, com-
bined to impart to it, at its highest moments under
the early kings, political qualifications of a high but
precocious kind.
The weakness of the constitutional basis, however,
on which the political order rested is manifest from
the extraordinary influence exerted on the national
fortunes by the personal character of the king, and from
the mode in which, in spite of the political sagacity and
importunities of a memorable line of statesmanlike pro-
phets or prophetical statesmen, the policy of the State
vacillated with every oscillation in the diplomacy of
surrounding States. It succumbed to all its rivals and
neighbours in succession, instead of holding, — as a small
State so situated well could, and at rare times did, —
the balance between them, and so securing the amount
of regulated independence which the Egyptians, in the
lowest depths of their fortunes, under the same Assyrian
oppression which bore so heavily on the kingdoms of
Israel and Judah, succeeded in vindicating.
The order of the Jewish State was built up on a
traditional national instinct, on common ceremonial
usages, on a religious unity, on far-sighted hierarchical
arrangements, on tribal sympathies or antipathies, —
but not on family life. Of course marriage of some
sort and the integrity of the family were recognised
abstractly in their institutions, and were enforced by
teachers and prophets in the clearest and loudest toaes.
Otherwise the State could never have lived as it did,
nor have so lived that, being dead, ifc yet speaketh.
But the very prominence of the teaching and reproofs,
M
162 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
and the notoi'ious examples of the eminent persons
whose biography has been preserved, point to the low-
ness of the common standard of coujugal fidelity and
the absence of monogamy as a theory or a practice.
The want of this unit of family life could not but tell
with weakening and isolating effect on every part of
the political organisation, till, at the summit, it touched
external politics, and hastened the time long foreseen
when the nation went forth one way to meet its enemies
and fled seven ways before them.
The history of Mohammedanism, when adduced as
a favourable instance of the working of polygamic
institutions from a political point of view, affords, if
possible, a still more decisive proof on the other side.
It may, first, be noticed by the way that polygamy was
no original or essential institution of Mohammedanism,
and that Mohammed was enlightened and keen-sighted
enough to perceive that for the purpose of creating an
organised nation out of the wild and undisciplined
Arabs who supplied the material for him to work upon,
the first thing to do was to regulate family life, and to
restrict the prevalent looseness of relationship which
prevailed between men and women. This he achieved
by binding his followers to content themselves with a
definite number of wives, (that- is four,) though he
subsequently allowed himself and his successors in
his office an unlimited number. Considering that
Mohammed seems to have been perfectly faithful for
years together to his first wife Hedijah, and only after
her death to have allowed himself more than one wife,
and that his whole policy became simultaneously more
warlike and less religious, in an ethical sense, there
MOHAMMEDAN AND MOKMON MARRIAGE. 1G3
can be little doubt that he underwent a personal degra-
dation of sentiment in this matter.
The results were impressed on the history of the
Mohammedan movement. The principle of importing
regulation of some sort into marriage and family life
has, in spite of the libertinism of thought and aspira-
tion which so much of the system inspires, admitted of
some few of the nations penetrated by Mohammedanism
attaining a very considerable amount of political pro-
sperity. But the allowance of more wives than one, the
facilities for divorce, the recognition of concubinage
and of slavery have prevented any Mohammedan nation
passing on to the higher forms of political life. All
these higher forms presuppose first, the equality, before
the law and in the State, of all its members, — men and
women alike ; and, secondly, their settled distribution
into the natural but strictly organised family groups,
in and through which alone social and political life
can be trained, concentrated, animated, and rendered
subservient to other broader forms of association. The
combination of these two conditions, — the equality of
men and women and the distribution of all members of
the State into distinct families, — can only be achieved
by monogamic marriage.
It is, perhaps, scarcely worth while to notice the
eccentric reversion to polygamic marriage which has
been attempted in the Mormon Society ^ttled in the
territory of Utah in the United States of America. It
is not likely that the experience of the so-called
' Saints ' of Salt Lake City and the adjacent districts
will be cited as favourable to the general re-intf eduction
of polygamic institutions.
M 2
164 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS
The subject of Mormonism, as a political scheme, is
a complex one, since it combines the elements of
socialism, colonisation, religious superstition, and onl/
as an accidental, and historically later, clement, poly-
gamy. It is suflBcient to notice that the fortunes of
the society have practically been more weighted by
that abnegation of true family life which polygamy has
involved than by any other of its peculiarities. The
abnormally numerous progeny claiming one man as
their father throws the burden of supporting the dif-
ferent groups on the mothers of each, and encourages
the common father in indolence and neglect of all
parental duties ; while the natural rivalries of the
different wives and the inane frivolity resulting, — as in
Eastern harems, — from habits of life absorbingly pre-
occupied by conjugal and puerperal solicitudes, keep
the women at a depressed level of cultivation — possibly
even as compared with the men.
The general consequences are being every day more
clearly seen in the gradual dissolution from within
of the cohesiveness of the old organisation, which is
further precipitated by the intrusion, for purposes of
commerce, of an active and healthy * Gentile ' element,
and by the decay of the early religious faith consequent
on the removal by death, one by one, of the original
Apostles and leaders. The instance is mainly note-
worthy, in a political sense, from its establishing that,
even if an Oriental community which has stagnated at
a polygamic stage can long retain its political organisa-
tion and some moral health, yet no community which has
once passed that stage can revert to it without soon
encountering moral degradation of the deepest sort,
^ot even religious fanaticism, colonising zeal, nor a
WHETHER MARRIAGE IS DISSOLUBLE. 165
communistic spirit of co-operatiou, can save it or long
delay its destruction.
The essence of marriage is not only that it should
be monogamic, but that the association it contemplates
should be life-long. It is this second characteristic, —
the necessary life-long tenacity of the marriage tie, —
which has suffered most assault at the hands of modern
civilisation, or which, more correctly speaking, has the
greatest diflBculty in establishing itself in the face of
dislocating and corrupting influences, themselves the
product ( »f civilisation.
There is no doubt that the march of civilisation has
been signalised in a considerable degree by the substi-
tution, in large departments of relationship, of voluntary
contract for status, that is, for involuntary conditions.
Slavery and Vassalage have given place to domestic
service and free engagements between workmen and
capitalists ; while even Government itself is held to
be based on determinate and reciprocal advantages,
reaped simultaneously by the Governors and the
governed respectively, and not on mysterious irre-
sponsible claims of privilege on one side or on inevit-
able submission on the other. By a not unnatural
analogy it has been attempted to extend the reign of
contract everywhere, even to regions in which it is
wholly inapplicable. There is a still greater disposi-
tion to do this when, as in the case of marriage, some
of the incidents, — such as those involving pecuniary
arrangements, — may properly become subjects of true
contracts.
But though marriage involves, for its inception, the
highest exercise of unbiassed volition, the existence of
166 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
the state of marriage after its creation excludes, witli
equal peremptoriness, the notion of its dissolubility at
the bidding of licence or caprice on either side, or even
on both sides. So soon as once the state of marriage
is created, the parties to it are no longer in a condition
of responsibility only to one another. Beside them and
above them is the community to which they belong.
The community not only represents the claims of
possible children and relations of all sorts, deeply con-
cerned in the fixity and permanence of bonds which
control their own lives, but has an interest peculiarly
its own. It is of the utmost concern to the community
that the family groups which compose it, in the last
analysis, should be definite and unmutilated; that the
utmost opportunity should be afforded for the quiet and
orderly development of the affections, and of the senti-
ments of mutual trust and dependence which are only
brought to maturity in the life-long home ; that the
family should be a school for the restraint of passion,
for self-discipline and for conciliatory self- surrender,
not an arena for the practice of irresponsible self-indul-
gence ; that, in fine, in the family the social capacities
should gain predominance over the centrifugal indivi-
dualism of savagery, and the State itself should be at
once reflected and anticipated in its most ubiquitous
and natural type.
All these requirements enforce the notion that for
marriage to be dissoluble at will, or dissoluble at all,
except in the most limited class of circumstances, as re-
gulated by judicial circumspection of the most stringent
and delicate kind, is suicidal to the true conception of
marriage itself. In all political constitutions, and in
all legislation which depends upon them, there is a
MAERIAGE AND DIVORCE. 167
place found for the remedy of a condition of things
which the State is bound to regard as exceptional.
The recognition of judicial divorce belongs to this
remedial department of State provisions, and it may,
undoubtedly, be admitted in such a way as to co-exist
with the most strenuous support of the life-long per-
manence of marriage. In the same way a bankruptcy
law implies no political patronage of recklessness as to
the payment of debts.
Though, in the way above indicated, marriage and
the family relationships which spring from it must be
treated as essential and primordial elements in State
life, it is also obvious that the final and best result of
that life, and not only the initial condition of it, is to im-
part to them their highest development, dignity, and
stability. In the laws of every State which has advanced
beyond an embryonic condition, personal relationships
form the subjects of the most prominent chapters. They
are usually the pioducts of older and more deeply rooted
customs than even laws of property, while, on the other
hand, the necessity of determining questions of suc-
cession and inheritance, of guardianship and of the
claims of women, implicate those customs in every part
of these laws.
Before quitting the subject of the Family as an essen-
tial and primary element of political existence, it seems
desirable to pause for the purpose of recapitulating
and emphasising the points in which the recognition of
family life is of importance to the statesman. The secure
limits which are placed on the tastes and affections
afford the repose and opportunity demanded for the
even development of the less animal functions and for
the gradual attainment of complete supremacy by the
168 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
spiritual nature. In this way, the best possible field is
opened out and guarded for the nurture of children,
their unconscious and conscious education and their
future separation under the most favourable auspices
from the parents' home. From this separation new
families take their rise without the tender links with
the old ones being broken, and rather with the result of
increasing than of diminishing the aggregate effective-
ness and felicity.
It is needless to say how profoundly concerned is
the statesman in movements and conuexions such as
these. Not only is it historically true that from the
union and multiplication of families springs the tribe,
and from the union and multiplication of tribes springs
the State, but even in the advanced State domestic
disorganisation is a sure augury of early political
disaster. The natural duty incumbent on parents, of
providing for their children, has in all civilised though
immature States had a marked effect on the law of
succession to property. The hplplessness and yet the
value of the young life has called forth, everywhere,
laborious provisions for guardianship and protection.
The mutual responsibilities, physical and moral, of
husbands and wives, of parents and children, and
even of remote relatives by consanguinity and affinity,
have been, from the earliest dawn of political society,
matter of concern to the nascent legislature. Not
indeed, that, at first, regulations in respect of such
matters are consciously formulated or even dimly con-
templated. But they grow up with the State itself and
are but one expression of its growth.
It may be long before the conscious statesman arises
and ascertains the value of the laws and institutions
ECONOMICAL ASSOCIATIONS. 169
which have come down to him with the stream of gene-
rations and are ready to his hand. He may have to
prune here, to add there, to abolish elsewhere, and to
amend and reform everywhere. But the materials and
elements which are bound up in family life are none of
his making, and while they will survive him, not the
longest line of his successors will survive them.
But the family, essential and momentous as it is,
as an element in State life, needs supplementary
elements to maintain it in health and to prevent it
becoming a mere centre of an individualism not less
selfish than the isolated member of the race. The very
sentiments to which family life gives preponderance,
the exclusive and concentrated affections, the absorbing
cares, the desperate solicitudes, the heated passions, —
strong through confinement in a narrow area and
aggravated by sympathy, — have an evil as well as a
good side, from a political stand-point. Indeed from
the stand-point of its own well-being and happiness,
family life cannot afford to be wholly self-contained.
Its affections and interests must be driven outward;
and it must learn the meaning of corporate mag-
nanimity as well as that of individual sacrifice.
Historically speaking, it is the tribal and village
organisation which first healthily extends the sym-
pathies and interests of family life. In the more
advanced State, when the tribe has become the nation,
and the village has become the town, the rush of
economical necessities, as well as the impulse of social
fellowships, operate to lead families out of themselves
and to blend them in a great and common life. The
State, itself, is from the first moments of its growth.
170 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
reacting upon these spontaneous tendencies and foster-
ing their influence. In the advanced State there are
endless forms of association which* intervene betvreen
the family and the political community as a whole, and
it is the due control or use of these associations
which often supply to the Statesman his most arduous
problems.
A distinction, however, has to be made between the
associated groups of persons which, as the State ad-
vances, owe their existence to mere economical progress,
and those of a more complex and varied kind which are
the product of the organisation of the State itself, though
they are also of the number of its elements and power-
fully react upon it.
To the first or more primitive class of purely eco-
nomical relationships belong the trade and commercial
connexions which spring from a constantly increasing
division of labour. Such are the connexions between
the shopkeeper and his customers, the landlord and his
tenant, the employer and the employed, the farmer and
the farm-labourer, the capitalist and the workman, the
master and the servant. In this economic and social
bifurcation of society there are generated great pairs
of classes of persons, of which each pair represents two
sets of mutually opposed interests. It may be that
circumstances favour the concentration of these interests
in the form of guilds, corporations, companies, clubs and
trades-unions. The formation of such communities is
a matter of the keenest interest to the Statesman, and
he has to determine how far he shall recognise, control,
encourage, or disallow it.
Apart from any intervention of the State, the in-
GUILDS AND TEADES-UNIONS. 171
fluence of these associated interests must be always of
a dubious nature, and it must depend on a number of
concurrent social cii-cumstances whether on the whole
it is good or bad. Thus, in the case of artisans' guilds,
such as grew up side by side with the great City com-
panies in Plantagenet England, one of their effects
was to stimulate artistic workmanship by guaranteeing
privileges and monopolies, and by promoting apprentice-
ships. Another class of effects was to prevent com-
petition, to restrict invention, and to sustain prices at
a point higher than that determined both by the cost
of production and by the law of supply and demand.
The community was thus the loser in some ways and
the gainer in others.
It would depend on the particular condition of the
Society at the time whether more was likely to be
gained by the encouragement given to special artisans
or lost by the artificially high prices and the limitation
of the field of labour.
It is a well-recognised principle of modern politics to
abstain as far as possible from actively fostering trades
and occupations by according privileges and monopolies.
But when associations of persons are created by volun-
tary contract, and the associations are potent and ex-
tensive enough to succeed in confining to themselves
special kinds of work, it becomes a serious consideration
for the Statesman how far, if at all, the contract ought
to be recognised as valid.
The most modem form in which the problem pre-
sents itself is that of Trades Unions. The moral use ol
certain forms of these Unions to the workmen them-
selves is recognised as great. They tend to train the
workman out of a merely selfish and individualistic
172 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
spirit of reckless competition, and to accustom him to
blend the interests of himself and of his family with those
of his fellow-workmen. Their actual result has been
to raise the character of the working-man, to make him
more prudent, as being under a sense of communistic
responsibility, and yet less anxious and more self-
respectful, because less exposed to suffer from the mere
irresponsible caprice or selfishness of his employers.
But, on the other hand, the danger inherent in all
such associations is that the special advantages they
enjoy are purchased at the cost of the general com-
munity, in the increase of prices, the limitation of the
labour market, and the expulsion of capital to foreign
countries. It will afterwards be seen, in connexion with
the subject of the Province of Government, that the
only function left to the State in this matter is the
protective one, of guarding both those within and
those without the Union against certain inevitable
influences of combination which, alone, they might be
powerless to resist. How far this protection is to go,
is a question of time, place, and circumstances. It only
needs here to notice that these associative tendencies,
and the sentiments of attraction and repulsion they
call up, form some of the most important constitutive
elements with which the State has to deal.
In the most advanced condition of the State, associa-
tion becomes the natural form into which all commercial,
social, philanthropic, religious, and political, energy
throws itself; and the State is constantly confronted
with the question how far it is to recognise, or to restrict,
the more or less formal organisations which spring up
in consequence. In whatever terms the answer may
be made, — and there is no topic on which States and
ASSOGDVTION AS AN ELEMENT OF STATE LIFE. 173
Statesmen have committed, and continue to commit,
more serious mistakes, — it is well to remember that the
associative principle is the natural and necessary school-
master to bring the citizen to the perfection of State
existence.
It is in the subordinate connexions and relation-
ships of a social and economic kind v^ith his fellows
that man learns to look outside himself and his own
petty life and even outside the life of his family, —
dear as that is and properly supreme to him as are its
claims, — and to venture forth his emotions and powers
into a wider field. He becomes used to multiplied and
endlessly varied relationships, and is transmuted into
a fuller being himself. He acquires, as on an exercise
ground, the instinctive art of weighing the competing
claims of each against all and of all against each. He
learns something of what it is to give and to serve, to
hope and to wait, as well as to receive and to have.
He dives deeper and deeper into the mine of human
feeling and into the possibilities of reciprocal sacrifice.
He finds himself hourly animated by countless examples,
— often of the humblest kind, — and knows himself to be
ever surrounded by a long-familiar cloud of witnesses.
He is braced up to adjust his every action to the standard
of duty incumbent on a citizen of what his life-long
training has taught him to regard as ' no mean city.'
174 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICa
CHAPTER YI.
CONSTITUTIONS.
It has already been noticed that, in one sense, the
conception of a Constitution is wholly of modern
growth. It is true that in the best times of Greece, if
not earlier, the question as to the best form of Govern-
ment in the abstract, and for particular States, had
already attracted attention; and the general subject
was regarded as of theoretical as well as of practical
importance. But it was not till the human race had
become universally enfranchised in men's minds, and
the depth of root which political rights have in morality
had been recognised, that the full extension of the term
constitution could be reached.
The Christian Church, indeed, by its organisation,
its notion of the essential spiritual equality of all men,
and its competition, at some points, with the secular
power, prepared the way for the supposition of there
being some settled condition of human society in which
each member would have his appropriate place; in
which each would contribute to the efficiency of all, and
all to that of each ; and in which no act of violence,
whether proceeding from a monarch or a mob, could
suddenly introduce fatal change.
In the time of the English Commonwealth, religious
zeal and political activity co-operated in the direction
CONSTITUTIONS. 175
botli of practical change and of favouring tlie con-
struction of ideal forms of social organisation on a basis
of equal rights for all. Based as these schemes were on
the rude and weather-beaten materials which the form
of English Government in the seventeenth century
supplied, they could, at the best, be but rough sketches
of an ideal polity. They are mainly important as
marking the rapid advances which the notion of a
political Constitution, — as distinguished, on the one
Land, from a mere body of constitutional laws and, on
the other, from a description of a form of Government, —
was making in England and in the world at large.
Montesquieu's panegyric on the English Consti-
tution, in his Esprit des lois, tended to popularise the
true conception of a Constitution as belonging to
universal politics, though France was hardly ripe for
the idea till the flames of the Revolution had fully
awakened the national spirit and conscience, or rather
witnessed to their awakening.
In England Hobbes, and after him Swift, kept alive
the political imagery which owed its creation to Puritan
times and with which the days of the Restoration and
of the Whig Revolution were little in harmony.
In the meantime, however, the British Colonies in
America were upholding the conception of a true Con-
stitution in a multitude of somewhat varying forms,
and laying the foundation of the first actual Consti-
tution which should be constructed on the lines of
theoretical science and yet should, after a hundred
years' trial, hold out promise of eternal duration and
growth. In the written Constitutions of the Thirteen
Colonies, the English reader wiU find for the first time
transferred to systematic writing what are held to be
176 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
the inalienable rights, privileges, or prerogatives of an
Englishman, but the title deeds of which in England are
only to be found expressed tacitly in institutions or
scattered up and down in archives and antiquated
records.
The right to Trial by Jury, the security against
despotic Treason trials, the principles of the Habeas
Corpus Acts, the exemption of an Englishman's person
from outrage and contumely even in the name of the
law, the independence of the Judges, and the most
valuable clauses of the Bill of Rights, will be found
expressed in clear and concise language and ranged in
distinct propositions on the face of the written Consti-
tutions of the several Colonies. These documents are
of the highest interest in many ways, inasmuch as they
establish the conception of the constitutional position
of Englishmen held at home at the time the Charters
were granted to the several bodies of Emigrants ; and
also because, indisputably, they supplied the type, and
much of the language, of the constitutional laws of the
Union, when these came to be framed.
The word 'Constitution' in some of its familiar
modern uses, testifies to the new and profounder
meaning it has in modern times. Thus a distinction
is sometimes drawn between a British Colony which has
a Constitution and one which has not. Here Constitution
does not mean a form of Government, because what is
known as a ' Crown Colony,' — which is opposed to a
Colony with a Constitution, — has a very precisely
described form of Government, including a Legislative
and Executive Authority, — subject, of course, as the
Government of all Colonies is, to the Government at
home.
WHAT IS A CONSTITUTION 177
A Colony with, a Constitution means a Colony which
has Parliamentary institutions and is no longer governed
by a small legislative body or Council every member of
which is directly nominated by the Executive Authority,
that is the Crown, at home. Thus the word Constitu-
tion is made co-extensive with the expression * having
Parliamentary institutions.' These institutions may
include a Chamber, nominated, — as now in New South
Wales, — by the Governor, who himself is appointed by
the Government at home. But the recognition of a
genera] right, in all male members of the community,
under fitting precautions and conditions of uncertain
but not unmeasured limits, to take part in the Govern-
ment by themselves or by their proxies, supplies the
foundation of a true Constitution. Similarly, when
the numerous revolutions took place in Europe in 1848,
the result was said to be, in many cases, the granting
of a Constitution, which meant the introduction, revival,
or reformation, of Parliamentary and representative
Government on a tolerably broad basis of electoral
rights.
In all these conceptions of a Constitution, there
enter the ideas of universality, of widely or rather in-
definitely, diffused personal rights, and of popular
intervention in Government. These ideas are com-
patible with a great range of variety in the actual form
and composition of Government, and, obviously, also
with a great variety of degrees of completeness with
which the essential notion of a Constitution is embodied
in a political organisation.
Constitutions may be good or bad, weak or strong,
lasting or transient, even popular or aristocratic. In
fact it may come about, at certain moments, that the
N
178 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
Constitution exists in idea and sentiment only, and
that, owing to accidental events, the people of a country
ha^e no political rights at all. In such a case, as to
some extent in France under the third Empire, and
even in Eussia and in Egypt now, the Constitution is
in suspense. It is a matter of hope, regret, and perhaps
of expectation, and soon of revolutionary zeal. But a
country which has once imbibed the notion of a Con-
stitution differs wholly from one in which that notion
has never been framed or could never be framed, as in
China, and the Native States of India, and in large
portions of the Ottoman dominions and the uncivilised
States of Africa.
In all the countries which, according to the principles
already enunciated, are at present the proper subjects
of Political Science, the idea of a Constitution has made
considerable advance ; and, in some of them, an actual
Constitution has been wrought out into shape with no
small amount of elaborateness in the execution of the
details.
In respect of the practical task of planning a Con-
stitution, an initial question presents itself on the
threshold as to whether the terms of the Constitution
can be completely or satisfactorily expressed in writing.
During recent years, — beginning with the Constitution
of the United States, — a large number of Constitutions
have been translated into the terms of written law ; and
even in Constitutions, such as that of England, in which
the quantity of unwritten law and usage is the greatest,
there is still a large and growing proportion of the
w^hole which takes the form of Statute Law.
The question, however, is not whether it is within the
wit of man to write a Constitution down and to describe
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 179
in precise terms and phrases tlie rights and duties of all
public officials and all members of the community in
respect of Government, but whether, when this is done
ever so skilfully and providently, there must not still
remain, outside any constitutional Code, the most im-
portant part of all, which is too indefinite, too subtle,
too fluctuating within imperceptible spaces of time,
to admit of compression within the limits of exact
language.
In the United States, after all the provisions of
the existing Constitution are described with as much
exactness as could be attained, there is still contemplated
the possibility of a change in the Constitution being
desirable, and an elaborate electoral and representative
machinery has been devised in view of the necessity of
bringing about a change. As a matter of fact a number
of more or less important changes have been brought
about in this way, and no insuperable difficulty has been
experienced in working the machinery. But, supposing
that the change desired was at once considerable and
yet not such as to commend itself to the large majority
requisite for giving legal effect to it, the only result
must be the alternative of social disruption or revolution.
Such a state of things did come at the time of the
Secession war ; and it was found that no mere written
language could bind the fealty of the whole people.
The Constitution, as it stood, was only acceptable to
the Southern States so Ion or as a series of favourable
accidents gave them the political influence they desired.
When the Constitution legally operated in a direction
less favourable to their interests, they resisted the
execution of the law and claimed to dissolve the Union.
Thus in times of real emergency, when interests and
N 2
180 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
passions are divided, it mattei^s little whether a Consti-
tution is written or unwritten. There are felt to be
forces and instincts stronger than the law, as they are
the basis of all law. It is in the hereditary and habitual
training of these forces and instincts, perhaps continued
for centuries, that what may be called a true constitu-
tional temper really exists. Where such a training is
found, anarchy is impossible, and revolution is shortlived.
Where it is not found, a permanent condition of order
is hardly attainable and revolutions are incessant.
The recent history of France illustrates the state of
a country undergoing a rapid constitutional training
through the vicissitudes of a single century. The con-
dition of the Ottoman Empir^ shows how easy it is to
frame written constitutions and to enact them, but how
impossible it is to impose them where no advance has
been made in the ethical preparation of the people and
of the ruling class.
There is, however, no doubt that it is for the
interests of order and of regular Government to have
as many parts as possible of the Constitution reduced to
writing. Not indeed that discussion is thereby pre-
vented, as may be seen by studying the volumes of law
written on the ' Constitutional Limitations ' of the
Government of the United States, and on the operation
of the written Constitutions of the English Colonies.
But in times of ardent differences of opinion, not to say
of discord and sedition, it is a great advantage on the side
of order to have a plain course of proceeding mapped
out by written law. Action proceeds while people's
minds are still being made up, and, before they have
finally chosen their side, an act performed has acquired
the pretensions of prescription.
THE FRENCH CONSTITUTION. 181
The French nation experienced in 1878 the ad-
vantage of their written Constitution when, in precise
accordance with its terms, they elecfced a successor to
President McMahon without delay or hesitation ; and
at various epochs in English history the advantage of
a written rule or even of a well remembered precedent
stored up in the archives of written history, however
imperfectly applicable, has suggested and determined a
course of action which has commended itself to the
bulk of the community by its show of formality, and
has thereby arrested revolution. Instances of this are
supplied by the operation of the Act of Settlement in
facilitating the accession- of the House of Hanover, and
of the Eegency Acts of the Eeign of George III., each
of which smoothed the way for the passing of its suc-
cessor.
The first question which has to be settled by a Con-
stitution is as to the number of persons who are to take
part in the Government, and the share in it which each
person is to have. Mr. Austin, in his celebrated Lectures
on the 'Province of Jurisprudence,' pointed out with
inimitable clearness the fact, which is not so much con-
tested as neglected, that, at any given period in the
existence of a political community, there is some person
or assemblage of persons who are habitually obeyed by
the bulk of that community.
In the Greek communities, as investigated by Aris-
totle, the absorbing question was as to the number of
persons who formed this sovereign authority ; and even
in modern times the mere breadth of the legislative
Assembly or Assemblies, and the numerical extension
of the electoral surface, are points of considerable rele-
182 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
vancy in the comparison of the merits of Constitutions.
But there are many reasons which now conspire to re-
duce the significance of the mere quantitative estimates
which, to the minds of Montesquieu and even of De
Tocqueville, were the basis of the distinction between a
Monarchy, an Aristocracy, and a Democracy.
The deeper notion of human rights which is acquiring
the dignity and the fixity of an ethical maxim changes
the question as to how many, and who, ought to be ad-
mitted to share in the Government, into the converse
question as to whether any, and who, can be legitimately
excluded from sharing at all. The victory which was
obtained for the emancipated slaves in America by their
admission to the electoral Franchise was as much a
gain to the human race, regarded as capable of political
organisation, as to the immediate objects of the enfran-
chising Amendment to the Constitution of the United
States. In the same way the movement which promises
an early success in favour of Women's Suffrage in
England, by removing an obstacle, based only on tradi-
tion and prejudice, and confessed to be of no practical
value, — even if not economically detrimental, — goes far
to fortify the notion that, apart from special and clearly
established personal disqualifications, the right of taking
part in Government belongs, as an essential part of the
heritage of civilised humanity, to all alike.
Even in the times of Hobbes and of Locke, the two
theories, — in the somewhat cumbrous legal forms of
the Divine Eight and the Social Contract, — were being
brought face to face. Both these conceptions have, —
after a brilliant history well sketched out by Sir H. S.
Maine in his ' Ancient Law,' — dissolved away before
the analytical solvents of History and Logic. But there
VIEWS OF THE TKUE BASIS OE A CONSTITUTION. 183
still remain sternly antithetical to each other two
inconsistent views of the true basis on which a consti-
tution ought to be founded : naraelj, that of procuring
the absolutely best law and administration, and that of
procuring law and administration which, if perhaps not
the best, yet is the best expression of the clearly ascer-
tained will of the people, or of the preponderant
majority of the people at the time.
These two views either appear on the surface or are
covertly implied on every occasion of electoral change.
It is usually attempted to make a compromise between
them, and disputants who recognise the value of each
view, when isolated from the other, do not always
perceive the extent to which they are, or may be,
incompatible.
It is surprising how many affiliated questions are
connected with this primary discrepancy. Such ques-
tions are, whether a representative system ought to
succeed in reproducing in the legislative assembly
all important phases of political opinion or only the
dominant phase, or a few dominant and ostensibly
competing phases ; whether representation in any sense
can be looked at as a satisfacfcoiy and permanent instru-
ment of Government, or whether (as some English
followers of Auguste Comte hold) it marks only a
transitory and immature condition, for the needs of
which it provides at best but a rough and cumbrous
machinery ; what are the mutual claims of local and of
central Government ; and to what extent the Executive
Authority should be subjected to popular checks and
control.
With the vieAV of ascertaining the true principles
184 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
which, for the purpose of a Science of Politics, must
be held to underlie all profitable discussion of this class
of subjects, a few broad premises have been, in modern
times, clearly established, and must henceforward be
taken as starting points in the argument.
One premise is that the Art of Government tends
increasingly to become, in quite a different sense from
anything known before, a specialised art, needing
peculiar training, concentrated attention, and long
and appropriate study. The internal administration
and the conduct of the Foreign relations of a Modern
State are, with every advance in the arts of life and in
economical and social organisation, becoming matters
of special knowledge.
In Ancient times, and in the Middle Ages, the
governing class no doubt were far in advance of the
community, and possessed acquirements and diplomatic
accomplishments for which there is less opening now.
But the financial, the moral, the religious, and the
sanitaiy, — let alone the judicial and military, — functions
of a modern State, even of the youngest and smallest,
are complicated and embarrassing to an extent for
which there could be no precedent in the older world.
It is not now, however, the fact that the classes
habitually called upon to take part in the Government
are better informed than other classes of the Community.
Indeed the opposite is usually the case ; and the persons
best informed in their several trades, occupations, and
professions, are content to devolve the charge of Govern-
ment on persons less specially instructed in any peculiar
branches of knowledge but, otherwise, generally com-
petent and trustworthy.
The result is that the art of Government is becoming
. ....
HISTORY OF REPRESENTATION. V\<^85^>j^
a new and special one, quite distinguishable from every
other art, and j^et involving some cognisance or, at
least, some recognition of the claims and province of
every other art and human interest. So far from this'
becoming less true as time goes on, it will become
more true with each step of social advance as expressed
in a new division or subdivision of occupations, and ^
the danger rather is that the art of Government may
need such an amount of distribution into departments
as may seriously impair the due co-ordination and
supervision of the whole.
The question, then, is presented, how far the pre-
mise which propounds this specialisation of the art of
Government can be reconciled with another premise
to the effect that, with the growth of civilisation, the
claims to intervene in the Government of the country
are increasingly recognised as inherent attributes of
humanity.
The only solutions which have been attempted of
this problem have been found in the devices, firstly, of
Representation and, secondly, of Party Government.
The result of all the investigations of M. Guizot, of
Mr. Hallam, and of later writers, into the history of the
modern institution of Eepresentation is that this insti-
tution is rooted partly in the representative Councils of
the Christian Church, — which themselves as time went
on reproduced the administrative and judicial usages
of the centralised Eoman Empire,— and in the nature
of Feudalism, involving as it did the substitution of man
for man as its essence, and a representative system in
the Courts as its inseparable working machinery.
The later development of representative ideas and
facts in the modern political world, beginning in the
186 , THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
history of the English Parliament and recalled to life
on the Continent of Europe by the first French Eevo-
lution, is only a chain of direct consequences from
notions which had been deeply instilled into the con-
sciousness of the Teutonic and Eomaic races. The
necessities of confederation which had been felt and
acted on in America a hundred years before the War of
Independence, and the operation of the Federal systems
of Switzerland and the United Netherlands, had further
familiarised men's minds with the practical convenience
attending the conscious delegation, by the many to the
few, of the forces of Government.
In the course of this evolution a still unsettled
question has been mooted which is involved in the term
delegation, and which contains in itself the gist of the
theoretical embarrassment which is inherent in repre-
sentation. It may be asked to what extent is there
implied in representation, or in political delegacy,
identity of opinion and of resolution, between the re-
presentative and those whom, to some extent or other,
he is held to personate. There is room, here, obviously,
for a great variety of degrees of conformity of sentiment
between the two. The representative may be the merest
mouthpiece and echo of conclusions reached elsewhere.
Or he may be left to say and do as he likes, according
to the dictation of new circumstances, — those who
depute him being either indifferent to the matters in
issue or content to leave ulterior courses and decisions
in the hands of one in whom they confide more than in
any other person at the moment available. Or he may
receive, — like an ambassador, — general instructions,
but retain the capacity to diverge from them if un-
foreseen emergencies suggest a new course.
CHURCH COUiNCILS AND REPRESENTATION. 187
Upon this characteristically modern difficulty at-
tending representation little light is thrown by recourse
to the history of representation in the past. In
Feudal times, the one question which absorbed or over-
shadowed all others was that of money, or in place of
money, of personal service ; and the mutual economical
dependence of class upon class was so close that no
feudal lord could grant to his superior an extra-
ordinary levy, or aid, or burden, without himself
incurring proportional loss or deprivation. Thus the
identity of interest was complete and manifest, though
it extended over a narrow range.
In ecclesiastical matters, again, the subjects dis-
cussed at Church Councils ranged over an enormous
area, doctrinal and practical, — yet the Bishops in
attendance, who personated the lower clergy and the
congregations, were, no doubt, sufficiently in advance,
in point of learning and of familiarity with the ques-
tions at issue, to demand at their hands an amount
of personal confidence which the coarser interests of
politics, better understood by the mass of the com-
munity, could hardly have secured.
It is in very recent times, since legislation, instead
of being exceptional, has become continuous and all-
embracing, and when the members of a Legislature
can claim every day less and less of a monopoly of
instruction, that a decision has to be come to as to
the amount of identity which is to prevail between a
political deputy and his constituents. The subject is
naturally complicated by the fact that the same causes
which promote an endless discrepancy of opinion and
of sentiment between the deputy and the most sym-
pathetic of his constituents tend likewise to promote
188 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
the discrepancy between one of those constituents and
another.
The device, accidental invention, or casual existence
of government by Party has gone some way to prevent
the essential difficulty which attends representation
from being obtruded as it otherwise must have been.
In fact, even now the imperfection of representative
Government is more felt in those places, such as the
British Colonies, in which parties are not strongly
organised and the spirit of party does not mount high,
than in such a country as England, in which many
circumstances concur to sustain this form of mani-
festation of political activity.
In spite of the ever growing assimilation of opinion,
among all intelligent persons, on those large classes of
questions, dynastical and economical, which, — partly
owing to sentimental prepossessions and partly to the
unequal spread of knowledge, — once divided them, there
appears no sign of an absence of fervour for political
combination; and in the House of Commons, as well as
in the country at large, it is still possible to distribute
into two distinct camps the vast mass of political com-
batants.
The important point to consider is whether this
phenomenon is to be regarded as permanent, or as
a mere cinder-heap, artificially kept alight. Some
lessons may be learnt in respect of the future of Party
from glancing at popular government as conducted in
other countries in which the play of new social con-
ditions has been less controlled than in England by
traditional institutions having a strong local hold on
the imagination, by the firm tenure of an Aristocratic
HISTORY OF PAETY IN THE UNITED STATES. 189
Assembly, and by the pertinacious retention of a reli-
gious Establishment.
In America, the history of Party since the founda-
tion of the Union would of itself be a valuable contri-
bution to the study of Political Science. Professor
Van Hoist's Historical treatise on the Constitution of
the United States, which has been translated from the
original German into English, and which is founded on
a minute investigation of all State papers to be found
in America or in England, as well as on observations
conducted in America, will be found to contain all the
materials for such a history. It is only not such a
history, because it is so much more.
On the whole it may be said that, soon after
the Union was constituted, the only question which
broke up all persons taking part in Politics into two
opposite factions was that of States-rights ; one faction
inclining to the notion that the basis of the Constitu-
tion was the inherent independence of the several
States ; the other faction being more favourable to
the Federal Constitution, and holding that the several
States only retained so much independence as had been
expressly left them when the Union was constituted.
Of course the forms and grounds of opposition
were not formulated so distinctly and concisely as
this. It was only by experience, and especially by the
different policy which, owing in some measure to dif-
ferent geographical conditions, emerged on the question
of Slavery, that the organisation into the ' democratic '
and ' republican ' parties became complete.
What is most remarkable about this history is that
while, on the face of it, there would seem to be no con-
nexion between these American parties and the old
190 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
Englisli parties (wliich prevailed in America at one
period, and in name are scarcely yet extinct) of Whig
and Tory, yet the supporters of absolute State Rights
became the advocates of slavery and the opponents of
the party of Progress. They were, in fact, the party of
the landed proprietors and planters of the South, as
opposed to that of the commercial world and petty agri-
culturists of the North. Thus it was brought about
that the most celebrated, and still momentous, of party
divisions in America was, and is, based on an opposi-
tion of interest far more than, — as was the case with
the old English parties, — on an opposition of sentiment,
of religious belief, or of personal loyalty. It is, how-
ever, true that the seeds of the opposition between the
two leading American parties will be found in the dif-
ferent circumstances of the early colonists and in the
personal differences of the various classes of these
colonists themselves.
The history of Party in the United States has been
aflPected, during the present century, by various waves
of political interest and agitation which have tempo-
rarily occupied or obscured the whole horizon. Thus
the expediency of extending by any modes the terri-
torial area of the Union ; the advisability of liquidating,
m one form or another, the financial obligations of the
Union ; the policy of reconstructing the Union after the
War of Secession in one fashion or in another ; and the
more personal questions raised by the recognised neces-
sity of taking measures of one sort or another to repress
oflficial corruption ; are all topics which have proved, in
their time, weighty and stirring enough to bind together
strong political parties in the firm ties of mutual
loyalty, for the purpose of severally carrying out their
HISTORY OF PAETY IN AUSTRALASIA. 191
own ends even at the sacrifice of the independent pro-
clivities of masses of individual persons. The capacity
and habit of free and spontaneous organisation, which
exist in the United States more than anywhere else,
and for which the mechanical working of the Con-
stitution of each State and of the Union itself is an
incessant training, favour the rapid generation, as well
as the early generation, of political parties. Thus it is
difficult for a foreigner ever to learn and understand
the quickly coined phrases of party- war fare. They are
often out of use before they have had time to be ab-
sorbed by literature or translated even into the EnglisJi
spoken at the other side of the Atlantic.
The political experience of the Colonies of Australasia
since New South Wales and Victoria obtained, in
1855, from the British Parliament, complete Parlia-
mentary Constitutions, differs instructively from the ex-
perience of the United States in respect of Government
by Party. In the Colonies of New South Wales and
Victoria, the circumstances of political Hfe have not
succeeded in calling into being any deep and widespread
and strongly marked oppositions of opinion and of senti-
ment analogous to those represented by the terms WJiig
and Tory, Liberal and Conservative, in England, or by
the terms Democrat and Republican in the United States.
The parties in those Colonies have hitherto rather
resembled the secondary and transitory parties already
alluded to as fitfully crossing the stage of American
politics without leaving any permanent memorial or
even influence. They have usually centred round some
prominent personage, and been connected with some
strongly felt and clearly expressed interest.
192 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
It is true tliat the political life of these colonies is
not yet of thirty years' growth. But their institutions
were framed, formally, after the model of English
institutions, so far as was possible, and there has been
no break of revolution or anarchy to interfere with a
rapid unfolding of all natural political products.
The most notable exhibition of a true party organi-
sation, as distinguished from mere accidental personal
loyalty to a leader, has taken place in Victoria, in
which colony the supporters of a policy favourable to
the aggrandisement of large landed proprietors on the
one hand, and, on the other, those of a policy favourable
to an equalisation of fortunes and to the diminution of
the influence of wealth have, for years past, ranged
themselves in camps of increasingly menacing propor-
tions and dispositions. The battle has been mainly
fought round the constitution of the lesser House or
Legislative Council, which has been from the first a
plutocratic representative Assembly. As it will be a
long time before the absorption by agriculture of the
plains now employed by wealthy pastoral occupiers,
and the exhaustion of the mines, have reduced the
opposition between the few rich and the many with
only moderate means, this ground of party feud will
probably be long-lived. The place will, probably, be
taken, by newly evolved oppositions of interest which
will be of a fleeting kind, and scarcely deserving the
name of party differences.
The lesson taught by these Colonies, — as by the
history of the United States, — is that in the demo-
cratic organisation of the future the opposition of
conflicting interests will be found a more solid basis of
political organisation than personal moral differences
HISTOEY OF PAETY IN FRANCE. 193
or sentimental ties. These will have their weight as
between one person and another, but they will be
sniited from a primary to a secondary place. The
main hope is that the progress of education and the
diffusion of knowledge will lead to more enlightened
views of what people's best interests really are ; and,
although it must always be expected that, in the com-
petition of economical forces, one man's loss will be
another's gain, yet it makes a great difference whether
a fair and just balance is preserved, on the whole,
between the losses and the gains of all, or whether, as
in the old world, tlie gain is exclusively for the few
and the loss for the many.
Party organisation is invaluable so far as it is
confined to maintaining a wisely adjusted balance of
political and economical forces. It is mischievous and
an anachronism if, by resting on spurious sentiments
and unmeaning or hypocritically-professed beliefs, it
arrests, from time to time, real improvement, and
becomes a hindrance instead of a help to national
development.
From the time of the Eestoration in France till
now, the history of Party in that country has passed
through various phases which illustrate these remarks.
The best marked distinctions have been based upon
dynastical ties or preferences ; the Buonapartists, the
Orleanists, and the Bourbons each commanding a fol-
lowing just sufficient to interfere with a Government
conducted by either of the other parties, which yet
could not themselves solidly combine.
The Empire of Napoleon III. was mainly serviceable
to Prance by interposing a lengthened period of prescrip-
tion against the Orleanists and both branches of the
o
194 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
Bourbons; by securing peremptory order and unques-
tioned submission ; and by affording time and oppor-
tunity for the exhaustion of the Napoleonic allegiance
already owned by none but a few Parisian veterans,
and which a newly grown population hardly remem-
bered. Under this Empire, however, the party of the
Buonapartists naturally received an enormous impulse
and extension, and a new party, which the Revolution
settlement had called into existence, — that of the con-
servative peasant-proprietors, — became an important
factor in politics.
The result of the fall of the Empire by the event of
Sedan was an early reconstruction of political parties.
The peasant-proprietor could no longer see in Buona-
partism a security for order, or for peace, or for escape
frum the proscription, or for regulated taxation. The
financial basis of the Empire at Paris was shaken to
the ground by the siege of Paris, and by the financial
embarrassment caused by the German debt. There sur-
vived only two possible grounds for the construction of
new Parties wide and influential enough to govern
France. These were the party who were in favour of
order and peace, at any sacrifice of dynastic allegiance
or antecedent sentiment, and those who saw in some
reconstitution of the Republic, — which two Napoleons
had first turned to their own account and then over-
thrown, — a meeting point, and the only meeting point,
to which all France would sooner or later rally.
A coalition of the Republicans and of the party of
peace and order produced the Thiers Government, and
then a change in the balance of the coalitionists pro-
duced the Government of Marshal McMahon. The
decisive development of pure Republicanism expressed
HISTOEY OF PARTY IN iliANCR 195
itself in the French Constitution of 1875, and the
working out of this Constitution has witnessed the
growth of parties founded on little else than mere
degrees of democratic conviction, expressing themselves
in demands for a more or less popular system of repre-
sentation and for a more or less radical reform of the
conservative Senate. The attitude of France towards
Germany, and in respect of Foreign policy generally,
has introduced a special element into party warfare
which must be regarded as of purely accidental signi-
ficance.
The history of Party in France during the first half
of the present century recals the vicissitudes of the
political parties in England during the fifty years
after the accession of William III. ; but England has
no parallel, — unless it be found in the parental home-
policy of George III.'s reign, — to the operation of the
empire of Napoleon. In England the Hanoverian
dynasty became more and more consolidated and asso-
ciated with unbroken successes abroad, and, at no late
date, with legislative improvements and with accessions
of public liberty at home. Thus, at this day, party in
England is undergoing a slow and steady transforma-
tion in which it is almost by forced subterfuges and
suppressed convictions that political organisation is
maintained.
In France the various shades of Republicanism
will, no doubt, as political activity becomes diffused
throughout the country, connect themselves with real
and clearly understood interests. The proper appre-
ciation of these interests, and the intelligent sup[X)rt
of them, will afford a sound basis of political activity,
and statesmen will find that they can hold power only
o 2
196 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
by introducing real and substantial reforms, and not
by appealing to shadowy and superficial sentiments,
however momentarily popular.
The general result of this inquiry into the place
likely to be occupied by party organisation, as political
communities become more democratically constituted,
is that real practical interests will, as grounds of party
divisions, more and more succeed to the place of
sentimental predilections ; that these interests will
become increasingly intelligible and even laudable,
instead of being secret and sinister ; and that while the
economical and industrial organisation of society will
always bring large classes of persons into polar oppo-
sition to each other, on certain points of legislation
and administration, yet the competition between these
classes will proceed more and more on grounds admit-
ting of logical statement and discussion and not main-
tained, on either side, without professed subordination
to the common welfare of the community as a whole.
In fact party will become the political expression of
the real and necessary distinctions of interests which are
implied in the division of labour and of social functions.
Thus, instead of being superseded, it is likely to grow
and develope. It will serve to maintain unity and con-
tinuity in government and to secure the preference of
what is most important at a particular moment to what
is least so. It will continue to train the community in
habits of loyalty to worthy leaders, and in the practice
of making sacrifices for sufficient ends. On the other
hand, it may be expected and hoped that more and more
of what is still, and has long been, most immoral in party
combinations, that is, the artificial adhesion to opinions
long obsolete, the prevalent indifference to truth, and
THE FUTURE OF PARTY 197
the unscrupulous support of unwortliy champions, wlio
are good for nothing but to comply fornaally with a
party test, will pass away and give place to influences
already, in the most advanced countries, making them-
selves distinctly felt.
Assuming, then, that the practice of party combina-
tion must be taken as a permanent and essential portion
of political organisation, the question returns as to how
the practice must be regarded as necessarily affecting
the novel relations of the governors and the governed.
It has been seen that the modern problem of political
organisation presupposes two data, — one, that the art
of Government has become special, difficult, and ab-
sorbing, in a way it never could have been before ; and
the other, that the great mass of the population of a
modern State has unprecedented opportunities and
capacities for intervening in governmental acts, —
whether they do so by freely choosing their governors,
by ousting and changing them, by free criticism, or by
anarchical revolutions. The problem can only be solved
by the use of such political constructions as can, first,
secure the utmost amount of trained skill and know-
ledge for the service of Government ; as can, secondly,
obtain for the Government the fullest measure of
support and acquiescence; can, thirdly, turn to the
largest account the peculiar ability possessed by the
people at large to pronounce clear moral judgments
and to correct the bureaucratic and despotic disposition
which experience proves the mere continuous exercise
of the art of Government to bring with it invariably ;
and can, fourthly, prevent the need or desire for Revo-
lution.
198 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
Any political macliinery or proposed reform of exist-
ing mackinery must be judged bj the contribution it
makes, not to the attainment of any one of those ends
alone, but to the attainment of all of them without the
sacrifice of one. It has been more by historical acci-
dent than by political ingenuity that experiments
towards the attainment of some or all of these ends
have been hitherto witnessed in diflPerent countries.
But in difiPerent countries in ancient and in modern
times a sufficient number of devices have been em-
ployed to indicate the lines of the directions which
political constructiveness can alone take in the future.
For the sa,ke of brevity of expression, the rallying
points of controversy in this matter may be desig-
nated as (1) the extension and distribution of the
Electoral Franchise, including the questions of the
rights of Minorities, and of the machinery of Eepre-
sentation ; (2) the duration of Parliaments ; (3) tlie
expediency of having one or more Chambers, their com-
position, and their mutual relations, if more than one ;
(4) the relation of the Executive to the Legislative
Authority and to the people.
(1.) The Extension and Distribution of the Electoral
Franchise,
The positions which have already been assumed as
starting points for modern political construction, and,
therefore, as already belonging to Political science, are,
first, that the object of political organisation is not
the attainment of good laws and administration as
abstracted from all consideration of the sentiments of
the people and of the relations between the governors
and the governed ; and, secondly, that a presumption
DISTEIBUTION OE THE ELECTOKAL FRANCHISE. 199
exists against the exclusion of any person or class of
persons from all right of control over the Government.
Admitting these positions, which are rapidly, though
unconsciously acquiring the force of axioms, and which
each new revolution and constitutional change tends to
reinforce, it is not necessary to travel over ground
which has been thoroughly explored and occupied
by facts rather than by a priori reasoning. It may
be laid down as an indispensable basis of Govern-
ment in all States which look to a future, instead of
merely clinging to a past, that the political franchise
is presumably co-extensive with the physical, moral,
and mental capacity to do any legal act whatever ; and
that, to adopt a concise though hackneyed phrase,
Government is to be conducted in some measure by the
people as well as for the people.
The real difficulty arises when it is attempted to
ascertain what shall be the proportions in which dif-
ferent classes of persons, all in the possession of the
franchise, shall share their control over the Govern-
ment, and what shall be the amount of that control.
In other words, the Constitution of the State has to
determine both the relations of different classes of
electors to each other and the relations of electors
generally,— that is the governed,~to the elected, —
that is (speaking broadly) the governors.
The extreme theory in respect of the mutual rela-
tions of classes of electors is to recognise no classes or
distinctions of persons at all, but to give every person,
of sufficient understanding to know what they are
doing, and not disqualified by taint of crime, an equal
electoral right. This democratical constitution, in
order to be complete and logically consistent, must be
. 200 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
reproduced in the composition of all the constituent
jq parts of the Legislature, if more than one, and must be
secured against an undue preponderance of the Legis-
lature or the Executive bj short Parliaments and by
effective control, at every point, of the Executive by the
Legislative Authority.
Such a condition of things is often pictured as the
consummation of Democracy, and is the ideal of nume-
rous classes of Eeformers. There has probably never
been any State which has satisfied all the requirements
here indicated; and there is none which approximately
satisfies them now.
Such States as present the nearest approximation to
a purely democratic constitution, such as the United
States of America, the Swiss Confederation, and the
British Colonies in Australia, will all be found, even
on a superficial view, to fail in some essential charac-
teristic. In all these States the Executive Autho-
rity, or, it may be, the Federal Legislature, or, —
in the British Colonies, — a nominated or plutocratic
Upper House, has a disproportionate share in the con-
trol of the government ; and that, not only at par-
ticular moments, which may be incidental to their
character, but permanently and by an inevitable process
of encroachment on the purely popular organs of
Government.
It would seem, indeed, that the more purely demo-
cratic is the constitution of the State in its prominent
structure, the more urgent necessity is felt for a forcible
Executive to balance, control, and direct the popular
energies. History is full of examples of the tyrant
succeeding to the organised mob, and (as Aristotle and
Montesquieu pointed out) it requires superlative virtue
DISTEIBUTION OF ELECTORAL POWER. 201
to prevent a mass of equally enfranchised citizens
degenerating, at least occasionally, from the highest to
the lowest type of political authority. The opposition
presented in the Constitution of the United States
between the firm seat of the President for the period of
four years together with his almost uncontrolled Execu-
tive authority in some of the most critical departments
of government, and the popular mode and conception
of his election, is fel t by th o hoot American -^ta-tesmen
themselvfiS-to-be an anomaly f or-which a remedy must,^
some time-ar-^othejL_be-jQund. Even in the British
Colonies, so often as the popular will is really brought
into conflict with the Upper House or the Governor,
who represents the Parent State, the country is only
saved from revolution by concessions and compromises,
■ — that is, by repudiating the right of control and recog-
nising the supreme dominion of the people themselves.
It appears then that an equal distribution of electoral^
power is no security for the maintenance of what, in
the highest sense, may be called popular rights, and for
the permanent dominion of the popular will. Except
where, as in the limited world of ancient Athens, the
space is confined enough to admit of rival orators and
of demagogues disputing with each other the right of
supreme control, that right will always be exercised in
undue predominance by the person, or Council, or
Assembly, in habitual possession of the organised forces
bf the State. He or they are constantly at the helm,
and have the incommunicable advantage of unity of
purpose, of concentrated knowledge of facts, and of
acquired technical skill in rule. The people, on the
other hand, are in danger of being satisfied, as under
the Empire of Napoleon III. in Prance, with a mere
202 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
show of reserved power testified by such a mockery of
electoral forms as was exhibited in the plebiscite.
Even though, as in the Australian Colonies, strong
divergencies of interest may be found among the
people, yet these are either pitted one against the other
in such a way as to enable the Executive Authority
to re-assert and establish its power by arbitrating
adroitly, and at critical moments between them ; or
one class of interests predominates over the rest, and
becomes master of the Executive Authority, all other
interests being thereby rendered subservient to the
supreme class of interests. This state of things existed
in the United States, when the Slave States dominated
for years together over the Union and rebelled at the
first symptom of a loss of power. The actu aL-political
equivalence of all mtiVpriH ^beco mes the engine o f a
subtle and jecret des potismj because the govern ment
is exercised in the na me of t bewhole people, and all
insurrection in pursuit of popular aims, as against a
monarch or an aristocracy, is out of the question. Public
liberty is not ignored or defied as in a State overtly
governed by a despotic authority, but is rather silently
eaten away under all the forms of a Government holding
its mandate from nothing else than the popular will.
It is necessary to examine with some care the actual
barriers which still exist in the best governed countries
against such a perversion of democratical institutions,
and to consider how far they can be treated as perma-
nent elements of a political system, or how far they must
give place to advantageous substitutes.
In England the existing obstacles to a complete
equalisation of electoral rights are found, firstly, in
the aristocratic constitution of the Second Chamber;
ELECTORAL EQUALITY 20S
secondly, in the plutocratic basis of the county franchise;
thirdly, in the unequal distribution of population through-
out the electoral areas; and fourthly, in the balance
maintained between the amount of representation re-
spectively accorded to boroughs and to counties. The
special representation of Universities in the House of
Commons, of the Church, and now, in some measure, of
the Law, in the House of Lords, is of less momentous,
though of significant, account for the same purpose ; and
the indirect influence of Royalty cannot be wholly neg-
lected, though the constitutional action of the Crown is
almost wholly subordinated to the requirements of purely
popular government. The influence and value of a
second Chamber in itself form a separate topic, and
may be treated quite independently of the consideration
of the equal or unequal distribution of electoral power.
The existence of such a Chamber, as in the United States
and now in France, is found to be compatible with the
perfect electoral equality of all citizens, though it may
serve to obviate some of the natural consequences of
this equality.
The actual obstacles to electoral equality above
enumerated, — and they may be taken as fair specimens
of all the classes of similar obstacles found in any other
countries professing to be governed on popular prin-
ciples,— are mainly due to historical cause s, generally
of an accidental nature. It is true that successive
Reform Acts, following on long and anxious debates,
have largely modified the electoral constitution of Eng-
land as handed down to the present century. But the
conservative spirit and the conservative forces of the
country have been hitherto potent enough to preserve
almost unimpaired the leading principles implied in the
204 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
constitutional antithesis of town and country, in the
structure of the House of Lords, and in tlie disregard to
purely numerical considerations in the distribution of
seats. At this day the notions of equal electoral dis-
tricts baspd on population only, and of the equalisation of
the town and county franchise, are held to be expedients
scarcely less ' radical,' — in an offensive sense of the word,
— than propositions for the reconstruction of the second
Chamber on some other basis than that of hereditary
descent.
The customary defenc e, indeed, of these institu-
tions is not a sound one, and when keenly scrutinised,
fails to the ground. It is that the House of Commons is
pre-eminently an instrument for the representation in the
Legislature of distinct interests ; and that, on an equal
distribution of electoral rights, the claims of property,
and especially of landed property, would be insufficiently
protected, there being always more poor than rich, and
the richest members of the community being an ex-
ceedingly small and much scattered class. It might be
replied to this that, in the most democratically organised
communities, such as the United States and New South
Wales, where wealt h, as such, has little or none of
the special constitutional protection accorded to it in
England, the felt difficulty is how tojrestriiit, and not
how to guard, its proper influence . The rich always/
and everywhere possess op portun^JlKUdjt* exercising/
an amount of direct and indirect, honest and corrupt,)
influence throughout the country, which, in their aggre-;
gate, form one of the most obdurate of the forces which'
Government has to bring under efficient control in the'
interests of all.
The power of economic corohiuation is of itself a
EEPKESENTATION OF WEALTH. 205
weighty factor in politics, and the class of employers
and of capitalists, especially when rightly organised for
industrial co-operation, have, and can exercise, this
power in a silent and unobserved fashion which more
effectually protects their interests than any direct legis-
lation could do.
As to the landholding class, their local weight must
always preponderate out of all proportion to their
numbers, and, in fact, what with the personal influence,
the social authority, and the effectual power of this
class in the economic hierarchy, the value of the direct
votes of its individual members might be a matter of
comparative insignificance. Nevertheless the unity of
sentiment, of manners, and of pecuniary interest, which
belongs to the ownership of land will always give an
integral solidity to the votes of the proprietary class to
which scarcely any other class can aspire ; a nd thj s^is
the^rmest q£j\]] gua^a^^t^^s fr>rjJTAjlnA gppnrify of the
interests of wealth.
The argument, then, that wealth needs special •
representation in the Legislature must not only be^
dismissed as founded on a perverse distortion of the i
facts of the case, but must be regarded as pernicious, '
inasmuch as it reverses the true reasoning applicable to
the subject. If interests have to be directly represented
in the Legislature, it is surely not that class of interests
which are secure of the most uniform indirect and covert
representation. It is not the socially and industrially
organised classes who are in danger of being in-
sufficiently heard and protected, but the vast masses of
the population which— from their numbers, the variety
of their occupations, their indigence, and their ob-
scurity, — will never be heard at all, if special consti-
206 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICa
tutional provision is not made for them, — except at
sucli moments as those of the outbreak of the French
"Revolution and of the Revolutions of 1848.
But another error has crept into this reasoning in
favour of specially and most eflPectually representing
that which is always the strongest, — and indeed is
strong without direct representation at all, — based upon
a misapprehension of what is meant by an ' interest.'
Surely every member of the State, worthy of the
name of man or woman, is concerned with the good
government of the country for far other reasons than
for the mere protection of his property or of his in-
dustrial or commercial gains. I n the struggle between
the classe s_ several ly personating the o,ln,ims of capital
and of labour, it is of importance to the parties on
either side that the laws, and the execution of the laws,
affecting their fortunes should be reasonable and just ;
and for this end the legislator must be thoroughly in-
formed of the issues at stake and of the probable effect
of any legislation he contemplates. The administrator
of the law must likewise have opportunities of knowing
intimately where the law presses and when, and where
and to what extent its execution should be enforced or
relaxed. But all these considerations rest upon plain
and easily cognisable matters of fact.
There is no greater difiiculty in finding out what
Are the precise rival interests affected by a Land Act,
a Bank Charter Act, or a Currency Act than there is
of discovering,— as is done by a Select Committee of
the House of Commons, — what are the precise interests
likely to be prejudiced by the construction of a new
line of Railway or by the Amalgamation of two Rail-
way Companies. To the extent that interests are real
MONETARY INTERESTS. 207
and definite, — and therefore as some say deserving of
special representation, — they are likewise definite, and
really, if not always numerically, computable, and can
be thoronghly guarded without any direct representa-
tion at all.
If it be said that it may be true that these monetary
interests may be understood through the machinery of
oral witnesses and documentary proofs, but will only
secure proper attention through the sort of political
pressure exercised by special representatives, then the
question arises as to the composition of the Legislative
Chamber itself.
On this theory each class of distinct pecuniary in-
terest must be adequately defended by special delegates,
and the Chamber as a whole must reflect all the classes
of interests which are forcible and conspicuous enough,
and yet not too numerous and intricate, to secure a
place. But, to revert to what was said above, these
limited and ascertainable interests are, at the most, only
a small, and by no means important, portion of the in-
terests affected by legislation. They are more calculated
to attract attention than other interests only because of
the distinctness in which the outward incidents of pro-
perty and of industrial intercourse stand out on the
platform of human afPairs. Every one can appreciate
their value according (it may be) to a standard of his
own, and the rivalries to which they give rise proceed
in the eyes of all men, and without cessation or pause.
With respect to other interests, however, they are
noticed by the m£.ss of mankind only at such moments
as novel questions arise having relation to them. They
occupy, indeed, too large a space in individual and in
political life to attract to themselves a special and
208 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
concentrated attention which would be proportioned
to their magnitude. Thej fill the canvas, and conse-
quently the eye cannot estimate their real and com-
parative worth and significance.
It may be, indeed, that owing to a specific event,
such as the threat of war, the tale of inhuman atrocities
committed in a foreign land, a criminal trial, a gross
administrative abuse, or a scandalous commercial fraud,
public attention is roused, and the interests of public
morality and of national right and duty are recognised
as supreme. The public conscience is stirred to its
depths, and (as happens from time to time especially
in America and in France) a portion of the community
usually reluctant to intervene in Politics comes to the
front and determines to make itself heard. But the
interval of such spasmodic zeal is shortlived, and when
the evil has been redressed, the diplomatic course
altered, the national character vindicated, the claims
of the mighty interests for the time in jeopardy are
forgotten or at least subordinated to the unresting
calls presented by the clash of commonplace economical
competition.
It may thus be expected that in what may be called
quiet times, — that is, in ordinary times, — the claims of
property, of commerce, and of fragmentary portions of \j
the community will exercise an influence over elections v
wholly disproportionate both to their actual importance u
and to their effective weight at any momentary crisis'*
when the community has its political sentiments
strongly and deeply stirred.
It may be expected that the progress of the equali-
sation of electoral rights, as above described, will operate
in favour of diffusing more broadly and evenly at an
PAETY IN THE UNITED STATES. 209
times the genuine political sentiments on the strengtlp
and correctness of which the State must rely at the most
critical moments. The limited field of Athenian^ demo-
cracy, so far as theprecedent is applicable in the modern
world, certainly seems to prove that the equalisation of
rights of intervention in government may elevate rather
than depress the habitual character of political action.
It might be said, on a superficial view, that the ex-
perience of the Unit ed States is the oppof=;itft tn tin's ,
and^jfc hat the ^^qmLdiffiision of electora,! rig hts ha.s bp.ft n
attend ed by a stea d y deprf^chition of pnlitiVal characfpr
a nd energ y. But the truth is that the United States are
only beginning to grapple practically and seriously with
the very constitutional problem the elements of which
it is the object of the present discussion to examine.
ThB rapid poli^al and constitutional jn ovem ents, pre-
cipit^d by-economical and physLcal_expansion, have
forced th£^ almost insuperable difficulties of the case
int9j)remature prominelice. "^ ^
So far as an indication of ultimate success in^c^
adapting the Constitution to the demands of a state S^
of society based on an absolute equality of electoral *^
power can be gathered from casual experience at .
critical epochs, the united energy of the nation in
maintaining the Union, in re-organising the Slave
States, in defraying the expenses of the Secession War, i
and in grappling with the scandals of administrative
corruption, affords a rich promise for the future. "Kie
Republic of the United States can only be said to have
failed when the bulk of the nation shall have indolently
acquiesced in the vices and flaws of its government,
when it has ceased to struggle, to reconstruct, to hoi)e,
and to believe.
p
210 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
It is plain then how superficial and inadequate is the
view of a Legislative Chamber which supposes that the
mere representation of a limited number of ascertain-
able material interests within its walls can ever be its
fi.nal form. It is found, on reflection, that it only
comes from national lethargy and inadvertence that
these limited classes of interests are forced, in ordinary
times, into political prominence; and that as soon as
ever the public conscience and the educated instincts
of the people are appealed to, those classes of interests
become as nothing in the appreciating scale, and, in
place of them, there instantly come to the surface con-
siderations based on the claims of national right and
obligation, of posterity, and of the more unprotected
portions of the population, of religion (not of a purely
denominational sort), of education, and of abstract
morality.
It is to be remembered too that the tendency of free
institutions and of the equalisation of political power is
to impart substance and cohesiveness to this general
order of ideas as dominating in the popular conscious-
ness. An untrammelled press, security against police
despotism, an unrestricted right of orderly public
meeting, and ungrudged opportunities for the an-
nouncement of wishes and opinions in an organised
form to the heads of Government Departments, all
operate in one and the same direction of calling into
mature existence political conceptions and instincts
of the highest order, which, in default of these popular
agencies, might remain embryonic or be starved out of
life.
Yet it is jus t this ord er__Q£-i dea s wh ich, even
though often false, uninforme d, or impprft^ct., nf> ed to
PRINCIPLES OF REPRESENTATION. 211
be brought into direct competition with the strong and
purely material interests which are pretty sure to hold
their own, whatever be the constitution of the Legis-
lative Chamber. Industrial co-operation and the ex-
tension of centralised administrative work must be
expected to increase rather than to diminish. But
this involves the creation of compact political interests
of a highly organised kind. The railway interest, the
interest of large ship-owners, the interest of bankers,
the interest of municipal corporations as such, the
interest of the Army, of the Police, and, in many
countries, of voluntary Churches, are likely to become
more, and not less, effectually defended as time goes
on. The only counterpoise to them will be found to
be the general rpf^ogn it i on ^f f l^ e t r nfh fhaf. f ^ y p ry
member ofth^^COrnm u ni^-y hn.a a^ pnripprri in thp dp-
velopment^f its jm oral life^ar exceeding in. magmtude
and v alue that jw hich he or another may c hance to
ha ve in any enterprise capable of being counte d,
measured, or weighed.
The^pprehension of this position is not here a
subject of recommendation, which would be outside
the purpose of this treatise. It is stated as about to
become a political axiom which must be taken into
account in all constitutional constructions based on the
conditions of modern society. The direct representation
of monetary interests must become less and less pro-
minent or possible, while the representation of the class
of ideas which are capable of commending themselves
to innumerable persons at once will become more and
more so.
Admitting, then, these conditions, the question rej
turns as to what are the only possible modes of reprot-j
p 2
212 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
ducing adequately in a Legislative Chamber the true
spirit and will of the people in their various manifesta-
tious, consistently with maintaining a due amount of
energy and continuity in the Executive Authority.
In England, at the present day, a considerable
amount of variety in the composition of the Legisla-
ture, corresponding with broadly marked diflPerences of
opinion in the country, is secured by the distribution,
on a definite principle, of the seats between the towns
and the counties. This distribution is due at the out-
set to purely historical causes, though it has been,
within recent years, consolidated and improved in pur-
suit of distinct political ends.
The permanence of the lines drawn between town
and country representation cannot be relied upon as an
essential factor in the constitution of a Modern State.
The facilities of locomotion make the transit between
town and country so rapid and easy that the town
population is increasingly acquiring habits of working
in the town and sleeping at several miles distance in
the country. One portion of a family occupies the
country house or villa or lodging and the other portion
spends the working hours of the day in town and passes
to and fro at night and morning. Thus the interests,
sentiments and habits of town and country residents
respectively become less and less separable.
In the meantime purely economical causes, such as
the growth of population, the depreciation of agricul-
tural profits, and the indispensable necessity of applying
larger amounts of capital and on a more extended scale,
if profitable cultivation is the object, are assimilating
country labour to the highly organised labour hitherto
only witnessed in large manufacturing towns. Further-
REPEESENTATION OF TO^VNS. 213
more, new towns, especially in America and the great
British Colonies, keep springing into existence with
unexampled rapidity, according as the discovery of a
new mine, or the opening out by a railway of new
markets, pastoral districts, or commercial centres, call
for them.
The inhabitants of these new towns have none of
the fixity of ideas, or traditional associations, or heredi-
tary attachments, which go so far to give political
coherence to the citizens of the older towns, while
the migratory disposition which, in fact, gave birth
to the new settlement, imparts to them a character-
istic temper which distinguishes them alike from tlie
dwellers in a rural village and from the freemen of
an ancient borough.
Besides this, another compensating tendency is de-
stroying civic life as a political factor altogether. The
facilities for locomotion acting within a narrower range,
and the more dift'used and correct appreciation of the
laws of health, as well as the improvement of towns from
the point of view of artistic beauty and architectural
convenience, combine to render the suburb of a town,
as a political element, more important than the town
itself. Even where the railway is not resorted to for
the purpose of nocturnal flight into the country pro-
perly so called, the practice of sleeping and conducting
family existence on the outskirts of the town, and not
in its centre, is become more and more habitual. That,
too, which is the luxury of the well-to-do clerk or
tradesman is become the necessity of the skilled and
unskilled artisan.
Every internal improvement which broadens streets,
erects commodious warehouses, central railway stations,
214 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
exchanges, town-lialls, and places of amusement, and
claims space for squares, public gardens and parks,
drives the labourer and his family to find a home at an
increasing distance from his work. The street-tramway
and the early 'workman's' train adapt themselves to
the new exigencies, and the result is that the outskirts
of every great town are fringed with remote suburbs
the reverse of ' fashionable,' which by the simplicity, —
not to say the occasional squalor, — of the erections,
merge into the common surroundings of the agri-
cultural labourer.
It is evident then that every fresh economic im- ,
pulse tends to obliterate that sharp distinction between
town and country which could alone be a continuing/i
basis of fixed differences in political representation//
No doubt it will always be the case that the person
whose life is most thrown with that of his fellows, who
is best trained in habits of co-operation and in the
culture of sympathetic emotions, who has the truest
sense of the continuity of corporate existence and of
the corresponding responsibilities, and who is the most
familiar with the economical conditions, as exhibited
on a clear and wide platform, on which all civilised
society and therefore all government ultimately rests,
starts with a political education to which the isolated
dweller or worker amidst purely rural scenes can make
no pretension, and for which no book study or desultory
social intercourse can make compensation.
It is for this reason that the great reforms and
beneficial revolutions in such feudalised countries as
England, France and Germany may be traced back to
the indestructible political instinct which has often had
its sole refuge in the ca.sually protected corporations
TOWN AND COUNTRY REPEESENTATION. 2 15
of the great towns ; and that, even at this date, the
characteristic political sentiment of the dwellers in the
great towns of these countries is one favourable to
indefinite political improvement rather than, as in
country places, to the mere maintenance of existing
institutions and the preservation of order.
It has been seen, however, that this clear opposition
of sentiments, which may be regarded as salutary where
it does not result in stagnation, cannot be treated as a
permanent phenomenon. Even where the political
characteristics of town and country life are on the
whole maintained, the gradations of sentiment brought
about by incessant motion to and fro, by migrations,
and by the indefinite extension of the area of town life
into the country, are becoming so numerous and fine
that the distinction itself is becoming antiquated for
purposes of Parliamentary representation, and will
shortly be worthless in the more advanced countries.
If once the d istinct ion of town and country becom es
no longer^ecognisable HiS one of the Jb ases of the di s-
tribution^^f^seats, it cannot be long before an end is
put to all the less startling inequalities in the electoral
franchise. The extent of electoral areas has been
determined not only by population but by merely acci-
dental, local, or traditional claims to special repre-
sentation. It may thus be expected that within a
period not too remote for political prevision, in every
country in which representative institutions are the
foundation of the Government, n o other princ iple_gf
distributin g votes a n_d spnta will be toler^.ted thnn thn.t
which ma kes every pers on — not disqualified by ag e,
diseas e, or c rinie, — a voter, n.nd pve^ry person's vote of
216 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
exactly equal weight as affecting the composition of
the Legislature.
A difficulty, however, is here encountered the ele-
ments of which must be examined with some care,
because of its bearing on some political problems
already adverted to and larger than itself. Though
every person's vote may presumably be of equal weight,
3^et there are various modes of adjusting the machinery
of voting by which on occasion the effective value of
each vote may be disproportionately increased.
The current electoral practice in England is an
illustration of this. The electoral areas in England
(excepting the Universities) are a county, — or divisions
of a county, — and a borough,— or (as in the case of
London) divisions of a borough. One, two, or three
members are apportioned to each electoral area ; and —
except in a very limited number of constituencies ten-
tatively submitted to a different system, — every voter
has as many votes as there are members to be elected,
and he can use as many or as few of his votes as he
pleases. Thus when a party issue or other clearly com-
prehended and sufficiently interesting question is clearly
propounded to a constituency at the time of an election,
the majority of the voters who are of accord on this
issue or question necessarily carry all the seats, and the
minority are, so far as this area is concerned, wholly
unrepresented.
The misfortune is that as it usually happens that
one question at a time occupies public attention and
depresses all other questions, the accidental distri-
bution of opinion on this single question at the moment
of election determines the constitution of the repre-
sentative Chamber so long as the Parliament lasts,
SHOET AND LONG PARLIAMENTS. 217
while the people may be wholly unrepresented on all
other questions, and the aggregate of minorities
throughout the country are unrepresented on this
question also. In fact, for the duration of the Parlia-
ment, on all questions but the one which predominated
at the moment of the General Election, the will of the
Parliamentary representatives is substituted for the
will of the people, and on all questions whatever the
will of the minorities is unrepresented.
The only practical correctives to this state of things
are found in the inevitable competition of other ques-
tions with the prominent one ; in the confidence re-
posed in individual candidates independently of their
specific views at a given moment ; and in the necessity
that members desirous of re-election should defer, in
their Parliamentary conduct, to the sentiments pre-
vailing in their several constituencies. This last con-
sideration operates most forcibly when Parliaments are
elected for the shortest periods, and, naturally, with
more force towards the close of a Parliament than in
its early days.
Many schemes have been devised and partially
resorted to in England, and in other countries, in order
to bring a greater portion of the true popular will to
bear upon Governments purporting to be representative,
and to enable this will to operate at a greater number
of points.
Shorter parliaments have been always one of the de-
mands of an extreme democratic party when in pursuit
of more complete and continuous popular representa-
tion. Long Parliaments have different disadvantages
according to the modes in which they come to an end.
One disadvantage is that of gradually substituting for
218 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
the popular voice an adventitious, and j^et highly
organised, opinion generated from within by the con-
ditions of co-operation peculiar to the Assembly itself.
Another may be that of artificially prolonging the
duration of an Assembly proved to contain elements
too recalcitrant and irreconcilable to sustain the in-
terests of order and progress. A third may be that of
putting in the hands of the members of the Executive
Authority an arbitrary right of dissolution which may
be resorted to, not in the public interests, but simply in
order to maintain themselves in ofl&ce. But, on the other
hand, too short Parliaments prevent the formation of
habits of Government; favour an undue reference, at
critical moments, to transitory waves of opinion and
sentiment outside the House ; maintain ceaseless agita-
tion and excitement in the country ; and impede the con-
struction of a strong and lasting Executive Authority.
Some of each of these opposite disadvantages may
no doubt be avoided by the American system of re-
electing a third (or some other considerable fraction)
of the whole House at short fixed intervals so as to
ensure that within a brief, but not too brief, period, — as
for instance six years, — the whole House be re-elected.
But this system bears, like so much else in the
American Constitution, the signs of nervous apprehen-
sion of democratic dangers, and thereby loses some
of the characteristic advantages of a true popular con-
stitution. There is the want of perpetual opportunity
for a full exhibition of the public sentiment ; and
therefore there is always a sense that there can be
no real and permanent unity in the House of Repre-
sentatives, but that one portion or another will find
support in the Senate or from the President, each of
REPIIESENTATION OF MINORITIES. 219
whicli departments is elected on different principles
from tlie rest of the Legislature. The public mind is,
at the most critical junctures, curbed and chained by
the Constitution, and the result is that it expresses
itself with most freedom on the occasion of the election
of the President, who becomes, as soon as he assumes
office, the most conservative and irresponsible element
in the Government.
The solution of the problem of popular representation
which has obtained most favour in England of late years,
and has been, to some extent, put in practice, is that of
the direct representation of minorities. In the actual
schemes which have been propounded, the subject has
usually been implicated with others, such as local repre-
sentation and the machinery for expeditiously taking
the votes, which are only indirectly connected with it,
though of great importance in themselves. It is ex-
pedient, however, in pronouncing on the value of this
solution of the problem, to reduce the mode proposed
to its simplest elements.
At some point or other both inside the Legislative
Assembly and outside it, it is obvious that, in case of
final difference of opinion, the opinions of the more
numerous must practically prevail over those of the
less numerous ; not by any means because the more
numerous are more likely to have right on their side,
but because a decision of any sort is better than no
decision at all ; and if the superior physical force wielded
by the stronger is no longer the means of decision, the
bare collected opinions of those who might otherwise
wield the force form the natural and only available
substitute. It is true that the very notion of force is
forgotten or exploded, and the mere allusion to it savours
220 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
of a deference to mob law. But, historically speaking,
there can be no doubt that the practice of deferring to
a majority is simply that of giving way, in time and by
decent ceremonial, to those who could have their own
way if they chose to take it.
The solution of merely counting the votes, and
acting in the direction to which the greater number
of votes incline, is rough at the best, and the only
apology for persisting in its use, in a civilised con-
dition of society, is that when action must be taken
and the individual votes of the persons in whose name
it is taken are presumably of equal value, the test of
mere plurality is the only imaginable test to abide by.
It has at least the advantage that it seems plausible,
because, to the superficial observer, the greater the
number of people who assent to a proposition, the more
likely is that proposition to be true. In the common
matters of life, which rest chiefly on wide experience
easily obtained, the mere multiplication of witnesses gives
credib to a statement or persuasion in which they all
concur. In these matters exceptional views are, at least,
as likely to be signs of mere eccentricity as of genius.
But, in proportion as the question rises out of the region
accessible to common experience ; as it involves strict
logic for its treatment; demands the casting aside of
prejudices due to habit and a narrow experience ; and
calls for moral as well as mental equilibrium and intro-
spection ; it is the few rather than the many who are
most likely to give a true reply to it.
No doubt, between the common problems of daily
life on which the opinion of one average person is
likely to be as good as that of another, and the ques-
tions requiring special knowledge, thoughtfulness, or
MAJOEITIES AND MINORITIES. 221
moral culture, there are a class of questions which
only come to the surface at moments of political emer-
gency, — especially when some moral sentiment is in-
volved or believed to be involved. On. such occasions
the conscience of the people as a corporate community
may be stirred to its depths. All the ordinary ties
and associations of habit are snapped asunder. The
heart of the people is moved as the heart of one man,
and, either with the frenzy of fanaticism or the judicial
resolution of an intelligent patriotism, the large mass
of the community thinks and feels together with hardly
noticeable dissent.
It is seasons such as these which generate national
crimes or occasion acts of heroic magnanimity which
illustrate to all time the possibility of corporate virtue.
It was such a vox populi which, by supporting the
unwavering energy of the Eoman Senate, steadied the
nation after the defeat of Cannse. It was the same
voice which vindicated the cause of the Seven Bishops
and, by anticipation, stamped the English Revolution
of 1688 with popularity. It was, too, the same voice
which accredited in France the military encroach-
ments at home and abroad of the two Napoleons, and
which has since again and again emphasised its
acceptance of the Republic. It is the same voice
which at one epoch, supported in England the Chinese
aggressions of Lord Palmerston against the condem-
nations proceeding from both Houses of Parliament,
and which, thirty years afterwards, accepted with tu-
multuous approbation the counter policy of Mr. Glad-
stone avowedly based on the principle that England
must peremptorily abstain from encroachment on her
weaker neighbours.
222 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
Such examples as these prove that, even when the
public mind of a nation is so far shifted from its common
moorings as to act with abnormal activity and concentra-
tion it is dependent, to a perilous extent, on the sort
of personal influences which are brought to bear on it.
The Roman Senate, the two Napoleons, M. Gambetta,
Lord Palmerston, and Mr. Gladstone, — not to dwell on
the more common instances of popularly exerted power
which are spread over the history of Greece, of the
Italian Eepublics, and of the United States, — severally
exercised, at great national crises, an amount of wide-
spread popular influence which for a time, or in some
cases for years together, imparted a marked and uniform
consistency to the policy of the country.
It is the object of a Constitution so to settle the
framework of the State in harmony with the true and
permanent national spirit of the country, created by
its history and by the growth of all its institutions,
that no casual political accident, wave of feeling, or
momentary personal influence, shall have a dispropor-
tionate weight among the forces which affect the public
mind. It has been seen that in ordinary times and
in respect to the commoner topics of life, a majority
of persons are more likely to be in the right than a
minority. In similar times, as to matters requiring
special thought and knowledge or specially cultivated
sentiment, a minority is at least as likely to be in the
right as a majority, and a properly selected minority
more likely to be in the right. In times of a critical
and exceptional kind the majority may be right or
may be wrong, but is at all events likely to be
overwhelming in numbers and irresistible in au-
thority.
MINOEITY EEPKESENTATIOL. 223
A s&Timing then that the constituti onal machinery
nrnsjLhRirmoTiisPi with, and give effect to, the political
pr eponderance of numerical majoriti ea,JU^-&till^^mftyR«
to be settled at w hat point of time or^^e(g[uence in the
process of election and legislation the mere weight of
counted numbers, and of this alone, is to tell. Suppose,
in the simplest case of all, that a single member has to
be elected by the electors dwelling in a definitely cir-
cumscribed electoral area. There may be several candi-
dates, of whom the one who obtains the greatest number
of votes is chosen. All the electors who have voted for
any other candidates than the one who has the majority
of votes are unrepresented in Parliament altogether.
Suppose the case to be the same in any number of similar
areas. If these_u nrepres ented_jninorities a,rft added
tr^gAJjhgrjf.liTvvn ghQu t the onunivyj thoy mny lf>,ygftly-nnt-
nu mber the sum of m anyLiiL the ma j orities w hich are
represented.
Therefore, because the separation between the ma-
jority and the minority is made at the first moment,
is irreparable, and is made for every member elected,
the aggregate effect is that, on a vast variety of topics,
and in respect of the competing claims of a vast number
of candidates, the number of represented persons may
be exceeded by that of those whose votes prove good
for nothing. The latter are in fact, for many purposes,
and when added together, the majority. For instance,
if a particular candidate were nominated for a dozen
constituencies at once, and only failed of election by
a single vote, as against different successful candidates
in each constituency, the aggregate majority in his
favour throughout these dozen constituencies would
be overwhelming, and yet he would not be elected, and
224 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
tlie votes of his supporters in each constituency would
be thrown awaj.
It is with the utilisation of these votes, so thrown
awaj, that Mr. Hare, Mr. Mill, and a variety of Con-
tinental writers have occupied themselves in their
schemes for what is sometimes called the Eepresenta-
tion of Minorities, and sometimes Personal or Propor-
tional Eepresentation.
The most popular of these schemes provides that
each voter may furnish to the returning officer a list of
persons, either selected at pleasure or out of a list of
candidates previously prepared, arranged in the order
in which he wishes each of his votes to be turned to
account. There is a fixed minimum of votes, — based on
the proportion between the number of members to be
elected and the number of electors in the electoral area,
— needed to secure the election of any member whatever.
So soon as, in counting up the votes, it appears that
any member has received a sufficient number of votes to
secure his election, all other votes given for him are
cancelled, and the votes so given are applied in favour
of other candidates, according to the order of pre-
ference in which they appear on the voters' lists.
The operation of cancelling and substitution is re-
peated with each return of a member till the whole
number of members are elected in the area, which
may be as large as the area of present constituencies,
or larger, or, indeed, coextensive with all the existing
constituencies. The mere size of the constituencies is
not of the essence of the scheme propounded, though it
is an important element in estimating its value.
The writers who have advocated this scheme have
laboured to show that the mechanical difficulties of
SCHEMES OE MINORITY REPRESENTATION. 225
counting tlie votes with rapidity could be got over,
and that it would become as familiar and as thoroughly
understood as voting by simple majorities. One ob-
vious objection to it is that, to make it of real ad-
vantage to voters, the area must be sufficiently large
to secure a large choice of candidates. The smaller the
area, the smaller the number of members for that area,
and the fewer the names which will appear on a voter's
list with any hope of the alternative votes being turned
to account. The larger the area, the greater chance
that a na.me, though first on no list, will yet re-appear
on a great number and so secure election, rather by
diffused than by intense popularity. In this way the
finer shades of political opinion will secure a greater
chance of representation. But, according as the area is
extended in this way, the notion of local connexion
between a member and his constituency becomes ob-
literated. This not only implies a vital alteration in
the Constitution of most existing States, but involves
a loss of some political elements which could ill be
spared.
The connexion between a member and a definite
constituency has undoubtedly some disadvantages which
are reaped to the full when, as in the United States, and
some British Colonies, the places represented are very
far apart and have very diverse interests, and when the
sense of corporate national responsibility is not always
strong enough to overcome the centrifugal tendency
thereby created. But, on the other hand, it is scarcely
possible to overrate the benefit accruing from multi-
plying sub-centres of Governmental responsibility. To
bring a definite portion of the population, already
welded together by geographical situation, hereditary
226 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
antecedents, and current mutual dependence, into a
close and constant connexion with the central Govern-
ment must be a primary object of the Statesman's soli-
citude. This definite connexion with the central
Legislature is at once the necessary supplement and
the best corrective of local Government. The fact that,
in some countries, it degenerates into a system rife with
opportunities for corrupt self-seeking is one of those
morbid phenomena which, while they call for the political
physician, are no imputation on the general worth of the
life they impair. Mere universal popularity over a large
area, as was shown by the plebiscites which returned
again and again Napoleon III., is often but a superficial
indication of true personal merit; and though, under
such a system of alternative voting as that described
above, the mere force of notoriety would be largely cor-
rected by the return of the nominees of accumulated
small minorities, yet here again the want of connexion
among the voters would rather favour the representation
of worthless crotchets than of deep-rooted and wide
scattered, though unobtrusive, political convictions. The
personal relationship between a member and his con-
stituency has been often made, and is capable of being
made still more, the occasion of the finest species of
political training for the people. In his speeches and
addresses to the electors of Bristol Edmund Burke well
explained the limits within which he held a mere local
subserviency to be confined.
The English practice of autumnal speeches ad-
dressed by members of Parliament to their consti-
tuencies, followed by questions and varied forms of
social intercourse, ought not to be omitted in taking
account of the less direct machinery by which the
SCHEMES OF MINORITY KEPRESENTATION. 227
claims of different parts of the country are reconciled
with its claims as an integral unity.
Other less complete schemes of minority representa-
tion have been suggested, and to some extent put in
practice, but none of them occasion the loss of so few
votes as that just explained. The method of election
of English School-Boards, according to which each
elector in an electoral area has as many votes as there
are members to be elected for that area, and can dis-
tribute them among the nominated candidates, or with-
hold them altogether, or accumulate them in favour of
one or more, certainly secures the representation of can-
didates distinctly representing well marked minrrities.
Thus in some parts of the country it often happens that
a Roman Catholic, Nonconformist, or woman candidate,
is at the head of the poll, not because more persons vote
for them, but because those who do vote for them give
them all their votes and vote for no one else.
Another mode, in use in what are called in England
the ' three-cornered constituencies,' is to allow voters to
have votes numbering one fewer than the number of
members to be elected, so that if there are three members
to be elected the probability is that the majority of the
constituency succeed in returning two out of the three
and the minority the third. In these constituencies it
is always the object of the majority, by economising
their votes, to secure the return of all their candidates.
But this is difficult ; and they are usually defeated where
the sides are clearly marked and the majority is not
overwhelming.
The representation of a clearly marked minority of
this kind in a single constituency is logically unsatis-
factory because it proceeds on an assumed numerical
Q 2
228 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
distribution of opinions throughout the country which
probably at no moment represents a real distribution
of opinion. If such constituencies existed all over
the country, the result might be an Assembly of
which exactly two-thirds were attached to one political
party, — the dominant one in the country at the day, —
and the remaining third was attached partly to the
direct opponents of the former and partly to an in-
definite number of strongly organised but politically
insignificant coteries.
T hough a Hou se_of_this_com positio n pres ents the
appeaiTa nce of arithmetical fairness, yet the ve ry sharp-
nesg^oLtheJin e separating the d iffereiit_classes of mem-
bers is unfavourable to unity and to legislative homo-
geneity. It is one thing for a deliberative Chamber
to come together, as formed of personal elements having
a history which recalls on a smaller scale the actual
lines of demarcation which broadly separate political
parties and opinions in the country at large. It is
another thing to attempt to reproduce, in exact numeri-
cal proportions, the quantity of opinion on one side
or another arbitrarily presumed to exist outside. In
the one case, the sense of political responsibility,
the mere fact and habit of companionship, and the
necessities of co-operation, all tend to develope a unity
of purpose and action which is quite consistent with
the broad and sharp opposition, at proper moments,
of party policy. In the other case the Members for the
same constituency bring with them into the House the
deep-rooted oppositions of sentiment which prevailed on
the spot at which the election took place, and which were
exacerbated and intensified by all the incidents of a
sharply contested election.
TEE REPEESENTATION OF MINOIIITIES. 229
If it be true, as has been already admitted, that the
mere economical distribution of society will, of itself,
always maintain the existence of great political parties
inclining in opposite directions, it is, furthermore, a true
condition of healthy political existence that every means
be exerted to render this fixed opposition as compatible
as possible with the unity of State life.
This unity can be best secured not only by soften-
ing, in all forms of social intercourse and in Par-
liamentary manners, the asperities of party spirit, but
by preventing hard party lines being drawn in the
ordinary working of the C'onstitution. Party divisions,
even where they connote true and deep differences of
interests and sentiment, should be made as casual and
evanescent as possible in their formal expression. They
should instantly disappear before the solvent of a
national call which appeals to that which is deeper and
more permanent than themselves, and the utmost oppor-
tunity should be afforded for the frequent subordina^
tion of them to personal or other claims of a diflPerent
kind.
On all these grounds, it seems undesirable, — that is,
in other words, incompatible with the highest principles
of popular government as already enunciated, — that
minorities should be so represented as to reproduce
with microscopic precision the unstable divisions o"
political feeling stereotyped at the moment of a
general election. The claims for the representation of
minorities are not properly based on the notion that
the less popular opinions outside the House should be
entitled, through their concentration in a narrow field,
to tell with reduplicated force in the actual performance
of the task of Legislation and Government.
230 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
These claims really rest on the fact that, according
to the recognised methods of counting only the majority-
vote in each electoral area, the country is not polled at
all in respect to a vast number of questions. Such
questions are those which, either owing to the special
circumstances of the country at the moment of the
election or to the necessity of choosing candidates
likely to command general confidence, are inevitably
treated, at that moment only, as secondary questions.
Thus the complaint is that thf^. majority-vote only
accidentally represents, even in form, a majority. It
may happen that the number of aggregate minorities
throughout the country would, on some other question
than that temporarily uppermost, coalesce with a suffi-
cient number of those now opposed to them to form
a majority still greater than that now dominant.
Thus a really adequate representation of even a
majority of the electors would mean the representation
of all the majorities which would be obtained by taking
the votes successively on a large variety of urgent
political questions, capable of being propounded in a
clear shape to persons not specially instructed.
It is customary in ' election addresses ' for candidates
to announce their views on a series of questions which
they consider urgent or interesting to the constituency
at the moment, and to arrange them in the order of
the importance they attach to them. It depends on
the quality of the party divisions at the time whether
a number of such questions hang together and can be
treated in the lump as a portion of the party pro-
gramme, or whether significance attaches to only one or
only a few of them. Thus each elector, in comparing,
the claims of candidates to his vote, may have to de-
THE REPRESENTATION OF MINORITIES. 231
termine whether he shall make the party question
prevail in his mind over all the others, or whether, —
— through indifference to party claims, through personal
predilection for a particular candidate, or through
superior concern in other questions in which a can-
didate would represent him more closely than he does
on the party question, — he will refuse to be bound
merely by his party ties.
As it may be assumed, by the very hypothesis, that
the dominant question of the moment will most interest
most electors, there are strong inducements for an elector
to subordinate his concern in all other questions, and
even in the personality of the candidate, in order to make
his vote tell at all. In this way a certain violence is
done to freedom; and this is especially true when a
Minister dissolves the House suddenly on a question
on which the country has concentrated its whole atten-
tion for the moment, — as, for instance, that of his own
retention of office or that of a foreign war. In these
cases, all those electors who do not rate the dominant
question at the same value as the average electors do
are not only out- voted, but are never asked to vote at all
on any subject but one. These disappointed electors
are often more numerous than is supposed, because, as
they find it worth while to vote on one side or the
other rather than be temporarily disfranchised, their
indisposition to sacrifice all their strong opinions to one
opinion, which to them is almost colourless, never
appears.
It is obvious that such a scheme as that of naming
alternative candidates,— worked with electoral areas
large enough to secure a plentiful supply of varied can-
didates and yet not so large as to lose the advantage of
232 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
a local connexion between a member and his coDsti-
tuency, — would go some way to secure a representation
of a far larger number of the population on a far larger
number of questions. This would be done without
representing minorities, and so, perhaps, indurating and
intensifying within the House the antipathies already
more than sufficiently well marked outside it.
Having ascertained the principles which determine
how the people are to be represented, it remains to
consider how far the efficiency of the representative
Chamber itself and the conduct of Government are
affected by the various modes of representation to
which attention has just been drawn.
Some part of this subject has been anticipated in the
remarks which have been made on the aggravation of
party-spirit within the House likely to be promoted by
positively representing minorities as such. There is a
cardinal objection to all modes of minority-representa-
tion, even to those which have for their supreme object
the most complete attainable representation of the
majority of the electoral body on the largest number of
separable topics. It is that the less uniform and nar-
rowly confined are the political sentiments of members
of the House, the more difficult does it become to secure
promptness and decision in legislative action, and the
more incalculable are the obstacles which, at unforeseen
points, are likely to obstruct the path of the Executive
Authority. Thus it is feared that, in a House repre-
senting a breadth and diversity of opinion at all cor-
responding to the multiform interests and tastes per-
vading the community, debates would be indefinitely
prolonged, party discipline would be slackened, and
THE KEPEESENTATION OF MINORITIES. 233
important measures would be carried by such insignifi-
cant majorities that small and compact sections of the
House would be able to make the whole policy of the
country sway from side to side at their pleasure.
This evil indeed is no imaginary one ; and it repre-
sents, undoubtedly, the characteristic danger to which
an assembly with a thoroughly popular constitution is
always prone. It was, in spite of Mr. Grote's apologies
(which are, in many respects, unanswerable), the main
constitutional drawback to those popular bodies in
Athens and in early Rome which not so much repre-
sented as were constituted out of the citizen body.
Mr. Grote has sufficiently shown that the Athenian
people, assembled in their Ecclesia, were neither fickle
nor unjust ; but on the contrary had attained the habit
of listening patiently to arguments from all sides, and
practised the self-restraint needed to re-consider again
and again their determinations. But this very process
of re-opening decided questions and of sustaining a
condition of protracted doubt is not favourable to the
rapid despatch of business or to the maintenance of
an uniform policy. The widening area of Roman
Government, — which opened out an experience to
which Athens had not time to attain, — rendered the
concentration of the powers of Government in the
hands of a homogeneous aristocratic Senate an essential
condition of further political existence, though (as
Professor Mommsen has fully proved) it was the cor-
ruption and internal discord of this Senate which
brought the Republic to the brink of ruin, from which
it could only be saved by the institution of Imperial
rule.
In modern States the best hope for uniformity,
234 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS
strength, and stability in tlie executive Government
need not be placed in the narrowness of the range of
interests or questions to v^^hich representation is ex-
tended. It may be expected that, according as the
constitution is so modified as to admit of a more com-
plete representation of every voter, — not in respect of
one subject only but of many, — political activity will be
developed in the country at large. Already, in countries
in which tolerably free institutions are found, the
cheap daily and weekly Press has an extraordinary
influence both in diffusing political information through
the length and breadth of a land and in concentrating
attention on questions which from moment to moment
specially invite popular interference.
This influence of the Press is emphasized by the
large use of public meetings, the proceedings of which,—
often aided by the presence of members of Parliament
or even of the Executive Government, — are again
reported in the daily papers and are thus shared by
innumerable persons in distant parts of the country.
The result is that the subjects on which large classes
of electors are simultaneously and sympathetically in-
terested become not only more numerous but of a more
exalted kind. Large associations are formed for the
purpose of pressing on certain classes of measures in
Parliament, and committees are formed for the pre-
paration of draft bills and of taking counsel with Mem-
bers in charge of them with a view to their being
brought before the House in the most advantageous
way.
In this way, a great deal of work, which, in an
earlier condition of society, would be performed within
the walls of the House, — where perhaps would then
THE EEPKESENTATION OF MINORITIES. 235
be found the only persons in the community competent
for legislative duties, — is done outside the Houses by
interested, philanthropic, or patriotic persons availing
themselves of all the modern advantages of a free press,
and a free right of public meeting and of association.
The advantage of legislative work prepared in this
way is that it is done under conditions of unrestrained
liberty, even to a greater extent than is possible in the
House itself by Members acting under the eye of consti-
tuents who may some day call them to account.
Thus when a claim is made for a more complete
representation by enabling wasted minority- votes to be
in some measure utilised, the result of conceding the
claim would not be, it may be fairly presumed, to fill
the House with Members concerned only to advocate
narrow and ill- digested crotchets, but to favour the
discussion in the House of a far larger number of
questions than at present, while presenting them in a
form in which all the initial steps of fitting them for
precise debate and prompt decision have been already
taken.
It cannot be a gain that a Legislative Chamber
should be forced by its own constitution to ignore
whole classes of important questions which are found
to interest the people at large ; and it may well be
expected that, in proportion as, under a more com-
plete representative system, a larger range of subjects
are brought under the effectual notice of the Legis-
lature, the House will not exhibit more instability and
vacillation of purpose in dealing with them by a
consistent policy than in dealing with the present
narrower range. The previous work of elaboration per-
formed outside the House, the aroused public interest,
236 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
the publicity of all modern legislation, and the ever-
widening public of educated political critics, all guaran-
tee a representative House that will not allow itself
to be brought into disrepute bj the caprices of small
sections of its members, and that will exhibit a higher
rather than a lower capacity of adhering to a steady
and uniform policy.
The subject of the superior advisability of having
one or more Chambers is part of the general question
how to secure all the benefits of the most complete
popular representation without sacrificing any of the
advantages supposed to belong peculiarly to Constitu-
tions resting on less broad foundations.
The subject must be distinguished at the outset
from that of the discussion of the political value of
the English House of Lords, though the two subjects
are often confounded.
The English House of Lords, in its modern shape,
is an institution wholly sui generis, of a character quite
unprecedented, and one which never can be reproduced.
It is by attempts to copy it or to imitate some of its
characteristics, erroneously supposed to be the most
essential ones, that modern States, — and more espe-
cially the Australian Colonies,— have plunged them-
selves into inextricable perplexities. The truth is that
the House of Lords owes its distinguished constitutional
position, and even efficacy in the face of every adverse
popular criticism, to those very facts which cannot be
transferred to another country and other circumstances.
The House of Lords, being a scarcely less ancient part
of the Constitution than the Monarchy itself, is so
implicated in the rest of the Constitution that no
THE HOUSE OF LORDS 237
competent political reformer can think of* simply ex-
punging it or of radically altering it, without being
13repared with an entire reconstruction of the most
essential parts of the whole Legislative framework.
The House of Lords, as an hereditary Chamber, is, in
fact, and still more in popular apprehension, a protest
in favour of that law of hereditary descent on which
both the Monarchical succession and the institution of
a titled Peerage is based. Furthermore, by occupying
a situation intermediate, both in rank and in actual
power, between the Crown and the representatives of
the people, it maintains a hierarchical gradation of
Governmental influence which obscures the otherwise
too patent facts of the omnipotency of the people and
the impotency of the Crown. But the maintenance of
such a post of resistance is only rendered possible by the
fact of possession, — guaranteed, at least temporarily, by
a sentimental indisposition to disturb a state of things
having its roots in the far past.
Lastly, the House of Lords is largely composed of
powerful landholders, who, by family connexion, as well
as by identity of interest, are in close relationship and
sympathy with a large, if not a dominant, section of
the House of Commons. Thus, in the case of any
conflict between the Houses, there are always found in
each House a sufficient number of members who care
still more for the maintenance of the existing character
and of the mutual relations of the two Houses than
they do for the point in dispute ; and these persons, by
throwing (perhaps under the politest and most self-
respectful of forms) all their weight into the scale of
peace, prevent the strain from proving excessive.
It will be noted that relationships such as these are
238 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
the product of innumerable causes of a wholly special
kind, which are bound np with the very core of English
life and history in their most characteristic aspects.
These merits (if such they are) have little to do with
the benefits attributable to a second Chamber or to the
individual merits of the hereditary legislators. They
are an indigenous growth of the country, and cannot
be transported elsewhere. It may, then, be laid down
at once that the questions of the value and of the
reform of the House of Lords only belong to the Science
of Politics so far as that Assembly is a specimen of
a second Chamber; but to estimate it properly from
this point of view it must first be abstracted from all
that is most characteristic of it.
In discussing a second Chamber, two topics have
to be kept distinct, though they intermingle at some
points. One is the general value of such a Chamber,
and the other its best constitution. The topics are so
far related that it may be advantageous only to have a
second Chamber if it be well constituted.
The usual arguments in favour of a second Chamber
are (1) that it affords a check upon the characteristic
tendency of a democratic assembl}- to hasty and pre-
cipitate legislation ; (2) that, unless the constitution
of the second Chamber exactly repeats the constitution
of the first, its existence affords the opportunity of
approaching a legislative problem from a new point
of view and throwing, perhaps, fresh lights upon it ;
(3) that by prolonging and complicating the process of
legislation it affords multiplied opportunities for cor-
recting the oversights, supplying the defects, and im-
proving the structure, of legislative measures ; (4) that,
A SECOND CHAIVIBEK. 239
in the case of the second Chamber being representative
like the first, but representative of other classes of the
community, it affords a security that the interests of
these classes are not overlooked.
The answers made to these arguments in favour of
a second Chamber of some sort are (jj that the enor-
mously increased legislative business of modem times
(the discharge of which may be facilitated by the
division of labour which the existence of two co-
ordinate Chambers renders possible) is, on the whole,
delayed, hampered, and interrupted to an extent wholly
dispropoi tionate to any benefits derived by a second
discussion conducted in a different assembly. (2) As
a barrier against the tempestuous current of democracy,
the second Chamber is worse than useless, because if
the more popular Chamber is practically omnipotent,
resistance will only be persisted in in matters on which
the mind of the people is not fully made up, and there-
fore on which no legislation ought to take place at
all ; — which is only saying that the popular Chamber is
badly composed, not efficiently representing the people,
and being prone to reckless legislation : or if, on the other
hand, the popular Chamber is not omnipotent, and the
two Chambers are of co-equal efficiency, legislation will
either be the result of a series of compromises, or be
barred altogether by a succession of dead-locks, as it
has been in the British Colony of Victoria. (2) So far
as, like the Senate of the United States and of France
and the Legislative Councils of the Australian Colonies,
it represents a different class of interests or sentiments,
it is pure legislative loss, — without any compensating
gain, — to have one class of interests or views repre-
sented at one discussion of a measure and another
240 * THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
class at anotlier discussion, instead of having both
represented simultaneously" to the great gain of the
debate and the saving of time, expense, and labour.
//With respect to the class of arguments adduced in
favour of two Chambers, those numbered (1) and (3)
(which relate to the beneficial impediments a second
Chamber is calculated to oppose to the progress of
democratic caprice, and which recommend it for pre-
venting errors and accidental blemishes in legislation),
they can be disposed of at once. Such arguments
mark a transitional state of mind, in which really
popular institutions are not yet accepted without dis-
trust, and in which what is called democracy is regarded
as a fatal political miasma which muse envelop all States
some day, but may by cautious preventive measures be
staved off for a time.
^The true and sufficient remedy for bad or rash
legislation is the improvement of the constitution of
the Assembly which really represents the people, and
the amendment of its legislative machinery. Such
amendments would be concerned with the length of
notice whioh must be given of a proposed law, with
the number of times it has to be discussed, with the
information to be procured by Committees and Special
Commissioners on its bearings, with the rules of
debate, and with the opportunities afforded to persons
outside the House to make their views on the proposal
known.
The phases which an ordinary Bill has to pass
through in the British House of Commons are tolerably
familiar to all. As a means of showing the possible or
endless variety of such phases which are available to
persons who wish to oppose obstacles to the precipitate
A SECOND CHAMBEK. 241
flood of popular energy in a Legislative Assembly the
following extract is given from the French Figaro re-
lating to the stages wliich a sanatory Bill for Paris,
decided on in the Ministerial Council, would have to
pass through : —
* (1) The bill will be drawn np by the Minister of Public
Works; (2) submitted to the Conseil d'Etat-, (3) which will
appoint a committee ; (4) which will appoint a reporter ; (5)
who will make a report ; (6) -which will be submitted to the
committee; (7) which will approve it; (8) the report will
be discussed, approved and sent back to the minister; (9)
who will lay it on the table of the Chamber ; (10) which will
appoint another committee; (11) which will appoint a re-
porter; (12) who will make a report; (13) which will be
discussed by the committee; (14) laid again on the table of
the Chamber; (15) printed; (16) distributed to the de-
puties; (17) put on the order of the day ; (18) put oflf ; (19)
adjourned ; (20) discussed ; (21) there will be speeches ;
(22) amendments ; (23) additional paragraphs ; (24) perhaps
a change of ministry ; (25) then it will be voted ; (26) the
bill will be sent up to the Senate ; (27) which will refer it to
the bureaux ; (28) new committee ; (29) new reporter ; (30)
new report; (31) report read to the committee; (32) laid on_
the table of the Senate.'
It surely is not needed to have a second Chamber
for the sole purpose of interrupting and checking the
too easy flow of popular legislation when such diffi-
culties as these may have to be surmounted even in the
case of a Bill which cannot excite much political oppo-
sition and lias already been approved by the Executive
Government.
i^But, further, this terror of what are called demo-
cratic institutions to which, in some measure, the late
M. de Tocqueville gave colour by some of his criticisms
B
242 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
is wholly unworthy of a statesman wno takes a true
view of the elements with which he has to deal. It is
confessed that all Governments in the future will have
to be conducted with full popular consent, if not by
direct popular intervention. An Assembly or body of
persons which is truly representative of the whole
people —or which, even if not prof essedly representatijt'ej
commands the confidence of the whole people — is not
likely to be more fanatical, more selfish, more incom-
petent than some of the Assembly or body of persons
existing side by side with it, and may well be assumed
to be less so.
It is the first object of a statesman not to be
domineered over by a mob ; but it is equally an object
with him to become the organ of the people, truly
announcing their deliberate judgment, and the organ
of the people only. Thus the temporary subterfuges
by which it is sought to counterfeit deafness to the
popular voice under the name of arresting impetuous
legislation must certainly be swept away, as M. de
Tocqueville foresaw, yet with gain in all ways rather
than loss, — which he did not foresee.
Even in the case in which a second Chamber
reverses a vote in the popular Chamber on the ground
that the course of the discussion disclosed such dif-
ferences of opinion that time ought to be afibrded for
the constituencies to be heard, the advantage that is
gained by a seeming deference to the true intention of
the people is lost by the extremely capricious and
Q£fiillfiiLtaL way in which this check is sure to act. It
will only act at moments when, for other reasons, some
political antipathy is aroused or grudge entertained.
It would never be allowed for one Assembly less popu-
A SECOND CHAMBEK. 243
larly constituted habitually to reverse the decisions of
another Assembly more popularly constituted, simply
on the ground that a vote was not that of a sufficiently
large majority, or from a casual and wholly arbitrary
conjecture that the other House did not in this matter
represent the body of Electors. Thus, here again, the
true remedy for legislation out of harmony with the
wishes of the people is to be sought in some improved
constitutional machinery, — such as that examined
above, — for representing the whole people on as many
distinct questions as possible.
There remain the two arguments in favour of a
second Chamber, based on the supposed necessity of
representing certain special elements in the country
not adequately represented in a purely popular assembly,
or on the advantage of having each piece of legislation
exposed to the criticism of a body quite differently
constituted from that which has first approved it or
must join in approving it. All the second Chambers
at present existing are constructed on the basis either
of their i:epresenting entirely different elements of the
populat ioiL from those represented in the first Chamber,
or of their being themselves £ompj:)sed_ jD»f _ eJeiOfints
selected on a principle which disposes the second
Chamber to apply to the judgment of measures a scale
very different from that in use in the first Chamber.
On one or other of these bases are constituted the
Senate of the United States, which i-ather represents
the component States of the Union than the population
of each State ; the French Senate, which represents a
number of corporate rather than individual electors ;
the Legislative Council of New South Wales, which is
nominated by the Crown; the Legislative Council of
fi 2
241 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
Victoria, wliicli especially represents the rich pastoral
occupiers of large tracts of land, and the hirger capital-
ists; and, lastly, the British House of Lords, which
pre-eminently represents the interests of the larger
landed proprietors and of the Established Church.
So far as the opposition of riva l interests goes , it
is not, — as has been proved by very extended ex-
perience, — a convenient solution of the real difficulties
',^of the case to have one class of interests represented
I pYnhisively - in one Chamber and the opposite class of
-^J interests in the other. By such a seclusion and agglo-
^^jneration of persons all feeling in the same way and
J, in a way which, from the nature of the case, is not
- ^ always, if ever, in harmony with the general interestsl\
^ of the country, every opportunity is afforded for obsti-
^ nate confederacy and none for placable concession.
^ The separation for legislative purposes of the two
Houses of the British Parliament was an accidental
though inevitable consequence of their distribution for
the purpose of taxing, according to their several dis-
positions, themselves or their constituents. In some
countries, as in France, special provision is made in the
Constitution for the two Chambers, in certain emer-
gencies, sitting and voting together. The same ex-
X^edient has been advocated by some eminent Yictorian
politicians as a mode of bringing the two Houses of the
Victorian legislature more constantly into accord. Even
in the British Parliament provision is made for what is
called a Conference between the Houses in case of an
otherwise insoluble difference of opinion. But the pro-
cedure is antique and almost obsolete, and does not
involve the whole body of the two Houses being brought
together face to face.
->
A SECOND CHAMBEE. 245
According to the older English Constitution, the
Clergy were represented in Parliament as an essential
part of the Body Politic, and it was here again a mere
financial accident that they broke away in order to tax
themselves in their own Houses of Convocation and
thus lost all direct voice in Government, except so far
as they continued to be represented by the Abbots, and
Spiritual Peers in the House of Lords.
It has already been laid down that where there are
conflicting interests to be represented in the Legisla-
ture, two objects have to be attained, — one, that of their
real and effectual representation ; the other, that of each
being only represented in proportion to its importance
relative to all other interests ; so that every opportunity
is provided for proper concessions and compromises,
for personal sacrifices, and for a fine correlation of
ends and means. Now, on behalf of all these objects,
— that is, of effective representation, harmonious co-
operation, timely concession, apt adjustment, and habitual
preference of the more pressing to the less pressing
claim, — a^common discussion in one broadly represen-
t ativ e Chamber ojust surpass in value any series of
discussions conducted firs t by pprsonsjhavin^excj u si vel^
one order of inte T-A^fa pnr^ a.ffArwa.rf],q by f. hose having
exclusively another order . When the two alternative
courses are contrasted in this way, it seems almost
absurd that there should be any doubt as to the side
on which the advantage lies.
And what is here said of the superior value of \
having all classes of interests represented simultaneous);'
instead of successively, applies with no less force to the
value of having various modes of thought, preposses-
sions, and habitual standards of opinion, all brought to ■
246 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
|bear in all tlie discussions of a measure, instead of
■having some exclusively recognised and enforced at one
;period of the discussion and the opposite or different
jones exclusively recognised on a quite different occasion
jwhen the measure has reached a different stage.
Nothing but the actual — and, so to speak, accidental —
^historical evolution of the British Houses of Parliament
jcould have made that appear so natural and familiar
jwhich is, in fact, wholly alien to all principles of dis-
cussion as recognised in other fields of enquiry, and
which can never be part of a permanent political
System.
There is no subject which has more exercised the in-
genuity of modern founders of Constitutions, beginning
with the writers in the * Federalist,' than the relations
of the Executive (including the Administrative) and
the Legislative Authority. Some light may be thrown
on the question by reflecting on the circumstances of
the evolution of the existing relations of the Executive
and the Legislative Authority in the older countries of
modern Europe which have had the most continuous
Constitutional history. In these countries the King or
Queen is the Supreme Executive Authority; but this
function is not one which has been gradually attained
to or arbitrarily cast upon the monarch for consti-
tutional convenience. It is the last relic of far more
ample powers, which included Legislative authority as
well, and which, in early feudal days, were limited only
by the close rivalry of powerful vassals and by occasional
obligations to a superior but, usually, far removed feudal
lord.
The tale of Constitutional History is that of in-
THE LEGISLATIVE AIsD EXECUTH^ AUTHORITIES, 247
cessant hemming in, at all points, both of the Legis-
lative and Executive omnipotence of the Crown, though,
in earlier times Legislation was of comparatively small
importance and the Executive authority of the Crown
was disputed not so much between the Crown and the
people as between the Crown and its greater vassals.
In France the final subordination of all the greater
vassals was the reverse of a gain to popular rights,
while in England it was the greater vassals who allied
themselves with the people, and even with the towns,
to extort concessions from the Crown.
The result has been that, after some hundred years'
struggle, the so-called * limited ' monarch of modern
days has carried off from the fight a real and not in-
considerable portion of Legislative power, and the whole
of the Executive power. This is subject, however, to
two serious limitations, — one, that every act done by
the monarch personally, either in his Legislative or
Executive activity, is presumed to have been done by a
particular minister or ministers approved by, and re-
sponsible to, a popular Legislature ; and the other, that
the Legislative authority, even as so circumscribed,
cannot be exerted at all so as to contravene the judg-
ment of the Legislative Assemblies ; while the exertion
of every part of his Executive authority is exposed
to the constant criticism and vigilance of the same
Assemblies.
Of course this summary and broad description of
the state of things is not designed to describe exactly
any existing constitutional condition, — not even that
of England, — and it would require many limitations
and qualifications before it would conform to any. But
every one will recognise that this is the framework
248 THE SC1E.SC1L Oi^- POLITICS.
which presents all that is most characteristic of the
relation between the modern European Monarch and the
people, as more or less perfectly represented in Legislative
Assemblies. So far as the most recently organised Con-
stitutions go, whether on a professedly Republican basis,
— such as those of the United States and of France ;
or on a Monarchical basis, — such as those of Belgium,
Holland, Italy, Greece, and Spain ; or on what may be
called a quasi-monarchical basis, — such as those of the
British Colonies having Parliamentary institutions ; the
same type reappears everywhere, the most interesting
variations being those of the present French Consti-
tution and the Constitution of the United States.
The position of the President in these two Constitu-
tions, with his remarkable personal prerogatives, his
fixed term of office, and almost complete exemption
from constitutional or legal control during that term, is
a wholly new and peculiar political experiment, which is
still on its trial. The executive functions of the Senate
of the United States through which, in a limited
number of cases, it becomes a sharer in the President's
executive power, is also a novel factor in politics, and
the value of it can hardly be estimated till more ma-
terials are supplied by future history for a compara-
tive inquiry.
The question which at the time of the foundation of
the United States Constitution especially perplexed the
great statesmen and writers of the period, as to the
true position of the Judicature, may be held to be now
settled in theory, if not in practice. It is now widely
recognised, in accordance with the constitutional
development of English History, that public liberty
demands an independent Judicature more than almost
THE LEGISLATIVE AND EXECUTIVE AUTHORITIES. 249
any other guarantee ; that this Judicature must not
be dependent on the mere will of the head of the
Executive for its nomination, for its casual amount
of remuneration or reward, or for its retention in
office ; and that, — a provision upon which the United
States have not always acted, — the Judicature must
be rendered no less independent of the people than of
the Executive.
These several propositions, which are truisms in
England and the English dependencies, are scarcely
admitted to the full in any other country. But they
are propositions which hardly need the support of an
unbroken line of historical testimony. When once
announced, they commend themselves as by a sort of
overbearing logical necessity.
The questions which are open to much controversy,
and on which modern experience is too recent and too
narrow to pronounce with decision, are questions as to
the relations which ought to exist, first, between the
Executive and the Legislative Authority, and, secondly,
between the Executive Authority and the people.
In the working of the modern Parliamentary system
the Executive Authority has a most important part to
play. The more truly popular and broadly representative
a Parliament becomes the more does it need for the
conduct of its legislative functions a body of persons
who command its confidence and who direct its activity
into the necessary channels. There is no sacrifice of
independence in requiring that the best opportunities
of doing independent acts without economic loss of time
or energy should be opened out. To do this constitutes
what may be called the Legislative functions of the
Executive Authority. The play of party sp::it or
250 THE SCIENCE OF POi^iTICS.
of other less distinctly manifested forces designates
the persons whom the majority of a Parliament are
disposed to follow and trust, and in following them the
Parliament makes no small sacrifice of the claims of
its individual members.
But, out of this relationship necessarily springs a
reciprocal one which is not without its important con-
stitutional consequences. The Executive Authority
which subserves the pleasure and prepares the work of
Parliament tends to become its master. It is in a
competition for mastery between the Legislative and
the Executive Power, and in an incessant struggle be-
tween them, that a large and most importa,nt part of
modern constitutional life exists. The typical way in
which the struggle is conducted is something of the
following kind.
According to one form, the Legislative Assembly
in the course of its own debates and divisions, which
may or may not be characterised as of a true ' party '
kind, brings to the surface a certain number of its own
members in whom the Assembly, represented by the
permanent majority of its members, is disposed to
repose implicit confidence for the discharge of such
administrative work as the Assembly cannot directly
interpose in, but can superintend and control. Or,
according to the form which prevails in the United
States, a prominent portion of the Executive Authority
is selected by methods wholly independent of the action
of the popular Assembly, and this Assembly only main-
tains its hold on the Executive through its command
of the national finances, its capacity of legislation, and
its power of adverse criticism. According to the
written theory even of the English Constitution the
THE LEGISLATnrE AND EXECUTIVE AUTHOKITIES. 2.51
Monarch is tinder no obligation to select his Ministers
from the ranks of the members of either House of Par-
liament, and it has occasionally happened within the
last few years that a Member of Parliament has, in
accordance with a well-known Statute of Queen Anne's
reign, vacated his seat on being appointed to an Execu-
tive office and has not succeeded in obtaining another
seat for months together, while continuing in office all
the time.
According to the letter of the English Constitution,
the Privy Council is the true Executive authority in
which alone are reposed all the Executive functions
of the Crown, and the Monarch is under no kind of
obligation to call to his council only members of the
Legislature, and, in fact, a considerable number of
members of the Privy Council, including many of the
Judges, have never sat in Parliament.
In most Continental countries, which in the general
constitution of the Legislature have followed British pre-
cedents, the choice of the Executive is far more depen-
dent on the arbitrary will of the Monarch or President
than it is in England on any authority but that of the
House of Commons. In England, at the present time
it is notorious that the choice of a Prime Minister,
and, incidentally, of all his Cabinet, is determined
only by the majority of the House of Commons as
evolved by a series of divisions sufficient to manifest
its reality and solidity, and proceeding on the lines
marked out by strict party organisation. It is only in
the very exceptional cases in which there are more
than two parties strongly marked and considerable in
point of numbers that the direct personal influence of
the Monarch may be invoked to determine who, as
252 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
Prime Minister, shall undertake the formation of a
Government.
Thus, in ordinary cases, in England the initiative
of forming the Executive Government proceeds from
the popular. Assembly ; in some Continental countries
having representative institutions, either from the
Monarch, — as in Germany, — or from the two Assemblies
sitting together and the popular Assembly alone, — as
in France; or from the people directly supplemented
by the popular Assembly, — as in the United States.
There is no country in which the continual presence
of every important member of the Executive Govern-
ment, and especially of the Chief of the Cabinet,
in one or other of the two Chambers is held to be so
indispensable as it is in England. In America the
distance of the President from Congress, with which
he only communicates in occasionally written utterances
of a strictly formal kind, is said to present one of the
most serious impediments to facility of political action
especially at critical times. His irremovability and his
provisional Legislative veto tend of themselves to make
him a power in the State wholly exempt from either
Parliamentary or popular control. The position was,
no doubt, specially created as a counterpoise to what
at the time of the foundation of the Constitution, was
believed to be a hazardous experiment in democracy.
In the present day, when popular legislatures based
on a widely extended suffrage have become little less
than universal, the irresponsible and autocratic powers of
the President, coupled with his firm tenure of ofl&ce, can
only produce anomalies in Government which nothing
but the exceptional wisdom and self-restraint of par-
ticular Presidents can prevent from beconiuig disastrous.
THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES. 253
The United States have been able to defer the con-
sideration of a remedy for this confessed flaw in their
constitution because of the remarkable sequence of
able men who have occupied the Presidential office,
and also because of the absorbing problems of recon-
struction and financial recovery which have called for
and found an exceptional amount of patriotic co-opera-
tion and self-renunciation in all quarters.
But it can hardly be expected, that in ordinary
times the population of the States will continue to be
content to put into commission for so long a period
together so large a proportion of their indisputable
right cf control over Legislation and more particularly
over Administration, especially when the Monarchical
States of Europe have become one and all governed
at every point by purely popular institutions, and when
the character of the nation is deeply involved in the
prevention and exemplary punishment of Executive
abuses.
Thus the control of the Executive Authority by the
English House of Commons, and the exemption of the
President of the United States from any such control,
present the two poles of possible relationship between
the Authority which makes the law and the Authority
which sees to its execution and conducts the adminis-
trative task of Government.
It is, however, scarcely possible to devise any theo-
retical constitution which should, at all times and in all
circumstances, maintain a due balance between the
Legislative and the Executive Authority. There are
some departments in which, from the very nature of
the case, they are always tending to encroach on each
other, and the occasional mischiefs or even calamities
254 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
resulting from this tendency, if uncliecked, can only be
kept at a distance or remedied by a thorough recogni-
tion of the perils at hand.
There are, for instance, some departments of ad-
ministration for the supervision of which a popular
Assembly cannot be suited, if it is broadly constituted
enough to do its own appropriate work well. Such
departments are the management of the Army, !Navy,
and Police, the conduct of Foreign Relations, and the
Government of Dependencies, especially when, — as in
the case of India, — the Dependency can supply very
little material for its own Government and calls for a
special amount of knowledge and skill of the highest
kind in those who rule it.
In some countries, and especially in France, the
management of the Police has been, for years, so
entirely withdrawn from the intervention of the Legis-
lative that the department of Government which deals
with it has acquired a degree of irresponsible authority
which is a dangerous menace to public liberty. The
peril is all the more serious in countries in which there
is no Habeas Corpus process, and in which the methods
of criminal procedure concede to the police engaged in
investigating a crime an amount of licence in secretly
examining any number of persons on the barest sus-
picion, which would be scouted in countries which have
followed the English type of criminal proceedings.
The evil is intensified in countries where a highly
centralised system of administration prevails ; and here
the local and municipal control of the police (though
this has been much infringed upon of late in England
by the Metropolitan Police Acts) may present effectual
barriers to the development of an uncontrolled central
ORGANISATION^ OF THE POLICE. 255
police Agency. It is obvious that a police system, to
be really effective, must have extensive ramifications,
must be inspired by a common spirit and subjected to
an unity of management, and must have a large portion
of its most important work habitually concealed from
view.
In aU this, however, there are abundant oppor-
tunities for the growth of a government within, and
yet only too much outside, the general Government
of the State. The more silent, prompt, and elastic
are its movements, the more effective it is likely to
be for its own peculiar ends, and yet all these require-
ments wholly unfit it to satisfy the scrutinising require-
ments of a popular Assembly which does all its work
in the broad light of day. The result' of a com-
promise between public justice and public liberty is that
the scrutiny is less close than is needed for the one end
and the prosecution of offences is less vigorous than is
needed for the other.
Nevertheless there is no reason for an Assembly
of popular representatives to ignore their functions, as
the sole and last refuge of the obscure and dependent
classes of society, on the ground that the police must
be irresponsible if crime is to be checked at all.
As in all other political matters, a balance must be
struck between different and incompatible ends. The
first duty will be to provide by Legislation, and by
the creation of fit institutions, that the Police force
be not centralised more than is absolutely needed for
the public safety, — and that every opportunity is
afforded by the intervention of a local and independent
magistracy for proper publicity and for the vindication
of innocence. The next duty is that of securing that
256 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
all abuses are brought to ligtt, and that the responsible
members of the Executive Government are vigilantly
checked and criticised by the popular Assembly.
It is vrell-known that, in Paris, the sole institution
which has survived from the days of the old monarchy,
throughout all the storms of revolution and repeated
changes in the form of Government, is that of the
organisation controlled by the Prefect of Police. The
secret methods of French criminal procedure enabled
the police to become masters for successive genera-
tions of the private afiPairs of a large number of
persons, some of them in influential positions, and most
of them interested in purchasing silence by connivance
at police usurpations. There is reason to believe that
it was against this network of subtle and irresponsible
despotism that much of the popular indignation which,
at the close of the Franco-German war, took the form
of ' the Commune ' was directed ; and some of the lead-
ing Communists have alleged that the incendiarism
which destroyed public buildings had for its original
object the annihilation of the records of domiciliary
espionage treasured up in the archives of the Police.
Certainly, it is notorious that one aspect, and that the
least exceptionable one, of the Communist movement
was that of substituting local for central Go^'ernment
in a large class of matters of which the Police was the
most prominent.
It may be laid down then as a fixed political
principle that under all forms of Government the
management of the Police force will be a lasting and
justifiable object of popular jealousy and watchfulness.
In proportion to the numbers of the police, as demanded
by the growth of population and by the multiplication of
THE AEMY AND NAVY. 257
transactions and relationships, will be their individual
incompetency and their corporate strength when highly
organised. Nothing but just laws, publicly and strictly
executed by a high class of educated magistrates
exposed at every moment to public surveillance, and
abundant opportunities for bringing to light every
abuse committed against the most insignificant member
of the population, can ever afford sufiicient guarantees
against public liberty being eaten away in secret all
the while that constitutional principles and democratic
forms make the loudest protestations in its favour.
The management of the Army and Navy has long
been recognised as affording a chief opening for Execu-
tive aggression. In England up to Charles I.'s time, a
standing army in time of peace was regarded as the
symbol of despotic as opposed to constitutional rule.
The earlier English Constitution had done its utmost
to render the forces of the country subject to local
control in the counties, and to ensure all special levies
for foreign wars being subject, financially, to strict Par-
liamentary control. The tradition of this control has
been handed down to the present day, when the grant
for the two services is renewed year by year, and the
Mutiny Act empowering the Crown to levy soldiers
up to an accurately computated number, and to make
Articles of War for their discipline, has to be passed
year by year.
It is usually the object in more military countries,
such as Germany, to obtain a Parliamentary grant
reaching over some years, so as to be, in the interval,
exempt from popular criticism, in respect of the use to
which the army is put, and the detnils of the mode i:i
258 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
which, the levy is made. Indeed, in Continental coun-
tries, where the conscription universally exists, and
where the practice of passing the whole male popu-
lation through the Army is becoming more and more
habitual, the command of the Army during the years
for which Parliament has surrendered its right even of
financial control, puts an inordinate power in the hands
of the Executive.
It is not merely that the soldiery form a physical
support to the Executive against resistance, but that
the hand of the Executive is made to be felt, through
countless subordinates and delegated agents, in every
spot and hamlet of the country. Even in times of pro-
found peace, the whole population has more to do with
the central military than with the local civil authority.
If there are complaints of abuse or of trespass on con-
stitutional rights, the matter becomes one of military
order and discipline, and is taken out of the range
of the common civil courts. The arbitrary will of a
capricious petty officer becomes substituted for fixed
and well-understood laws. Eemedies have to be begged
by servile petition, by ignominious compromise, by
corrupt purchase, not demanded, as of right, in a public
Court of Justice. The sense of self-respect and self-
reliance is weakened to the lowest point, and popular
Government becomes merely the shadow of a tyrannical
dominion which has its centre in a very different
quarter.
What is described here as the peculiar characteristic
of those countries in which the levy is universal, and
where Parliament abandons its control for a definite
term of years, is only true to a very small degree in such
countries as England and the United States, in which
THE ARMY AND NAVY. 259
military service is free and the popular Assembly re-
tains a sufficiently firm hold on the War department of
the Executive Government to prevent the arbitrary rule
which is an inevitable adherent of all military insti-
tations from crystallising into permanent principles.
But in these countries, the danger, though comparatively
slight and remote, is still real. The use of the Army
in times of alleged sedition, and even of riot, is a
matter in respect of v^hich. the Executive needs to be
watched with the utmost vigilance.
Even apart from the physical strengthening of the
Executive by the Army, the political influence which
the Executive exerts through this medium is not incon-
siderable. The officers of all grades, and the more
intelligent soldiers, are likely to be much at one on large
classes of questions either political or closely allied to
politics, and to agree in being indiff'erent to other large
classes of questions. Thus at moments when it is appre-
hended that some national affront has been received from
another State, or when the popular conscience demands
that some concession of territory be made, or that a
long pending controversy be closed by a conciliating
adjustment of rights, or that arbitration be preferred to
war, it usually happens that the military profession are
all on the side of belligerency rather than of peace. This
may be of small consequence, unless the people are
only just so far roused that strongly expressed divi-
sions of sentiment manifest themselves. In such
circumstances, if the Executive Government chances to
favour a warlike rather than a peaceful policy, it is of
no small account that it has with it so large, so gene-
rally intelligentj and so compact a body of opinion as
that represented by the military profession and all
s 2
250 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
closely connected with it by ties of blood or of in-
terest.
In speaking of the watchfulness with which the
Executive Government has to be regarded on the ground
of the support it may derive, at certain emergencies,
from the military classes, it must not be forgotten,
furthermore, that in the management of the Army and
Navy the Government is the greatest employer of labour
in the country, and in the employment of this labour
has the command of the greatest amount of capital.
Every one knows the influence, social and political,
which is wielded by employers, and of which no electoral
or other restrictive laws can rob them. The larger the
army and navy, the more numerous are the func-
tionaries, of every degree of hierarchical subordination,
through whom the Government has to act.
Even where gross abuses are avoided and the
Government is, on the whole, disposed to do its best
and to act honestly, it is almost impossible to check all
the officdalswho have to choose whom to employ, whom
to contract with, whose pay to increase and whose to
diminish, whom to retain and whom to discharge, whom
to reward and whom to punish. Here, too, again, an
innumerable quantity of interlacing interests are deeply
concerned in labour being plentiful and uninterrupted.
A new fortification or dockyard or arsenal ; the breaking
out of war ; the despatch of troops in large masses to a
dependency in disorder; any of these means the well-
being and regular means of livelihood for thousands
and thousands of families, as the opposite of them
means their loss and suffering.
It is impossible then to expect political impartiality
from the classes of society which have so vast a stake
THE AKMY AND NAVY 261
in the game of life and death. No doubt miracles
of patriotism and of self-abnegation have been found,
again and again, at memorable crises, as in America
and the North of England during the War of Secession ;
but the statesman cannot act as if human nature would
m all similar emergencies attain the same elevated
range of sentiment. In ordinary times, the physical
claims of a man's wife and children are at least as
near to him as any other interests, and usually far
nearer than all other interests put together.
If, then, this is true when the Executive Govern-
ment acts honestly and abstains from using unfair
pressure on the myriads of persons it employs, it is
obvious how easy it is for it to operate on public senti-
ment in all those cases in which its views are really at
one with the interests of those who work for it. It
is against this fallacious exhibition of public opinion,
turned to account by an unscrupulous Executive, that a
popular Assembly must be upon its guard. The remedy
is to test the allegation that public opinion is on the
side of the Government, by examining in what quarters
that opinion is manifested ; by referring to the printed
organs favoured by the labouring classes ; by attending
to the sort of arguments which have weight at public
meetings ; by studying election addresses to such classes
as dockyard labourers and constituencies in garrison
and sea-port towns ; and by watching the course of
deputations to responsible Ministers.
In a country in which the expression of opinion is
really free, it will be easy, in a short time after the
public mind is fairly roused, to distinguish a real from
a factitious popularity of a Governmental act ; and if,
on applying such tests, the act is discredited, the
262 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS
Government can then only justify it by reference to
the intrinsic merits of the case.
It should be needless to supplement these remarks
on the perils, incident to the position of the Executive
Government as an employer of Labour, by noticing the
importance, on the one hand, of providing innumerable
checks, — of the nature of strict accounts, audits, in-
spections, publication of quarterly statements of the
most minute accuracy in detail, — upon extravagance
and corruption ; and, on the other hand, of following up
by a special legal machinery every alleged irregularity,
and of remorselessly punishing every underhand trans-
action, and, still more, every species of fraud, whether
committed by the highest or the lowest official.
It wonld seem from some miserable passages in the
recent history of the Unitod States that the com-
plication of modern Government has surpassed the
powers of the republican institutions, introduced a
century ago, to grapple with the widespread corruption
to which an opening is given. Here again the inde-
pendence of the head of the Executive Government and
its remoteness from Congress render the exercise of
the popular judgment far too ineffective.
There is another mode in which, in modern times,
and to an extent which is ever increasing with
economical progress, the Executive Authority exerts a
political influence which needs not only counteracting
institutions but also unresting vigilance of control on
the part of the Legislature. The Executive Authority is
not only the greatest capitalist in the country so far as
the employment of labour and the making of contracts
are concerned, but is also the gi-eatest capitalist so far
as the power of or^eratii'^ on the money-market is
THE EXECUTIVE AS A CAPITALIST. 263
concerned. This latter power is almost more important
than the former one, because it reaches into foreign
countries; it reposes on a very subtle connexion of
political and economical duties equally incumbent
on the Executive Authority ; and it involves so much
secrecy of action that it almost defies the scrutiny of
the most vigilant members of the Legislature as well as
of the intelligent public outside.
In the communities of the ancient world almost the
only mode in which the Executive Government could
operate on the value of money and on prices was Lj
debasement or alteration in value of the current coin ;
and the repeated recourse had by Rome to measures of
this sort, from the period of the troubles introduced by
the Punic wars, are well remembered as forming some
of the causes of national disorganisation which culmi-
nated in the Empire. In modern times the mode of
operating on the coinage is of the more seductive kind
rendered possible by the general use of paper money.
The difficulties of restraining Executive abuses in the
creation of paper money have tested to the utmost
modern political invention.
These difficulties have their root in the inseparable
connexion between the political activity which the
Executive Authority is bound to exhibit, and the
money needed to carry it on. Thus in time of war
or at an apparent critical emergency at wliich the
national honour, order, or safety seems ever so indirectly
involved, the Executive is always held bound to do its
utmost, and even, if necessary, to pledge the national
credit to an extent to which no legislative limit could
ever be put by anticipation. The mode in which this is
most easily done is by issuing paper money or promises
2G4 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
to paj at or after a certain date. These promises maj
or may not be punctually redeemed or else renewed
when the crisis is over ; but the fact that it is the
Executive which, at the outset, was responsible for
them, and that it is the Executive which may be
presumed to have the best means of information
as to the advisability of redeeming, renewing, or
supplementing these pecuniary engagements, and as
to the times and ways and means for doing so, puts
the Executive in a position which it requires all the
energy and vigilance of the Legislature to cope with.
Apart, indeed, from the supreme crises here alluded
to, even in the ordinary administration of the country,
the Executive must be allowed a very large dis-
cretion as to the contracting of debts and as to the
modes and times of their payment, as well as the
securities to be demanded from debtors to the State,
and as to larger commercial transactions (such as the
purchase of the bulk of the Suez Canal shares by
the British Government) which have to be decided on
without a day's delay. The practice in England of
allowing the Executive to issue Treasury Bonds at a
high rate of interest, redeemable within the year, for
the purpose of meeting merely temporary deficiencies
due to financial accidents, or to the necessity of making
payments before the receipt of the taxes designed to
meet them, is a recognition of this discretionary power.
It is most of all in its relation to national taxation
that the Executive Authority occupies a position of the
highest financial responsibility, and this position is made
all the more important in modern times through the
practice of contracting unredeemable Public Debts. The
amount of those debts in some of the countries of the
THE STATE AS A PUBLIC DEBTOR. VW", 265 ''
Old World is such that a large proportion of the taxation
of the country (in England about a third of the im-
perial taxes) is wholly absorbed in paying the interest
of debt. It is thus a subject of yearly recurrent concern
whether any and what portion of this debt can be con-
veniently paid off at particular periods, and by what
devices this can be most economically done. The purely
political question is always inv^olved as to whether
future generations should be relieved at the cost of the
present generation, and this depends, partly, on the
view taken of the comparative wealth of the tax- payers
now and hereafter (so far as this can be prognosticated),
and, partly, on the facilities presented, at a given
moment, by the state of the money-market for pro-
viding the funds needed to pay off debts.
Now the initiative of paying off portions of debt
must necessarily be left in the hands of the Executive
Government, because any public movement of the sort
on a grand scale debated and voted by Parliament
would, of itself, operate on the money market in such
a way as to change all the conditions of the problem
and, perhaps, render immediate liquidation no longer
expedient. Thus it will rest with the Executive Govern-
ment to make engagements with the creditors of the
State at its own pleasure and in the exercise of its
own discretion. It will have to choose the opportune
moment, the agents, the terms of arrangement ; and
in respect of each of these matters there are oppor-
tunities for infinite abuses, not so much on the part
of the Executive Authority, as a corporate body, as
on that of corrupt individual members of it who are
always liable to creep into its ranks.
There have been too many charges of abase of their
266 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
financial position made in recent times against Execu-
tive Governments or their agents for dangers of this class
to be treated as nothing better than theoretical halluci-
nations. The accusations against Financial Ministers
in the United States for abuse of their authority ao
collectors of customs ; the deplorable revelations of the
State frauds on which so much of the Executive action
and personal Government of Napoleon III. in France
seems to have been based ; the imputations, right or
wrong, that the disorder in Tunis in 1881 was craftily
designed, as a money-making plot, to pave the way
first to anarchy, when certain funds would go down,
and afterwards to French annexation, when they would
go up higher than ever ; the implication in certain
quarters of the purchase by British Executive Authority
of the Suez Canal shares with a vague scheme of
Oriental policy to which the British Parliament had
never been asked to assent ; all these tokens, — which
might be multiplied indefinitely, — sufficiently prove
that the modern relations of an Executive Authority to
Finance present political perils which will be likely to
increase with time rather than to diminish.
Dangers of this class are further aggravated through
the practice which so largely prevails in modern States
of maintaining a National Bank in peculiar relations
with the Executive Government. This subject, on one
side of it, belongs to the topic of the province of
Government, under which head it will be discussed at
length. But, on another side of it, and as a political
fact which actually exists and is likely to exist far into
future time, some observations must be made upon it
here.
The general nature of these National Banks will be
NATIONAL BANKS. 267
understood from a reference to the constitutional situa-
tions of the Bank of England and of the Bank of
France. The Bank of England was at its origin a mere
company of merchants who obtained from the Crown
certain exclusive privileges in return for the services
they agreed to render as the intermediate agents of
the Government for paying the national creditors and
for receiving the taxes out of which the payments had,
at fixed intervals, to be made. These privileges and
corresponding obligations have been repeatedly con-
firmed, defined, and enlarged by successive Charters,
usually granted in conformity with special Acts of
Parliament, the most important of which is the Bank
Charter Act of 1844. The effect of this Act was entirely
to separate the business of the issue of notes from all
the other banking business, — a certain limit being
affixed to the amount of the issue determined by the
amount of bullion actually in the coffers of the bank
jit the time of issue. The notes of the Bank of England
are convertible on demand, and are legal tender. They
thus operate as current coin within the country.
The Bank of France was constituted mainly for the
purpose of facilitating commerce by affording to mer-
chants a sure means of obtaining advances on good
security. It has the power of issuing notes payable to
the bearer at sight, up to the amount of three times its
cash in hand ; but these bills are only legal tender by
special and occasional legislation, which the Court of
Cassation has declared to be a matter only of police
and public safety which special contracts can avoid.
(Cass. 11, Feb. 1873.)
With respect both to these banks and to other banks
of this sort, it is obvious that the point at which
268 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICa
Government pressure is most felt is that which, limits
the right of issue and either enforces the convertibility
of the notes or, — what amounts to nearly the same
thing, — makes an inconvertible note legal tender. In
England the history of repeated commercial crises has
proved that, v^hile the crisis has been aggravated and
precipitated by the legal impossibility of the Bank
increasing its issue to meet the emergency, the sudden
interference of the Executive Government to suspend
the Bank Charter Act and to enlarge the powers of the
Bank, which that Act alone restricted, has been instantly
attended by a relaxation of the strain, — even when the
Bank has not actually had occasion to avail itself of its
extended rights.
This fact may or may not be used as an argument
against the policy of the Act itself; and many of the
ablest authorities on the subject have emploj^ed the argu-
ment both ways, but especially against the desirability
of the Government implicating itself at all in the con-
trol of the commercial community with a view to protect
those who ought to be able to protect themselves.
But, whatever may be said from the purely econo-
mical point of view, there can be no doubt that the
recognised right of the Executive Authority to interpose
or not to interpose, or to choose the moment and the
degree of its interposition, deserves the most jealous
watchfulness at the hands of the Legislature. The
two occasions on which the notes of the Bank of
France were made legal tender (March 16, 1848, and
August 7, 1870) were times of revolutionary change,
when the Executive of the hour must, unavoidably,
be in supreme command of the situation.
The suspension of the Bank Charter Act by the
KATIONAL BANKS. 1'69
English Executive is, constitutionally speaking, an
encroachment on the rights of the Legislature which
would be tolerated in no other department of affairs;
and it has only been endured hitherto because its good
results are manifest to all, while its indirect bad results,
in making the vicissitudes of commerce dependent, in
the last crisis, — and therefore, through the expectation
aroused, even from the first, — on the will of the Exe-
cutive Authority are less obvious. It must not be
forgotten that the Executive Authority must, by the
nature of the case, consist of a number of persons in
confidential relations to each other, and likely, many of
them, to have strong personal, social, or family in-
terests involved at the occurrence of every monetary
catastrophe. At such epochs a few hours' advance in
obtaining information, — and, still more, the slightest
capacity to direct the springs of action, — may mean
even for respectable commercial men all the differ-
ence between disastrous failure and conspicuous
enrichment. The temptation to abuse such oppor-
tunities, though in some healthy conditions of society
it will be generally resisted, will yet too often prevail,
and the possibility of its prevailing in any case should
be absolutely provided against.
The only mode of providing against such moral
hazards is to withdraw from the Executive, to the
greatest extent possible, all power of directly in-
fluencing the money market, even at the moment of
the most severe strain of public credit. If it be deter-
mined to persist, on principles to bo discussed hereafter,
in recognising an interference with Commerce and the
maintenance of National Banks as belonging to the
province of Government, it will be found necessary to
270 THE SCIENCE OF POLITIC&
provide some standing Committee of the Legislature, —
such as tbat of the House of Commons for Public
Accounts, — which shall take advice with the Executive
even in the interval of the Parliamentary vacation, and
share the responsibility of all its acts. This Committee
would keep a minute of all its transactions from day
to day and from hour to hour, and through its close
relations with Parliament would have facilities for dis-
cussing openly the grounds of any exceptional action
without involving the Executive Government in the fate
of its measures.
It is most difficult to maintain a proper check on
the pecuniary discretion of the Executive in relation to
Foreign Policy. The subject of Foreign Policy as a
department of scientific Politics will be discussed,
independently, later on. But one aspect of it belongs
to this place. In cases in which the main conduct of
Foreign affairs belongs, at least so far as the initiative
is concerned, to the Executive Authority, it is almost
impossible to prevent that Authority involving the
country in pecuniary liabilities which the Legislature,
if fully consulted, might well have shrunk from en-
countering.
The purchase by England of the bulk of the Suez
Canal shares, already alluded to in other connexions,
is an apposite illustration of this danger. If the pur-
chase had to be made at all, it must have been made,
as in fact it was, precipitately and secretly, by the
Executive Authority. There was no time for delay or
for prolonged negotiations, and publicity would have
been fatal to the transaction. But, owing to the haste
of the proceeding and the absence of full Parliamentary
PURCHASE OF SUEZ CANAL SHARES. 271
discnssion, the country found itself irretrievably com-
mitted to a commercial enterprise wholly unprecedented
and involving almost indefinite pecuniary risk. There
was absolutely no precedent for the Government of one
country becoming the main proprietor of an industrial
and commercial undertaking conducted in the terri-
tory of another Government and wholly subject to its
control.
The Suez Canal Company was a French Company
having its domicile in France, though, no doubt, it had
also a domicile of Jurisdiction in Egypt. One result
was that a Government, the greatest shareholder of all,
might have to depend upon Foreign Judges sitting in a
Foreign country (not even that of the enterprise
itself) for the ascei'taining and vindication of its
rights. The alternative was that of dependence on
the Egyptian Courts, which by the accident of the
International Tribunals established there, were in
themselves an unobjectionable tribunal.
Questions appertaining to the rights of the share-
holders, to the debts on the undertaking, to the latent
and ulterior rights of the Khedive, and even, in some
emergencies, of the Sultan, (who was one of the
parties to the original concession,) were numerous and
complicated, and the solution of them one way or other
might not only be productive of international em-
barrassments but involve serious pecuniary conse-
quences.
Yet to none of these matters was the attention of
the British Legislature ever called; nor was there
opportunity for it to be called. The Executive Autho-
rity availed themselves of their actual power and com-
mitted the country to engagements the nature and
272 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
extent of which it could not itself possibly divine at
the moment.
It is needless to recur to the case of Foreign wars
brought about by Executive diplomacy, or of com-
mercial Treaties which, though often discussed in
Parliament, are just as often negotiated by the Execu-
tive on its own responsibility. In superintending and
checking the Executive Authority in such matters the
Legislature will have to bear in mind more and more
that, quite apart from the more obvious dangers to
Parliamentary freedom involved in trusting too im-
plicitly to the Executive of the day, there is hidden
the dauger that the Executive in a popular Government
may carry with it the show of popular assent and
confidence, through its command of the numerical
majority of votes. But the majority themselves will
do well to be ware of the Frankenstein-monster that
they themselves have called into being. What they
allow to-day may become a precedent to-morrow and
be used against them when the Parliamentary tables
are turned a few days hence.
The Executive Authority, by the necessities of its
composition and of the continued co-operation of its
members, has a tendency to acquire rapidly a compact-
ness which itself is full of danger to free Parliamentary
life. Where this tendency is aggravated by the promi-
nent influence of an autocratically-disposed chief, or by
the weak servility of a Parliamentary majority, or by
the undue dominance in the country of bureaucratic
institutions (as in France and Germany), the perils
to public liberty are almost inevitable. The Executive
possesses itself of the Legislative power, ensures the
acceptance of a series of measures favourable to its
CONSTITUTIONAL PKINCIPLES. 273
OWD pretensions, and does its utmost even to sap the
foundations of an independent judiciary and of the last
bulwarks of public liberty residing in such institutions
as Trial by Jury, the writ of Habeas Corpus, and
regular Magisterial procedure.
The story is an old one, tracing back to the times
of Greek Tyrants and Roman Csesars. It has yet to
be seen whether the story is to be perpetual as well as
old ; or whether the popular constitutions of modern
States will suffice to maintain a permanent barrier
against the aggression of an Executive dressed in the
little brief authority imparted by a fluctuating majority
vote.
Besides the parts of a Constitution which admit of
being expressed in the formal structure of the Govern-
ment and in provisions for securing its proper operation,
there are other parts which are of even greater im-
portance but do not admit of being so expressed. They
rather exist as fluid principles, only occasionally con-
gealed into fixed institutions, such as, in England, the
processes which regulate trial for libel and treason.
Parts of the Constitution like these have usually been
handed down from early times, and are attributable to
specified documents or grants or memorable historical
events. They are cherished with fond popular affection,
and, in healthy periods, on no other subjects is it so
easy to stir the national jealousy.
In early England soon after the Conquest, ' the laws
of Edward the Confessor,' as supposed to have been
guaranteed by the Norman invaders, seem to have been
resrarded as a fixed basis of the Constitution which the
people were entitled to claim, even from a new dynasty,
T
274 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
as their national birthright. It was not long till Magna
Charta and the other Charters which preceded or suc-
ceeded it acquired an almost sacred efficacy, and even
to this day it is believed by countless persons who have
never read a word of the original documents, nor could
translate them if they once succeeded in reading them,
that they announced, and that for the first time, all the
most characteristic doctrines of the English Constitu-
tion.
At a still later date the Bill of Eights, the Act of
Settlement, the Act of Union with Scotland, and even
the terms of the Coronation Oath, have been regarded
as possessing a certain constitutional cogency over and
above their mere force as Acts of Parliament or solemn
personal engagements of the Sovereign. In the same
way each other country, in which a traditional consti-
tution exists at all, reverts to special documents and
written manifestoes which, at the least, are treated as
supplying the best evidence of the antiquity of a poli-
tical claim.
In France and Italy ' Concordats ' between the civil
Authority and the Authorities of the Catholic Church ;
in Germany and neighbouring States the settlement
brought about by Treaties at the Peace of Westphalia ;
in the United States the Declaration of Independence,
and in the British Colonies the first constitutive Act of
the British Parliament ; are documents the validity of
which it is scarcely possible by any later legislative
measure to supersede or call in question.
Such documents draw their force, in truth, not from
their scant and often irrelevant verbiage, but from their
stamping, in visible and lasting forms for ever, reso-
lutions, concessions, compromises, and arrangements,
CONSTITUTIONAL FUNCTIONS OF JUDGEa 275
which were at the time, — and were thereby made to
continue for all time, — essential parts of the political
consciousness of the whole people expressing themselves
by their proper representatives. It is by a long series
of sucb material proofs that the constitutional sentiment
of a people is framed, and it is far more the strength
of this sentiment itself than the mere words of the
documents, interpreted like any other written law, that
constitutes their political efficacy.
The mode in which the growing and increasingly
settled constitutional instincts of a people manifest
themselves in the detail of common life is throuofh
the decisions of Courts of Justice. This has been
especially the case in England, where the Judges have
not been restrained by the precedents of a legal
system already fully developed, as was Roman law,
and where, consequently, they have been free to seek
for the principles of their judgments in the moral
traditions of the people themselves. It was such moral
traditions, brought, as far as possible, into harmony
with actual usages, and with such written law as there
was, which enabled the English Judges to pronounce
against the right of the Crown to impose arbitrary
taxes, against monopolies, against the use of torture for
the purpose of eliciting evidence, against irregular tres-
passes on person and property by the police, against
the right of the Crown to call Juries to account for
their verdicts, against the one-sided interpretation of
treason statutes, and in favour of free speech, free
right of public meeting, and free association.
The doctrines of public liberty, so evolved and laid
down by Courts of Justice in England, have been
generally translated into written law in the various
276 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
States of the American Union and into the consti-
tutional Charters of new States which have taken the
English Constitution as their type. It may be ex-
pected, hereafter, that most of these doctrines, which
have been wrought out by slow degrees and painful
effort by England, will prove to be henceforth part
of the world's heritage. They will be universally
incorporated in all written constitutions ; and, side
by side with the provisions for popular representation,
and for defining the mutual relationships of the Execu-
tive and the Legislative Authority, there will be
found a series of declarations as to what neither
the Legislature nor the Executive Authority is, by the
Constitution, entitled to do. It will be recognised
in formal terms that there are certain inalienable
human rights which no majority vote, at any crisis in
tne fortunes of the people, has a right to infringe upon
ever so slightly. It may require a longer political
experience before the full reach of these rights can be
even approximately ascertained ; and they will never
be so absolutely determined as to be beyond the reach
of further constitutional evolution. But the world
cannot go back, and those countries alone will con-
tinue to advance with it which secure for themselves
in the firmest manner each step which has been already
gained by any one of them.
w
CHAPTER Vn.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT.
There is nothing in the political structure of the States
of the ancient world which corresponds with what is
now meant by ' Local Government.'
It is true that, so often as a State comprehended
within its dominions territories far removed from each
other or from the seat of Government, various devices
were resorted to for making the hand of the Government
felt at the extremities, and for securing not merely
order but in some measure harmonious contribution to
common ends. The favourite Oriental mode of bringing
this about was by the formation of quasi-independent
satrapies, in the government of which the delegate of
the sovereign was supreme within the limits of the
province entrusted to him, and only responsible to his
superior for the provision of a military contingent, for
handing over revenue received, and for maintaining
order. He was usually liable to be arbitrarily deposed
and superseded.
This mode of Government seems to have obtained
in the middle period of Ancient Egjpt, at the time of
the Semitic invasioiis and lengthened usurpation ; in
Persia under the immediate successors of Cyrus the
Great; and is well known to be the occasion of the
278 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
political embarrassments of the modern Ottoman Empire
and of the Empire of China.
The Roman Republic and Empire resorted to thp
same method of administration, though in a qualified
form, in the government of the provinces successively
annexed. The period of the appointment v^as usually
for only a year, though it was occasionally prolonged.
Its continued prolongation for an unprecedented period
in the case of Julius Csesar was, in fact, the most serious
omen of the coming reconstruction of the very basis of
government.
Furthermore, in the Roman dominions, the numerous
colonial settlements scattered about, and the various
corporate and personal rights of Roman citizenship
conceded to the residents in the different classes of
towns, all tended to restrict the autocratic power of
the Proconsul or Procurator, and to bring the subject
people into direct relation with the central Government.
At successive intervals under Augustus, under
Diocletian, and under Justinian, the whole system of
Provincial administration, — especially in respect of the
administration of justice, — was recast, but always with
the object of avoiding the local irresponsibility which
was becoming so disastrous in the later days of the
Republic, and which has become a byword in cha-
racterising the despotisms of the East.
Nevertheless, at all periods of the Roman Empire
the conditions were lacking for combining local free-
agency with central unity of control; and this was one
of the chief causes why the efforts of the Roman
Empire to govern such vast dominions were premature
and destined to failure. What these conditions are will
shortly appear.
FEDEEAL GOVERNMENT. 279
Another class of teii tative efforts, in the old as well
as in the newer world, to reconcile the claims of local
independence with central unity is that known under
the name of ' Federation.' The idea and the practice
of Federation are at least as old as the supremacy of
Athens over her Ionian allies, and as the Achsean league ;
and the numerous political and commercial leagues of
the Middle Ages all expressed the same necessity of
combining the advantages of corporate strength and
individual freedom.
The numerous attempts at Federation among the
American colonies, previous to the final one ushered in
at Philadelj)hia, sprang from the same necessities
which the United States Government find it at this
day no light task duly to recognise and provide for.
It was the war of Independence which, with extra-
ordinary rapidity, brought to a head both the advan-
tages and the embaiTassments of a system of Federal
government; and a Federal constitution was hardly
created before it was modified in the direction adverse
to true Federal principles and favourable to the supre-
macy of the Central Authority. As time went on the
adequacy of a Federal system for the government of so
large a part of North America, in the face of the com-
pactly organised Governments of Europe, was tested
again and again by all varieties of constitutional crises
at home and of diplomatic hazards abroad. The Seces-
sion War brought the question to a head, and it was
decided against the Federal system and in favour of a
system of Local Government, the forms only of an
extinct Federalism being retained.
It has, then, to be determined, as a matter of
scientific investigation, what are the conditions, —
280 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
social, economical, and national, — which recommend a
system of Local Government in preference either to a
rule by provincial deputies or to a true federal organi-
sation. It is assumed that the essence of a system of
Local Government consists in a distribution being
effected between the governmental, legislative, and
executive powers, in such proportions as that the claims
of unity of control and of supervision are reconciled, or
presumed to be reconciled, with the claims of inde-
pendent management and self- taxation on the part of
all the groups of persons locally associated who, taken
together, constitute the population of the country.
It is, indeed, not so much a distribution of all the
powers of government which really takes place, as a
delegation of certain powers of government; and in
describing what Local Government is in its essence,
it must be remembered that the actual forms of it
which are manifested on every side seldom fulfil the
logical conception. Thus where the interference and
supervision of the Central Government becomes inces-
sant and no important act can be done by a Local
Authority without the acquiescence of the central
department, or where the assessment of a tax has to
be approved by that department, or where the chief
officials in the different local seats of administration
are appointed by a central authority and for short
periods and under stringent control by that authority,
Local Government may exist only in name. It is only
by understanding what are the broad characteristic
features of Local Government as contrasted with a
purely centralised system of government, on the one
hand, and, on the other, with such peculiar phases of
decentralised government as Federation or Provincial
LOCAL GOVERNIVIENT IN ENGLAND. 281
delegacy, that its existence in any particular case can
be detected and its merits and demerits assigned.
The history of Local Government in England may,
without any imputation of illogical patriotic conceit, be
fairly resorted to for the purpose of throwing light upon
the essential conditions of Local Government generally.
Besides England itself, the countries in which Local
Government has already naturally developed itself with
the greatest exuberance and promise are the United
States, the British Australian Colonies, and the German
Empire.
In the United States the local institutions more
distinctly than any other part of the system of
Government spring from an English stock. In the
Australian Colonies the English people established all
their native institutions, so far as they were at all
applicable, in their most mature form. In Germany,
in spite of the Imperial traditions and the auto-
cratic military organisation which, for the present,
tends to stifle all popular freedom, the Local Govern-
ment of England is that part of the English Consti-
tution which has most profoundly impressed theoretical
writers of authority,^ and is being used as a type
in the constitutional transformation which every part
of the Empire is rapidly undergoing. Professor Gneist
published a treatise on * Self-Govemment in Eng-
land,' the result of long and patient enquiry on the
spot, which serves even for Englishmen as the best and
most exhaustive authority on the minutest problem or
surviving antiquarian curiosity on which it may be
consulted.
The reasons of this pre-eminence of England as an
authoritative precedent on Ihe theory and practice of
282 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
Local Government are two. One reason is that the
primitive circumstances of the political settlement of
England, — first bj those who (in spite of current
criticism) are most conveniently denominated by the
name of Saxons and then by the Normans, — concurred
to bring the Local Government of parishes and counties
into a special relation with the Central Government of
the King and the King's Council which has had no
exact parallel elsewhere.
The other reason is that this special relation has
been maintained intact, in spite of all sorts of modifica-
tions and developments in point of detail for 800 years
without interruption from civil strife or external foe.
There is no other country, not even Japan, of which
two similar propositions could be laid down.
The history of the English parish is traceable so far
back that its origin is lost in that period when the
Romans had scarcely yet withdrawn, and when the
institutions of the British Church were still the most
influential elements in the civilisation of the island.
At this period, which intervened between the publica-
tion of the Codex Theodosius II. in the West in 438
A.D. and that of the Code of Justinian in the East in
529 A.D., it is well known that the Eoman Empire
was throughout its length and breadth almost as
elaborately organised for purposes of ecclesiastical as
for those of civil Government. Indeed the Bishops and
Clergy had civic functions of the utmost importance
cast upon them by the Secular Government, and
Christian assemblies and Churches were freely turned
to account for witnessing the performance of civil acts.
Recent writers on Ecclesiastical antiquities have
pointed out that the ecclesiastical dioceses and divisions
EARLY ENGLISH LOCAI. GOVERNMENT. 283
survived the civil, as is conspicuous in the names of
many French Bishoprics in the present day. In England
indeed the inroads or rather the violent colonising
raids of the pagan Teutons from the European Con-
tinent not only drove the native Britons into the
Western fastnesses of Wales and Cornwall but broke
up the already tottering fabric of Roman civilisation in
the cities, and with it the crumbling relics of eccle-
siastical organisation. It is still a moot point how far
the Teutonic invaders, as they became settled, revived
the expiring life of Roman and Ecclesiastical order, or
how far they simply introduced their own institutions
as existing in their Continental homes. They certainly
adhered to the general sites of the Roman towns though
not to the identical spot previously occupied. It may
be at least supposed, that, when the Christian Church
was organised afresh by Augustine and his successors,
the more enduring of the landmarks of the primitive
British Church were rather re-invigorated than super-
seded.
The history of the County and the ' Hundred,'
and of the Courts and Assembly which belong to them,
has been carefully investigated of late years by Professor
Stubbs and Mr. Freeman, and the result of their en-
quiries seems to establish that these divisions have
their origin not in any artificial organisation devised by
any particular King or Government, but in the original
separation from each other of the different sections of
settlers, and in the habitual organisation (of the kind
described by Tacitus) which prevailed among the
German tribes.
If this be true, it is evident that, just as parochial
organisation traces back to the Church and to the
284 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
joint civil and ecclesiastical organisation of the Roman
period, so County and other local divisions trace
back to the peculiar circumstances of the Teutonic
settlement and to the home traditions of the settlers.
It appears then that in England all the main units of
Local Government now in force, — that is, the Count}',
the Parish, and the Hundred, — were anterior to the
consolidation of the English Monarchy and have a
continuous history which is older, and so longer, than
that of the English Parliament.
The effect of the Norman Conquest, — as is now well
known through the amount of erudition which has been
expended on this special topic, — was not to destroy or
weaken the local organisation which it found in exist-
ence, but to use it to the utmost, while bringing it
into closer relation with the Central Government and
into harmony with the stricter feudalisation of the
country.
The general effect of the Conquest, from a judicial
and from an administrative, and soon from a financial,
point of view, was that of increased centralisation.
But when once the supremacy of the King in all
causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil, was duly protected
against local (if not against priestly) insubordination
the County and parochial organisation could work
together in excellent concert with the characteristic
feudal institutions for the keeping of the peace and for
the military defence of the country which were intro-
duced by the Norman Kings in an improved, if not a
totally new, form.
This historical review serves to explain the peculiar
conditions under which Local Government has thriven
to the extent it has in England. The first of these
EARLY ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 286
conditions is that its arrangements oe as naturally con-
genial to the habits and tastes of the people as are the
common incidents of domestic life. The smallness of
the circle within which Local Government, as contrasted
with central government, is conducted, while it brings
its responsibilities and charges more closely home to
each person found within the circle, also claims from
him an amount of individual practical activity from
which, ordinary persons, in the larger circle of central
government, usually find themselves exempt. The
Parish Yestry, the Hundred Mote, the Court Baron, the
Local Board, the Court of Quarter Sessions, are each
of them small Parliaments or judicial benches in one
or other of which the most insignificant householder, as
well as the wealthiest territorial proprietor, may find his
place. There is needed a certain amount of training,
moral self-restraint, public spirit, capacity for co-
operation, which, cannot be called forth in a day at the
will of a legislator, but which may require generations
for their diffusion throughout every portion, even the
remotest, of a country.
It need not be said that these local institutions
themselves, if they require, as their primary conditions,
a certain natural disposition and capacity in the people
themselves for their due operation, also react power-
fully back on those who take part in their operation.
There could be no better school for the acquisition of
genuine political habits, though it must be remembered
it is, at best, only a school, and he who brings to bear
on the Government of a great country nothing but
the limited ideas and resources to which he has been
accustomed to in a narrower area is properly stigmatised
as exhibiting only the talent of a ' vestryman.'
286 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
Again, for the effectual working of Local Government
in harmony with the exigencies of the central govern-
ment, it is necessary that a certain community of
sentiment, national spirit, moral conscientiousness, and
economical information be found in all parts of the
country. The greater the community in all these
respects the better, and it is the tendency of a broad
and effective system of national education to produce
this community to an ever greater extent. It can-
not be expected that identity in these respects will
ever be reached, any more than that the time will ever
come when people will always think and feel alike even
in exactly similar conditions. But it may be expected,
that, taking one part of the country with another, the
main divergencies of thought and sentiment will be due
only to real and important local peculiarities of the
kind for which independent Local Government is
specially needed as a supplement to central govern-
ment. So long as the people are unequally civilised or
as education is only partially diffused, the real dif-
ferences due to important local diversities are obscured,
and the Central Administration remains uninformed
as to the requirements of particular districts.
It is one beneficial consequence of a centralised
administration that it tends to prevent the different
portions of the population advancing at such an un-
equal rate that Local Government might become rather
an aggravation of a social disease than a manifestation
and means of health. Everything that tends to weld
the population together in thought, sentiment, habits
of life, and moral instincts renders them fit rather than
unfit for Local Government. In England such influences
as the Church and Clergy, the diffusion of the Bible
LOCAL GOVEENMENT IN ENGLAND 287
after the Reformation period, the popular literature at
all times broadly circulated, the very community of
sentiment brought about by the French wars, and the
feudal burdens, all tended to produce an extraordinary
amount of national uniformity, in spite of much pro-
vincial ignorance, rudeness of manners and tastes, and
even dialectical peculiarities.
In recent times, indeed, England has shared, in an
unusual degree, in all the extraordinary advantages
in the way of means of locomotion and of mutual com-
munication which modern inventions have introduced
in all civilised countries. The railway, the telegraph,
the newspaper press, are all means for equalising the
knowledge as well as the tastes and opinions of the
people, in all parts of the country. This does not
imply, what is so much feared in some quarters, the
production of a dull uniformity of type or the oblitera-
tion of all originality and specific genius. The gain
is obtained not by levelling down but by levelling up.
No political advantage accrues from retaining ignorance
or brutishness under the name of independent thought.
The more men think alike in respect of all the
problems which admit of demonstrative proof, the more
likely are they to be sagacious and discriminating, and
therefore to have fine differences among themselves, in
respect of matters which, at present, are only matters
of probable conjecture. The more they agree in com-
prehending the needs and situation of all parts of the
country, the more acute is likely to be their sensibility
to the special wants of the part which is nearest to
them. Thus one of the most important conditions for
the existence of Local Government in a beneficial form
is an equality of mental and moral attainments in the
288 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
population resident in all parts of the country, even
those the most removed from each other.
A last condition of Local Government is that of a
sufficiency of topographical area to prevent it being a
needless excrescence on the central government. It is
obvious that much of the advantages of Local Govern-
ment must depend on the amount of work to be done by
the central government and on the convenience of dele-
gating some of it to local bodies. But the case might
present itself, — and in fact does in some very diminutive
States such as Belgium, Holland, and the Hawaiian
Islands, — of the whole territory of the State being no
greater than can be conveniently administered, for all
purposes, by the central government. In these cases, it
is quite possible that Local Government may exist, as it
does in those countries especially in the Towns ; but its
characteristic advantages are scarcely perceived, and all
the possible disadvantages of inequality of conditions,
uncertainty of rules, and perplexity as to jurisdiction,
are felt in an enhanced degree.
It has been already seen that the area may be so
large that on this account alone Local Government
is inapplicable, and some such device must be re-
sorted to as the Federal system lately introduced
into the British Colonies in North America, and
the division into several distinctly organised Presi-
dencies of the British territories in India. It is, of
course, impossible to lay down any distinct limits to
the area for which, and for which alone, the utmost
advantages of Local Government would be obtained. It
depends not merely on the area as measured but on the
area regarded in its relation to the actual habits and
condition of the people who populate it. Thus it might
CONDITIONS FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 289
come about, in England, say, that communication
between all the parts of the country was so incessant,
and the practice of living in towns having an identity
of conditions and wants had become so persistent as
largely to depopulate the country places, and that the
economic saving effected by a central organisation had
become so widely appreciated that the local areas should
be constantly enlarged till they were nearly co-extensive
with that of the central government. The experience
already obtained in the case of the extension of High-
way districts, of Poor Law Unions, Local Government
Districts, and of School Board Districts, and the call for
County Boards of a representative kind, seem to point
to the antique area of the parish being gradually
superseded, and Local Government itself undergoing an
entire transformation which, in fact, though not in
appearance, tends towards increased centralisation. In
every change that is made, the newly created authority
is brought into the closest possible relation with the
central administrative department.
Having ascertained the conditions in which Local
Government, properly so called, is possible, the next
class of questions which present themselves relate to
the principles which determine the actual mode in
which, at any time and in any countiy, the distribution
of the task of Government between the Central and the
Local Authorities ought to be effected.
It is necessary, at the outset, to remove a certain
ambiguity which attaches to the term Centralisation, an
ambiguity which the late Mr. John Austin did his best
to explain and get rid of in an article specially devoted
V
290 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
to the subject in the number of the Edinburgh
Review for January 1847.
The term Centralisation may be used merely to de-
scribe certain constitutional arrangements by which the
central government is brought into direct connexion
with all local authorities throughout the country, and
is able to make its power felt to the utmost extremities
of the land with the smallest loss of time or energy
occasioned by the interposition of intermediate agencies.
The word in this sense means nothing either good or
bad. The system of government implied by the word
may be compatible either with a very large amount of
local independence or with a very small amount of it.
It only means that inasmuch as all local authority is,
in theory, subordinate to the central authority, the
dependence of the one on the other is not weakened
by the accidental or artificial intervention of official
obstacles of a purely mechanical sort. The structure
of the whole government, if it be likened to a machine,
is so perfectly constracted that wherever the hand of
tne central agency is entitled to exert itself, there it
can exert itself at once and effectually without loss of
power from interruptions or needless friction.
In the other sense of the term Centralisation, it
means that which the person who uses it wishes thereby
to condemn as politically vicious. He implies, in using
the term, that the government of which he speaks has
drawn into its own hands so large a part of the direct
forces of control and administration that local autho-
rities have no free play. They are hampered and
arrested at every point. Local officials, like the French
Mayors under the Second Empire, are the nominees of
the sovereign power ; all the details of executive work
MEANINGS OF CENTRAIJSATION. 291
in tlie smallest village, town, or district, are supervised
and checked by a system of incessant inspection ; one
uniform body of rules for education, for sanitary control,
and even for the regulation of the use of libraries,
parks, and public institutions of all sorts, is imposed
from above, and not the smallest deviation is allowed
even when dictated by varieties of climate or of ancestral
practice. The whole population is governed like the
army, and precision, uniformity, and submission are
purchased at the expense of the free national life. This
is the system which is most favourable to an autocratic
government, such as that of Napoleon III., of Augustus,
and of Diocletian, and of the British Government in
India. It enables the central authority to feel the
pulse of the people from moment to moment, to check
disaffection even before it has manifested itself, to secure
the return to the popular Assembly of a disproportionate
number of its own creatures, to give to its more de-
monstrative acts and manifestoes an outward show of
popularity, and, in the case of actual insurrection, to
repress it with concentrated energy.
Nevertheless, history is full of instances, from the
days of the Csesars to those of the Napoleons, of the
real instability of centralised government of this sort.
The very unity of mind and spirit which expresses itself
in every act and institution and the real simplicity of
the political organisation lead to the instant imputa-
tion of every national check and disaster to the Govern-
ment, while it makes the entire removal of a dynasty,
or the change in the succession, or the substitution
of a fresh body of ministers, alarmingly easy. The
bureaucratic efficiency of the government mechanism
is shown to be independent of all merely personal
292 TIIE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
considerations. Any amount of cliange can be risked
without fear of prolonged disorder or anarchy.
After the defeat of Sedan, the republic of M. Thiers
instantly stepped into the place of the Empire of the
defeated captive, and the smallest possible shock to the
constitution was experienced from the change. There
is an advantage in this species of stability; but it
is not the sort of advantage which autocratic rulers
seek for themselves ; and it is purchased for the country
bj the loss of the sense of independence, and by the im-
position of a tyrannical uniformity which forces all local
arrangements into an unyielding Procrustean type.
In determining on the principles applicable to the
construction of a system of local Government, a deci-
sion has to be arrived at on the following points : —
(1) The Distribution of Work to be done by the
Central and by the Local Government.
(2) The Distribution of Workers.
(3) The Modes of connexion between the Central
and the Local Work and Workers.
(1) The principles on which work has to be dis-
tributed between the central and the local authorities
will be best evolved by setting over against each other
the characteristic advantages of local free government
and those of the enforced uniformity which comes from
the superposition of a higher authority. Of course it
is not necessary for the argument that the regulations
imposed by a central authority should be uniform for
all parts of the country, but they must not fail to be
uniform in policy and in spirit; and generally speak-
ing, for the mere sak^ of economising time and labour,
CENTEALISATION AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 293
all directions appertaining to the same class of matters,
and whicli come from a central authority, will be
monotonously identical for all parts of the country.
The characteristic advantages of local independence
in the matter of government are that the persons who
legislate have an ever present, and often life-long,
knowledge of the persons, things, and facts, of the most
exact and detailed sort, to an extent which no persons
living at a distance can ever rival. Furthermore, local
legislators and administrators are able to watch with
minute and incessant vigilance over the operation of
their own regulations, and are able to change, supersede,
or supplement them, or derogate from them from one
short period to another with a facility and propriety
which cannot be attained by even the most omniscient
and sagacious of central governments.
Again, in respect of taxation, for many local pur-
poses, there is the greatest advantage in visibly con-
necting in the popular mind the necessity for the tax
with the fact of its exaction. Thus it is well for people
clearly to understand that if they grudge a poor-tax
they must bestir themselves to remove poverty from
thoir midst. If they want good roads, or the luxury
of a free library, or parks, or public gardens, it is they,
and not some indefinite class of persons somewhere else,
who must make sacrifices to obtain them.
Lastly, there are many matters, — especially those
touching on the private, religious and moral life of the
people, — in respect of which a natural and proper sen-
sibility indisposes them to conform to any dispositions
in the public interest the true policy of which they
do not thoroughly understand. A local debate in a
vestry or common-council hall, a discussion in the local
294 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICa
papers^ and free conversation at all places of public
resort, gradually tend to bring out the true merits and
issues of a really complex measure. When once it is
understood, more than half the obstacles to carrying it
through are out of the way, and the probability of its
being thoroughly and loyally complied with is vastly
increased.
These arguments in favour of committing to local
A.uthority a very large share of independent legislation
of a particular kind, when stated together, are so
forcible, that it would almost seem that local govern-
ment might one day absorb the large mass of all legis-
lation. It will be seen, however, that these advantages
of local legislation are not without serious drawbacks
which, if they do not wholly impair its value, at least
largely restrict the topics to which it is properly
applicable.
One chief objection to all local legislation is that it
is not likely to be undertaken in what may be called a
true political spirit. This means that the area, at the
largest, — being yet, by the hypothesis, less than that of
the State itself, — is insufficient to call into existence
that conscientious sentiment towards posterity, in
respect of similar surrounding areas, and in respect of
the corporate requirements of the State as a whole,
which is the essential characteristic of the true states-
man. For the creation and nurturing of such senti-
ments, not only is the local area wanting in size, in
self-dependent distinctiveness, and in continuity of tradi-
tions, but the only available legislators are too few and
are likely to be drawn, for the most part, from too little
cultivated a class, to generate such sentiments among
themselves.
GOOD A^^D EVIL OF LOCAL GOVEENMENT. 295
These remarks apply least of all to the case of
capital towns in which, — as in the case of London,
Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow, Paris,
and New York, — the local government, even when at
its worst, may sin in a statesmanlike way, and, at its
best, has done acts of true and memorable states-
manship.
Again, there is the further vice attaching to all local
government which is due to some of the very advantages
which have just been enumerated. If it be true that the
legislators and those legislated for are at one in being
wide awake to the necessity for, and to the effect of, a
tax or of a severe regulation, it is also true that the
direct and immediate interests of all concerned tend to
cover the whole legislative vista. Every one becomes
accustomed to calculate with precision his own exact
loss and gain by each measure, and the result is that a
utilitarianism of the narrowest kind swallows up all
higher and broader political methods.
The local management of poor-law unions in London
has been, within recent years, a scandal of selfish ad-
ministration ; and if the recently instituted School
Boards throughout the country have exhibited a higher
standard of public sentiment, it is because the domestic
instincts of the members have, in this respect, specially
educated them to a higher moral sensitiveness than
that which responds to nothing better than a sharply
apprehended balance of profit and loss.
Lastly, in respect of certain matters there is an
advantage in uniformity which is a counterpoise to
many of the undoubted benefits which belong to local
independence. Every traveller appreciates the advan-
tage of the consolidation of the German Empire by
296 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
which the necessity of showing passports, the use of
different currencies, the examination of baggage at the
frontiers, and the interrupted postal and railway service
have been put an end to.
On a smaller scale, local independence means an
amount of local heterogeneity which is an obstacle to
social convenience and to the free and simple progress
of trade. It means, besides, the want on the part of
the central government of that facility for obtaining
instant information, and for making prompt adminis-
trative changes, on which at certain crises public order
and security may depend for their maintenance.
Turthermoi'e, through the variety of rules and
practices which local freedom introduces there are
all the losses which come from excessive friction
at moments when co-operation is needed for strictly
national ends, and all the increased expense and possible
extravagance which are due to a number of tentative
efforts on a small scale in the place of one highly
organised effort on the largest scale. It is true that it
is difficult to check the expenditure of any Govern-
ment ; but it is not much more hard to expose financial
excesses committed on a large scale than those com-
mitted on a small one, and when once it is done, the
whole country is relieved at once, instead of the opera-
tion having, by possibility, to be repeated for every
centre of local administration.
The condition of the poor-law administration in
England, before the introduction of what was known
as the ' New Poor Law ' in 1834, illustrates some of
the social and political disadvantages of an exagge-
rated attachment to local government. Owing to the
smallness of the administrative area, a struggle was
SUBJECT-MATTER OE LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 297
always going on between adjoining parishes to avoid
being burdened by each other's poor ; and it was inevi-
table that a law, itself economically condemned, should
be executed in a spirit vv^holly unaffected by broad con-
siderations of national policy. The remedy introduced
was to enlarge the area, to secure uniformity in the
administration of a law, itself largely amended, and
especially to bring the reconstituted local authority
into direct and constant connexion with the central
government.
In pronouncing a judgment, then, on the class of
matters which can alone with advantage be left to a
local authority, it is evident that a statesman will refuse
to hand over to such subordinate legislatures all the
affairs in which the characteristic defects of local rule are
likely to be exhibited in the most prominent form. He
will, at the sanpie time, reserve to the central authority
all those departments of government in which the
requirements of uniformity, despatch, economic organi-
sation, and efficiency of provision, and vindication of
national character, are more important than a deference
to local taste and peculiarities.
In applying these principles in detail, it appears at
once that a certain class of matters scarcely involve
political considerations of a broad kind at all, nor do
they in any significant degree touch the national
character. Nor is it of much importance, either finan-
cially or as a matter of social organisation, that the
regulations appertaining to them should be uniform.
At the same time it may be of importance that the
regulations should be popular, well-understood by those
concerned, and easily modified from time to time with-
out involvini^ too wide-reaching changes.
298 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
Such matters are (1) sanitary arrangements, — in-
cluding under this head all that relates to the healthful
enjoyment of life and not merely to the prevention or cure
of disease ; (2) all that relates to the artistic embellish-
ment of a town or of a village, — including the construc-
tion of public buildings, the improvement of 'streets,
and the restraint of eccentricity in the fashioning of
private houses ; (3) all that relates to the education and
mental training and occupation of the people, reserv-
ing it, however, to the central government to insist on a
certain minimum of education being enforced universally
in every part of the country ; (4) all that relates to the
necessary conditions of industrial and commercial life,
such as the provision or superintendence of market-
places, cattle- markets, bridges, roads, water-supply,
lighting, and, in some districts, canals. This is not
intended, by any means, as an exhaustive list either
of a positive or of a negative kind. It is only illus-
trative of the principles laid down.
On the corresponding principles, the central govern-
ment will reserve to itself such matters as the general
superintendence of the main means of locomotion and
communication throughout the country, the enforce-
ment of its own methods of general taxation, the
manipulation of the currency, and, of course, the
administration of Justice in all but the humblest
departments of it.
The most dif&cult and pressing problem as to the
relations of the central and local government con-
cerns the Police. In this case all the arguments in
favour both of central and of local control are at their
strongest; and the only solution is by distributing
the control between the central and local authorities.
ENGLISH METROPOLITAN POLICE. 299
Public liberty is endangered by nothing more than by
a highly centralised police system wholly out of corre-
spondence and relationship to the local magistracy. It
is at the same time necessary, for tracking out crime and
carrying out comprehensive legislation in an uniform
way, to attain the highest possible unity in police
management and mutual understanding.
In England, indeed, a large portion of the liberties
of the people are due to the fact that the maintenance
of order has — up to quite recent times and to the era
of the modern Metropolitan Police Acts, — been always
entrusted to a local constabulary having its centres in
the parish, the borough, or the county. The result was
that the local magistracy who appointed, managed, and
dismissed the constables, had them entirely under their
control, and could prevent any excesses of official zeal.
The magistrates themselves, of course, were always
directly subjected, in such matters, to the censure of
that public opinion which was nearest and, therefore,
most stringent.
Considering the importance of the police being a
popular force and of the people willingly co-operating
with them in case of need, it is a misfortune where,
merely in pursuit of a higher amount of organisation,
the people are habitually pitted against the police.
This is more likely to be the case when the police
are introduced from without than when they are nomi-
nated from within ; when they are only believed to be
subject to an unknown and indefinite authority at a
distance, instead of being obviously responsible to
magistrates or a town-council close at hand ; when
they are seen and known to share the common sym-
pathies and even prejudices of the neighbourhood in
300 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
whicli the J have been brought up, instead of being, or
seeming to be, alien in all their sentiments and ante-
cedents.
Another topic, in relation to the distribution of
work between the central and local authorities, which
has, of late years, excited much interest in England and
America, is that of the liquor traffic. It is claimed, in
some quarters, that the right of restricting or of abso-
lutely preventing the sale of spirituous liquors should
be put into the hands of local authorities, even though,
for the purpose of such subordinate legislation, the
authority were constituted in such a way as to require
the concurrence of some number of householders ex-
ceeding the bare majority. In behalf of this demand
it is alleged that the amount of the local poor-law,
sanitary, and penal charges due directly to drunkenness
invest those wIlo directly suffer from these charges with
the moral right and the political claim to be free to
agree to remove the causes of drunkenness out of the
way by absolutely forbidding, within the district, the
sale of intoxicating liquors.
The only replies to this forcibly worded argument
are that the right to sell spirituous liquors is one which
may be regulated but cannot be wholly abrogated with-
out an undue assault on public liberty ; that the wrong-
doing of some is no excuse for abridging the indepen-
dence of all, even w4th the consent of a large proportion
of them ; and that this is one of the matters in which
extreme inconvenience and some disorder would be
encountered by having a different practice in two
adjoining districts.
It is diflB.cult to deny that, where drunkenness does
really exist to an extent which obviously aggravates tlie
LIQUOR LAWS 301
local taxation and imposes other disagreeable burdens,
the sober part of the population ought to have a
remedy ; and that the remedy proposed is an obvious
and easy one. If the restricting law were carefully
worded, it would have the advantage of being so far
elastic that it could only be applied when the evil was
so great that the great bulk of the inhabitants did not
hesitate to apply it, and the mere threat of applying
it might of itself bring sufficient pressure to bear on
the authority which grants the licences to sell. It is
said that in countries where such laws exist they either
become a dead letter or are immorally evaded by all
persons concerned. The possibility of such a conse-
quence has to be avoided, and, it would appear, could
easily be avoided by affording frequent opportunities
for the will of the people to be ascertained.
Another expedient for the purpose of reducing the
sale ot intoxicating drinks which has recently been
advocated is that of the Local Authority, such as a
Town Council, purchasing all the public-houses, and
vested rights of sale attaching to them, and constituting
itself the sole dealer in intoxicating liquors within the
district. The political objection to this measure is that,
inasmuch as the Local Authority cannot afford to lose
by the speculation, though it might be content not to
make much or any profit, it always would have a certain
interest in the maintenance of habits of drinkiner in-
toxicating liquors. The interest may be ever so small,
but it is there. In times of financial difficulty there
will always be found a party who will demand, in place
of aggravated taxation, improved receipts from the
liquor-houses. Sometimes this policy will be acquiesced
in, and the scandal will be manifested of the Govern-
302 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
ment itself fostering habits of intoxication with one
hand and punishing the offences of drunkards with the
other.
It has already been seen that an exception to the
general propositions here laid down has occasionally to
be made in the case of towns, especially those which
are large and densely populated. The only genuine
experiments in true Local Government made by the
Eomans were those exhibited in the free towns or
Municipia, in which the resident inhabitants enjoyed at
once all the advantages of self-government and corporate
independence, without losing any of their rights as
Roman citizens.
But in the ancient world the methods of loco-
motion and of communication were too little advanced
to admit of the full problems of Local Government
being propounded ; . nor in the free towns of the
Middle Ages in Italy and Germany could these special
problems emerge, owing to the want of an effective
Central Government. The problem of Local Govern-
ment as applied to towns is, in fact, a new one, inas-
much as tiever till now have towns attained such size,
such commercial importance, and such density of popu-
lation, without seriously encroaching on the force of
the central government.
It is only in the exceptional and, probably, transitory
circumstances of the United States that towns like San
Francisco, Salt Lake City, and Chicago, — owing to their
distance from the seat of the Central Government and
the intermittent communication (rapid as that already
is), — secure to themselves an amount of autonomy which
is not always compatible with the interests, or even with
LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN TOWNS. - 303
tlie character, of the American nation as a whole. In
fact the difficulty of bringing these active but distant
centres of political, as well as of commercial, activity
into constant harmony with the will of the Union, as
represented in Congress, is one of the most pressing pro-
blems with which the United States have to deal. It
may be solved, of itself, by the rapid increase of popula-
tion and the multiplication of towns of all sizes and de-
grees of importance, which will operate as uninterrupted
links in the chain of communication and of political
interest and sympathy. Or it may have to be solved by
some re-constitution of the Union which will create
large provincial areas of Government, sufficient in
extent to satisfy the demands created by peculiarities of
climate and condition but not large enough to foster
ambitious proclivities or to promote rivalries with the
Central Government. Such areas would, in fact, corre-
spond to the provinces of the Canadian Confederation.
Looking to the future in Europe, the problem of the
growth of towns is a sufficiently difficult and anxious
one. It is probable that the progress of education and
of commerce will enhance the attractions of town life,
and difcuse the appreciation of them, while, in many
countries, the multiplication and enlargements of fac-
tories will continue to maintain and produce a conges-
tion of population in towns new or old. The only
compensation for these tendencies will be found in the
leisure that comes of accumulated capital, and the in-
dulgence in country occupations and tastes which will
result from it. The greater division of labour, and the
practice of free-trade principles, also operate in the
direction of the abolition of agriculture as a general
means of livelihood in countries having no special
304 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
advantages for its profitable pursuit, and of tlie re-
striction of the population of villages and of the sni'aller
towns.
It may thus be expected that in many countries of
Europe, and, not leasts in England, the problem of the
Local Government of towns will become the most ab-
sorbing, if not the most embarrassing, of all political
problems. It will, however, be found in one respect
easier than the problem of Local Grovernment in less in-
telligent and less well populated regions of the countrj\
It may always be expected that in a town of a certain
magnitude there will be found a. considerable number
of persons gifted with a genuine political spirit and
conforming themselves to a high standard of moral re-
sponsibility. In many towns the available knowledge
and skill will be found superior to much which is at the
service of the Central Government in the capital.
In the older towns and villages (as those of the
United States which soon attain to what is for this
purpose a venerable antiquity) lofty traditions and sen-
timental associations of a stinging kind acquire an ever
increasing hold on the imagination of each successive
generation, which is of the highest service to the states-
man who has to deal with it. He has the finest
elements of human nature in its proper social develop-
ment to deal with. He can always appeal with confi-
dence to an overwhelming majority of the townsmen,
whenever the supreme interests of public safety, order,
or honour, entitle him to expect a more than usual
amount of individual sacrifice or more than common
co-operation. The very conditions of social and com-
mercial life, the publicity of such life, the value set on
personal credit, the sincerity which comes from all real
CEirrRAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 305
interests being habitually evaluated in exact money's
wortli, the very impatience with the conditions which
turns so much of existence into a calculation, and the
desire to escape from them at every fit opportunity, —
are all the finest material for the judicious statesman
to handle.
Whatever lethargy, selfish indolence, or slow creep-
ing corruption, may do in the less densely inhabited
parts of the country to drag it down, the true statesman
will ever be able to find in the dense manufacturing or
trading towns of the country a response to his patriotic
appeal, and to elicit the means of national recovery.
(2.) The question of the distribution of the workers,
as distinguished from that of the work, between the
Central and the Local Government can only be answered
by referring to the actual circumstances of the country
concerned. The obvious answer to give is that the
task of central government will be performed by the
members of the popular or other Assemblies which con-
stitute the Legislature from among whom the members
of the Executive will (under most constitutions) be
largely chosen. In addition to them other persons,
habitually resident at the seat of government, may be
specially designated for Executive tasks in connexion
with the central government. Of course some of the
residents at the seat of government will be occupied
with the Local Government of the capital town which
usually forms that seat.
Similarly, those who engage in the task of Local
Government will be residents dwelling on the spot. As
society progresses, and the different areas of Local
Government are brought nearer together, and the
X
S06 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
habits of locomotion increase, it will be found more and
more difficult, even where desirable, to insist on any
tests of actual residence and even of habitual residence.
Both in towns and country places the local franchise
will be determined, as it was in the earlier days of the
towns of Europe, bj the fact of being held liable to
contribute to the local burdens ; and this liability will
be practically ascertained by the fact of profiting from
the produce of them. There are always a certain
number of persons who habitually benefit from a closed
market, an Exchange, well paved and lighted streets, a
fund and organisation for the relief of urgent cases ot
distress, and from that indefinite use of social con-
veniences which is roughly indicated merely by being
a householder* These persons then properly form the
body of local taxpayers, and thereby constitute the local
electoral constituency. The constituency may either be
the same for all offices, as when a Town Council is elected
by the ratepayers of the town and the Town Council
delegates its several functions to special boards, or those
who are taxed for a special object may form a distinct
constituency for electing the Board to carry out that
object. It is needless here to dwell further on the
various principles of election which may be adopted.
(3.) The modes of connexion between the central
and local work and workers suggest some questions
of considerable importance, because, while some con-
nexion must be maintained in order to prevent pure
autonomy, which may mean anarchy, the nature and
extent of the connexion may determine whether there
is real local Government or whether it exists only in
name.
LOCAL BOARDS. 307
The most recent invention, on this subject, in
England, is that of a special department of the central
executive authority, denominated the ' Local Govern-
ment Board,' the functions of which are to maintain
constant correspondence with Local Boards all over the
country; to provide for their due election in cases which
seem to call for it and yet in which the people are
lethargic or divided in opinion ; and to supervise the
action of such Governments so far as the claims of the
Central Government, or of financial security and of
justice, seem to call for it.
It is not the object of this invention to supersede
the functions of the Local Board in respect of initiating
improvements, or to override the views of the people
on the spot in matters within their competence. This
Central Board is, in fact, a mere extension of what
was formerly the Poor Law Board, and it has also
assumed to itself the functions of a Board of Health.
It may thus be taken as a characteristic specimen of
one mode of connexion between the Central and the
Local Governments. The range, however, of this
Board is limited; and it occupies itself mainly with
' sanitary ' matters, in a large sense of the term, and
with the administration of the Poor Laws.
The large department of Municipal Government is
only indirectly affected by the institution of a Local
Government Board. In many countries the Central
Government does its best to retain in its own hands the
election of the Mayor, and some of the most scandalous
abuses of electoral corruption and fraud exhibited
during the reign of Napoleon III. in France came from
this cause. In England the right of the citizens of
London to elect their own Mayor was one of the earliest
X 2
308 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
and most cherislied liberties wrung from the Norman
Kings through their financial dependence on the rich
municipality. In modern times, English towns having
corporate institutions have retained something more
than the right to elect all their civic functionaries.
They have succeeded, many of them, in almost escaping
all central control.
The Municipal Corporation Act, passed in 1835,
defined the modes of election of all the officers of the
corporations which adopted it ; but many have not yet
adopted it, and the City of London was not contem-
plated in its provisions. By this Act the Town Council
was forbidden, except by approval of the Lords of the
Treasury, to sell or mortgage the land or public stock
of the Borough or to demise them for more than a
certain time. The accounts of the Town Council were
to be at all times open to inspection, and to be regularly
audited and printed for the use of the ratepaj-ers. They
were, furthermore, to be submitted to the Secretary of
State and laid by him before both Houses of Parliament.
The terms of the local franchise were laid down with
the greatest precision.
It may be observed that in such a case as this
the central government reserves to itself the right to
interfere negatively and for preventive purposes. So
far as rights of making minor internal regulations go,
of taxing themselves, and of expending the product of
the taxes, the Town Council is wholly unfettered from
without. It is difficult to conceive a more independent
form of Local Government, a due connexion with the
Central Government being none the less retained.
One mode of enforcing the claims of the central
government which has been resorted to is that em-
CONSTITUTION OF THE FRENCH SENATE. 309
ployed in England in the government of Poor Law-
Unions, in which certain special officers, such as ' in-
spectors,' ' collectors,' and ' assistant overseers,' are
either nominated by the central authority or have in
cases of special emergency or necessity, of which the
Local Government Board has become cognisant, to be
elected according to rules prescribed by law, and in
conformity with the arrangements made by the Board.
Another specimen of modes of maintaining the
connexion between a Central Authority and Local
Authority is supplied by the constitution of the French
Senate, which awards a certain number of seats to the
representatives of communes and municipalities. The
communes and municipalities each elect, by a majority
of their members, one of a body or college of electors ;
and these in their turn choose the senators. 225 of
the whole 300 Senators are elected in this way, and
75, that is a third of them, retire every three years.
This mode of representation was no doubt suggested
by the practice of electing the Senate of the United
States, which is, pre-eminently, a representative Assembly
of the Governments of the component States of the
Union, the Legislature of each State of the Union
electing two members for six years. The rapid changes
which the United States are undergoing must render it
uncertain for a long time to come how far an electoral
practice, originally dictated solely by ideas of conf edera-
\ion, will be found consistent with the notion, which is
succeeding to it, of centralisation modified by great
independence in Local Government. If this form of the
constitution is permanent, it will be a remarkable
instance of the most complete harmony being main-
tained between central and local institutions, without
310 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
loss eitlier to local independence or to the claims of
uniformity.
Both, in England and in the United States the
circuit judiciary system has always done much to over-
come the centrifugal influences of local institutions;
and it is one of the current signs of the close approxima-
tion to each other of all parts of the country in England,
— which means the restriction of the sphere of Local
Government,— that the County Court, the Quarter or
Borough Sessions, and the Metropolitan superior Civil
and Criminal Courts, are year by year making fresh in-
roads into the ancient province of the County Assizes,
311
CHAPTER YIII.
THE GOVERNMENT OF DEPENDENCIES.
It has already been pointed out that the subject of the
Government of Dependencies has to be distinguished,
on more grounds than one, from that of Local Govern-
ment, though it is not always easy, as a matter of
practical application, to determine which subject is con-
cerned, and though there are many principles of Govern-
ment which are equally applicable to both subjects. In
ancient times the physical conditions of the civilised
world scarcely admitted of the existence of true local
government, though the administration of the Eoman
free towns very nearly amounts to it. In modern times
the rapid means of communication tend to convert all
provincial, federal, and colonial administration into
special problems of local government. Nevertheless,
there will ahvays be certain conditions in which the
relations between a State and some remote but con-
nected parts of it are such that, in some respects, it is
necessary to concede a greater amount of independence,
and in others a less amount, than comports with the
true notion of local government.
In modern times the occasions for investigation of
the principles applicable to the Government of Depen-
dencies are of two descriptions, and of two descriptions
onl}^. The question is one of colonisation either con-
312 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
ducted in an uninhabited country or in a country only
inhabited by uncivilised and unsettled races ; or it is a
question of the acquisition of territory already populated
by civilised races, though of a race, religion, language,
and form of culture more or less different from those of
the acquiring State.
The first is the case of the British Australian Colo-
nies and of the original Colonial settlements in the part
of North America novsr occupied by the United States.
The second is the case of the Canadian Confederation,
the British Colonies in South Africa, British India, and
the French Colony of Algiers.
It thus appears that the topic of the Government
of Dependencies has the highest possible interest for
England ; and, though France and even Germany are
said to be desirous of acquiring extended colonial pos-
sessions for the sake of disposing of their surplus popu-
lation, yet there is no prospect of any State ever again
acquiring such an extent of colonial and subject terri-
tory as is included in Australia, British India, and
Canada. England may lose part, but it is singularly
improbable that any other single State will ever gain
as much.
There have been two notable attempts made in the
history of the world to govern dependencies, and they
both signally failed, either through the political back-
wardness of the age in which the attempt was made, or
through the reckless neglect of principles which were
theoretically acknowledged. These two attempts were
that of the Roman Empire to govern its provinces, and
that of England to govern the thirteen American
colonies.
It was the accident and misfortune of Eome, rather
EOMAN ANNEXATION OF PROVINCES. 313
than the promptings of ambition, which led to the
successive annexations of provinces beyond the limits
within which the political resources of the period ad-
mitted of their being governed by a single Power. The
story of Rome is that of a commercial State, led on by the
necessities of securing qniet, first to occupy Italy, and
then to secure Italy by expelling the Carthaginians from
Sicily ; then to win a province in Africa and in Spain,
as a mere consequence of the necessity to crush the
maritime rivalry of Carthage ; then to add successively
Greece, Asia Minor, and Syria, and fresh African
provinces, merely for the purpose of securing already
acquired territories against the invasions of such enter-
prising patriots as Pyrrhus, Mithridates, Antiochus, and
Jugurtha, and to reinstate order and quiet. The same
was the tale in Germany, Gaul, and Britain, till the
Empire was founded, and the same work of forced and
incessant annexation went on, — sometimes at the price
of such desperate reverses as those at the hands of the
Parthians and the Persians. Augustus is said to have
left to his descendants a warning not to extend the
bounds of the Empire further, and his successors fully
appreciated the danger. But it was more difficult to
govern without further conquest than it had been to
conquer in order to govern.
There is no more interesting or instructive subject
of political study than the government of the Roman
provinces ; and the numerous inscriptions that have
lately been brought to light have done much to illus-
trate a subject which, from the comparative barbarism
of many of the countries concerned, has but few his-
torical monuments.
Undoubtedly the general intentions disclosed in the
314 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
Roman Provincial policy were good and wise. The
Romans appreciated to the full the advantages of not
interfering with the native institutions and habits of
the people more than the necessities of public order
required. They took immense pains not only to secure
the regular, prompt, and impartial administration of
justice, but to promote appeals to the Central Govern-
ment against the decrees of the Provincial judges.
They displayed much political adroitness in preventing
combinations among large groups of subject people by
attaching the different provinces and towns to the
Central Government by a great variety of different ties
and privileges. Hence, as there was no identity of
sentiment having its roots in a monotonous cen-
tralisation, universal simultaneous insurrection was
impossible.
But there were two obstacles to the success of
Roman Provincial Government which proved insupera-
ble, in spite of genuine efforts to withstand them. One
of these obstacles was due to the time and circum-
stances of the world at and amidst which a premature
experiment in governing widely scattered races of men
was made. The other obstacle was due to the mis-
fortunes and shortcomings of the Roman State itself.
The obstacle which belonged to the time and cir-
cumstances was that created by the primitive savagery
of most of the races which constituted the several
provinces, coupled with the absence of sufficient means
of ready communication with the Central Government.
These races, indeed, occasionally produced noble and
courageous leaders, and sometimes, as in the case of
Sertorius of Spain, patriots gifted with a true political
sagacity. But, for the most part, the virtues even of
go\t:enment of the eomai^ provinces. 315
the best men and races, from the Pillars of Hercules to
the Euphrates, were of the harsh kind which belongs
to a warlike and not to a political condition of society.
The Gauls were the most advanced, and it was with
them that the Roman Provincial Government was most
successful.
The other obstacle was the impoverishment of the
Roman State, which not only prevented the Govern-
ment from adequately remunerating their Provincial
Governors and so putting them beyond temptation, but
made the acquisition of revenue from the Provinces a
far too prominent object in all their policy.
The result of these two hindrances acting in concert
was, that the case most frequently (though, happily,
not quite universally) presented was that of a grasping
E*roconsul administering his province for no other
purpose than, first, the enrichment of himself, and
secondly, the securing of such a revenue as might
satisfy the expectations of his employers. The general
brutality of the people and their remoteness from the
Roman centre of civilisation permanently excluded
them from such influence on the part of their conquerors
as might have gradually brought about amalgamation
between the races.
In some parts of the Empire, where the races were
in an advanced stage, or were of the best type, as in
Egypt, Gaul, Germany, Britain, Spain, and Greece,
some little progress was made in Romanising the pro-
vinces, or at least in making the Roman rule congenial
and acceptable. But in other parts, as in the provinces
near the Danube, in Asia Minor, in the lands bordering
on the Euphrates, in Africa (excepting Egypt), and
even in Syria, the Provincial history of Rome is little
316 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
else than a long narrative of conspiracies, insurrections,
military enterprises, and, as often as not, disastrous
Imperial calamities.
Tlie experience of England in the government of
her American colonies was of an entirely different
character, though equally illustrative of the nature of
the problem concerned. The thirteen American colonies
were constituted of persons of the same race as those
inhabiting the parent country; and so far were the
colonists from being below the average standard of
moral and intellectual cultivation in their old home, that
they were above it. The original immigrating stock
consisted of those who, — considering their exceptional
commercial and industrial energy, peculiar fortitude in
grappling with physical obstacles, or rare conscien-
tiousness in preferring banishment to the want of
religious freedom, — may be presumed to have surpassed,
in the most valuable qualities, the great mass of their
English contemporaries. But their great distance from
the seat of central government, — a distance far greater,
for all political purposes, at that day than the distance
of the Australasian colonies from England now, —
rendered all true government from England an im-
possibility.
Owing, however, to specially favourable circum-
stances, it took some two hundred years to disclose the
fatility of the political connexion between the mother
country and the colonies. These circumstances were
the orderly and constitutionally trained habits of the
colonists ; the excellent provisions which were generally
contained in the charters of the colonies and which
communicated, in a compact and definite form, all the
ENGLAND AND RER AMERICAN COLONIES. 317
most cherished and liberal institutions which had been
developed in England; and the spontaneous arrange-
ments made bj the colonies themselves from time to
time in the direction of partial confederation and self-
government on an ever larger and larger scale.
So long as Navigation Laws prevailed which not
only confined commerce witK England to British ships,
but otherwise largely restricted the trade of the colonies
with any other country than England, and so long as
the commercial policy of all countries was that of a
jealous protection of native and colonial produce, the
possession of Colonies must have been, on the whole,
economically profitable to the mother country. From
such gains, the expenses of maintaining a large, efficient,
and ubiquitous navy, and of occasionally conducting a
land war for Colonial defence, ought to be deducted.
But, in spite of the economic advantages of colonial
possessions, especially when magnified by slave labour,
it cannot be said that the governing policy of England
in respect of her colonies was that of obtaining from
them the utmost pecuniary profit. The ties which
bound England to her Colonies in America were those
of genuine sentiment and of blood relationship, and it
is a mistaken view of the War of Independence to
suppose that the prominent thought on one side was
that of acquiring revenue and on the other that of
escaping fiscal burdens. The whole history of that
conflict, both on its social and on its constitutional side,
demonstrates that there were, deep down in the breasts
of the colonists and in those of the dominant political
party in England, sentiments of pique, of personal irrita-
tion, and even of vindictiveness, which had their roots
far more in a consciousness of outraged and yet inde-
318 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
structible relationship than in the mere crossing of
economical interests.
Some intelligent Americans of the present day have
given it as their opinion that the true offence of
England which brought about the war was not the
mere claim to tax the colonies for Imperial purposes,
but the mode in which it was attempted to impose
the tax, by violating the colonial constitution which, —
owing, in a great measure, to the apathy of England, —
had gradually evolved itself during the past two hundred
years. This constitution was based partly on local
government, partly on a system of confederation. In
imposing a stamp tax by a mere fiat of the British
Parliament, without deferring to colonial rights of
self-assessment, the British Government was violating
a relationship which had acquired all the fixity and
dignity of constitutional prescription.
The real grounds for the breach with the American
colonies have such a close connexion with new colonial
problems, and the precedent is always so readily cited
in the case of any serious controversy between England
and one of her colonies, that it is important that there
should be no misapprehension on the subject. The
teaching involved in the precedent is not that colonies
ought never to be required to contribute to the general
expenses of the central Home Government, and still less
that, if they are so required, it is their right and duty
instantly to revolt from their connexion with the mother
country. The true lesson rather is that while, on the
one hand, a merely selfish use of great dependencies for
purposes of revenue was shown by the Roman precedent
to be incompatible with any stability in political
organisation, the English precedent in America shows
ORiaiN OF BRITISH RULE IN INDIA. 319
that mere indifference to, and, still more, an ignorant or
contemptuous encroachment on, time-honoured political
institutions must entail either the anarchy of dissolu-
tion or the pangs of forced separation.
The Government of the great dependency of India
for a hundred years by the East India Company, acting
under a succession of Charters from the English Govern-
ment and acting therefore as its agent, illustrates,
though in a more agreeable way, some other important
doctrines relative to the government of Dependencies.
The English settlement in India presents the peculiar
case of a colonisation (if so it can be called) begun for
one purpose, and continued for a wholly different, if
not opposed, class of purposes.
At first the sole purpose was that of forming an
entrepot of trade at an Indian port, where Oriental
products could be collected from the interior and re-
packed with a view to their being distributed among
European countries. But a flourishing and expanding
trade of this sort, first of all needed political securities
for the unhampered conduct of its own operations and
against spasmodic breaches of civil order in the vicinity
of the commercial settlement ; and, secondly, it brought
rivals from other European countries into the field, and
so raised up special political complications. The history
of the political and military efforts to protect their
commerce against the consequences of internal disorder,
and against foreign rivalry, is the history of the English
in India from Clive to Lord Canning.
The government of India by the East India Com-
pany presents, in many respects, a favourable contrast
to that of the government of the Eoman provinces, and
320 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
of tlie American colonies. The problem Tvas certainly
as great as that which lay before Rome. The countries
were won either by the sword or by pacific engage-
ments with autocratic governments without any simula-
tion of popular consent. The general condition of the
people, so far as political attainments went, was back-
ward in the extreme ; and their language, religion, and
race differed widely from that of their conquerors.
Furthermore, the actual and direct agent of govern-
ment, the East India Company, was essentially a
trading association representing numerous shareholders
whose prime concern must have been, in average cases,
the safety and improvement of their investments. Thus
the inducements to sacrifice political to economical
considerations might seem to have been scarcely less
than those of the pauperised Government of Imperial
Rome.
In the face, however, of all these difficulties, and in
spite of temptations to a sordid abuse of financial respon-
sibilities, the result of the hundred years' possession of
British India by the English has been the gradual sub-
stitution of a wide-reaching and stable political relation-
ship for a casual commercial link ; the establishment of
perpetual internal peace and order ; the severe main-
tenance of religious toleration ; the enormous industrial
development of the country ; and (except in some fana-
tical and irrepressibly wild sections of the population)
general political content. This is not intended as an
optimistic view of the position of the English in India.
Every one knows there has been, and is still, abundant
ground there for seasonable criticisms ; and the poli-
tical responsibility of the English Government does not
end with simply keeping at a distance Powers which
POLICY OF ANNEXATION. 321
might compete with itself for supremacy, nor even with
reducing the periodic famines and securing the material
well-being of the people. Higher and ulterior objects
must be increasingly recognised ; and when once they
are recognised, there is good ground for hoping that
they will be pursued as unintermittently and attained
as successfully as the lower objects already reached.
It will serve as a guide to the true principles
applicable to the Government of Dependencies to reflect
on the objects which it may be supposed a State has in
view in retaining or in acquiring dependencies and
colonies, and on the real advantages and disadvantages
which attach to such possessions.
It is not necessary to say much on the mere national
prestige which at one time formed one of the main
attractions of an extended dominion, and which, even
at this day, retains some of its glamour. By this time,
however, historical and, still more, economical know-
ledge has sown a wide distrust of mere breadth ot
empire, apart from special considerations which give
it value. If there is always a fever of annexation pre-
vailing in some sections of a national community, there
are other sections quite as strongly in favour of surren-
dering what has been already won or even long held.
Extent of topographical area is being more and more
valued for what it is really worth — that is, for the oppor-
tunity it gives to national expansion and to the increased
means of support it supplies to a growing population,
who are thereby saved from the necessity of seeking in
foreign countries, and perhaps among institutions less
congenial than their own, a refuge and a home.
The mere glory of extended empire belongs especi-
Y
322 ' THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
ally to the Middle Age monarchical regime. The utter
and felt inadequacy of ancient constitutions to grapple
with the class of problems now being considered pre-
vented a sense of spurious magnificence deluding the
Ancient in the same way in which it deludes much of the
Modern world. It is probably the feudal system which
has associated so deepl}^, in the minds both of monarchs
and of people, the notion that breadth of territory means
power and wealth. It is becoming better recognised
that, often enough, it means only weakness and im-
poverishment.
Up to a certain point indeed, as in the case of
modern Greece, a certain amount of good cultivable
area of land is needed to supply the primary elements
of political self-support and independence ; and, again,
up to a certain but different point, the larger the area
of cultivable land, especially when found under different
climatic condition, the richer and more independent,
and consequently the more powerful, the State. But
beyond this point, extent of area may mean the disin-
tegration and scattering of the population, bad and
superficial agriculture, want of sufficient concentration
in towns and connected political centres, intricate
problems of local or colonial government, expense for
defence and for the maintenance of civil order, and dis-
proportionately small returns in the way of revenue.
Such is often the condition of a new country,
though, — as in the case of Australia and Canada, —
a compensation is obtained in the superior energy of a
population suddenly plunged into new conditions of
life, and in the immense returns from some unexhausted
but not inexhaustible sources of wealth. But even
now the large pastoral ranges in Australia^ while they
VALUE OF EXTENT OE TERRITORY. 323
afford enormous fortunes to individual settlers, are far
from being a pure economical or political advantage to
tlie colonies themselves. If agriculture is thwarted, if
towns are retarded in their growth, and if the accumu-
lated fortunes are removed out of the country, it does
not appear how, at present, the vast territories of the
Australian colonies are other than an obstruction to
their development.
The case of Russia, though it is not a new country
in the same sense, is a parallel one. It is difficult,
however, as yet to draw any profitable conclusions from
it, inasmuch as the recent emancipation of the serfs,
followed, perhaps, hereafter by the growth of a true
middle class, may prove that its territories, in Europe
at least, are not incommensurate with the national
resources for turning them to the fullest account. But,
so far as its Asiatic territories go, it may be expected
that, but for some fortuitous combination of circum-
stances which cannot as yet be predicted, its width
of Empire will prove its weakness rather than its
strength.
A more legitimate object, already adverted to, in
acquiring extended territorial possessions, is that of pro-
viding a field for Emigration. This is a topic which, in
view of the limitation of the area of the older European
States and the growth of population, has of late been
acquiring an importance of the first magnitude ; and it
is from the point of view of prospective emigration ou
an ever increasing scale, that the subject of the methods
of governing dependencies is becoming proportionately
interesting.
The modern reasons for treating Emigration as a
y 2
324 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
subject of political concern are different from those
which prevailed either in the ancient woild or at any
period in the history of the modern world earlier than
the present century. Before the present century, Emi-
gration and that which included it, — Colonisation, —
were rather the indulgence of a taste, or, at the most,
the consequence of some momentary social pressure or
congestion. Or, perhaps, it may have been a recog-
nised avenue to wealth for which, as in the case of the
Spanish American settlements, exceptional opportunities
suddenly presented themselves.
It is only quite recently that emigration and
attendant colonisation have been treated as one of
the natural, and almost indispensable, outlets for an
overflowing population. It might always have been
anticipated that the strict geographical limits of most
European States must become too narrow for the sup-
port of their population, so soon as the habit of engaging
in internecine conflicts ceased to be perpetual, and in
proportion as improved methods of existence at once
increased the number of births and reduced the death-
rate. The growth of factory labour on a stupendous scale,
and superior skill and energy in cultivating the soil,
have done much to counteract this pressure of the popu-
lation against the bars of their territorial prison.
But where,— as in Ireland, — factories have not ab-
sorbed the surplus labour and, from one cause and
another, physical, political, or moral, the culture of the
soil has come to a standstill, the necessity for provid-
ing means of existence for a redundantly prolific popu-
lation has been felt in all its force. The occurrence of
famines, which are rather symptoms than exceptional
accidents, brought the problem to a head, and the
EMIGSATION POLICY. 325
result was such a stream of emigration from Ireland
as, within some ten years, reduced the population
from eight to five millions.
It is well known that though some of these emigrants
went to the Australian colonies, and some to Canada,
yet a very large proportion betook themselves to the
United States, and have since become an element of no
small political importance both to their new Govern-
ment and to the Government of Great Britain. In
fact, the perplexities which this wholesale emigration
of a dissatisfied population to a foreign country have
caused in the political world are an instructive illus-
tration of some doctrines which apply to emigration
generally as a topic of political concern.
It is the misfortune of England that, in spite of the
enormous and unprecedented colonial territory which
her people have settled and are populating, there are
scarcely more than two colonies — that is, New Zealand
and South Australia — which from the first have been
settled with reference to broad and enduring principles
of economy and public policy. Ordinarily speaking, the
colonial policy of the country has been left entirely to the
hap-hazard accident and claims of the moment, or else to
the idiosyncrasies of some individual Minister of State.
When it was a question of getting rid of surplus
population, facilities were contrived for shipping emi-
grants away to distant shores, with little care where
they went to, or what became of them. When it was a
question of occupying new territory, convicts and the
progeny of convicts, and the associates of convicts, had
every facility provided them for laying the foundations
of the future State, and considerations of personal
eharacterj internal organisation, and political capacity
326 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
were thrown to the winds. It is these initial disasters
which it is so hard to repair ; though it may still be
hoped that the constant renewal of the population bj
fresh immigration, and the potency of constitutional
government, coupled with better understood principles of
economical and social organisation, will combine to con-
stitute new points of favourable departure.
The same necessity of promoting emigration for the
mere purpose of providing an outlet for a population
which is overpassing the territorial capacities of the
State is already pressing, as never before, on Continental
States such as France, Germany, and Ital}^, and, in
many affairs, affects their political action. This is
being especially felt in the eager competition which has
been going on for the last few years for the territories of
the North African sea-board which are so congenial to
European settlers. But it is also manifested in the
novel phenomena of the occupation, or attempted occu
pation, by Continental States of islands in the southern
seas.
One difficulty in all emigration schemes is that,
except at such conspicuous national crises as that pre-
sented in the Irish famines, when all the usual bonds of
society are momentarily relaxed, the classes who are most
disposed to emigrate and who form the best colonists
are just those classes whom, from the point of view of
internal policy, it is most desirable to keep at home.
Nor will even the progress and diffusion of education
and public grants for purposes of emigration improve
this state of things, so long as so little pains is taken to
organise emigration at home, and to devise measures for
more adequately meeting the moral, as well as the
material, exigencies of the colonists in their new home.
COLONISATIOK. 327
The prevalent notion of colonisation is that it
is a means of individual security against poverty, and
possibly of self- enrichment and aggrandisement. But
an appeal based on such a notion can only reach the
more enterprising and independent members of society,
— those who from physical health, acquired capital, or
special skill, know that they can stand alone without
the support of a complex social edifice all around them.
Those who are not more enterprising and independent
than the average of mankind are, as things are, right
to shrink from removing to a colony.
Even in the best administered modern colonies the
utmost that is, — or, according to existing arrangements,
can be, — done for a new-comer or a family of new-
comers is to supply them with food and shelter while
they are waiting for work, to help them towards the
obtaining of that work, and possibly, if the work fails,
to help them over a period of struggle and anxiety and
find for them fresh work. Beyond this, they have to
fit themselves into an active, forward- pressing, yet
imperfectly organised, society as best they may. They
may find friends ready made, a place for their own form
of worship, religious guides, and familiar institutions,
or they may not. In the remoter parts of the country,
of course, they cannot find these things, and they are
scarcely less alone and thrown on their own resources
than the original settlers.
Those who are content with a system of colonisation
of this sort both underrate the moral and political con-
ditions by which men live, and ignore the respon-
sibility of the State in respect of the population which,
in pursuance of the general welfare, it, practically,
deports from its shores. The poorer and the less well
J^28 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
educated members of society who, by the nature of the
case, would emigrate with most advantage to the home
country can, less than any other class, dispense with the
ubiquitous presence of all those moral and political con-
ditions which fold them round from their birth, and
which serve to elevate in the scale of humanity the
most insignificant and destitute of men. These condi-
tions have been the product of ages of struggle and
evolution, while they are connected in the subtlest of
ways with places and personal memories and visible
associations which can never be transplanted elsewhere.
The absence of these brings on that " home-sickness "
which, from the days of Ovid to those of the last trans-
ported convict, is no sentimental appetite but a deep
and genuine hunger for the first necessaries of human
existence. This craving for home passes away indeed,
but it is disguised and blunted without being appeased
or transmuted into anything better.
The State which finds it politically convenient to
disembarrass itself year by year of thousands of the
population it has called into being has no right to hide
irom itself the terrible temptations and difficulties to
which life away from home will expose its outcasts, nor
to flinch, indolently, from its duties in respect of them.
In ancient days, there was scarcely a more solemn tie
than that which bound a colony to its parent State ;
and if it be true that a colony then was not the same
as a colony now, the difference is one which casts a
heavier burden now than of old on the parent State.
Then it was a voluntary departure of an enthusiastic
and highly organised few, rather recalling the Pilgrim
Fathers than the modern emigrant ship. Now it is the
enforced disruption of countless family and social ties.
PRINCIPLES OF COLONISATION. 329
and the exclusion of those who fail in the race at home,
simply in order to secure ease and plenty to those who
are allowed to stay behind. The least that the State,
in such an emergency, can do is to extend its protecting
and organising hand even to the most distant parts of
the earth, if it may be, in order to ensure the reception
of its outcasts in a worthy and true home.
This view of the duties of a State towards its emigrant
populations throws some light on a class of problems
as to the relations of a parent State with its Colonies
which in recent times have attracted much attention.
It demonstrates, for instance, that a State has no right
to treat it as a matter of indifference whether its people
emigrate to its own colonies or elsewhere. It is not a
question of national vanity in respect of the amount of
enumerated population, nor a question of economical
interest in respect of the continued maintenance of
profitable relations between the State and its prosperous
colonies. It is a question how far the State has fulfilled
its duties to its people when it indolently allows or
encourages them to commit themselves and their for-
tunes to the care of alien people and institutions over
which their own father- State has no control.
The prevalent laxity of relationship, and still more the
prevalent ideas as to the essential laxity of relationship,
between a State and its colonies, are, indeed, making such
considerations as these seem irrelevant anachronisms.
But it may be that they are anachronisms only because
their time has not yet come> rather than because their
time is gone by. It may happen, indeed, as it has long
happened with Germany and, in some measure, with
France, that there is emigration without proportionate
opportunities for colonisation, and that, consequently.
330 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
tlie emigrants must necessarily pass under a new
dominion. But, even in this case, it is possible for the
parent State to acknowledge its continuing duties to
its emigrants, and, — both in securing for them a proper
reception, and in obtaining guarantees for their civil
rights and independence, — to avail itself to the utter-
most of its diplomatic resources.
Another consequence of this view of the responsi-
bilities of a State is that it should not be treated as a
matter of indifference and of mere accidental taste or
caprice on the part of a colony whether it is to continue
to form part of the parent State or not. Of late years,
and, in some measure, as a consequence of the abolition
of restrictions on colonial trade, a reaction has set in
against that spirit of attaching the colonies, at any
hazard, to the parent State which precipitated the
American War of Independence.
It is being argued, in some quarters, that a modern
State receives little economical benefit from its colonies,
and such as it does receive it would procure from them
equally if they were politically independent, or even if
they were subjected to a foreign State. It is alleged
that the expense of protecting distant colonial pos-
sessions is a serious drain on the resources of the people
at home, while the constant risk of losing them hampers
political international relations in far more important
respects. It is also urged, on grounds the general truth
of which has been already admitted, that mere extent
of territory is no proof of -real power or dignity, and
that, by scattering the population, and by opening out
endless facilities for escaping from liabilities to the
central Government, it may be a cause and a sign of
national decay.
RETENTION OF COLONIES. 331
To all these arguments it is sufficient to reply that,
although a time may come at which the necessities
for absolute colonial independence exceed those for a
continuance of the political connexion between the
State and its colonies, till that time has come, the
parent State is bound to treat the connexion as one of
the utmost importance and value. No one could now
deny that the time has gone by for attempting to fasten
a colony to its parent State by any other hooks than
those of moral obligation, reciprocal interest, and mutual
affection. But this is very different from admitting
either that the connexion is one of a wholly indifferent;
sort, or that its continuance or severance ought to be
determined by nothing else than the casual freak of a
particular generation of colonists. The mere admission
of the frailty of the relationship tends to propagate
freaks in the same way that free doctrines of divorce,
which, while establishing marriage as a matter of senti-
ment and interest, impair the practice as resting on
reciprocal moral duties.
Inasmuch, then, as the colonies of a State form
that part of the national territory to which, implicitly
or explicitly, it invites its surplus population to betake
themselves, or has in past times invited them, it behoves
the State to do its utmost, within the limits of political
prudence, to retain its colonial territories generally
within its own control, and to exercise control by pro-
viding such institutions as may best tend to obviate the
disadvantages of isolation and banishment. Of course
such a policy is not only compatible with, but demands,
the speedy generation of self-governing institutions of
a kind to effectually supersede interference from the
central Government at home.
332 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
In proportion to the largeness of the colonial area,
the distance from home, and the importance of the
issues requiring prompt and irresponsible determination,
the delegated powers must far exceed in magnitude
those which belong to Local Government at home.
At the present day even customs-duties are regarded
as belonging to the region of colonial freedom, and it
is only as to questions of colonial defence that the
Central Government has absolutely reserved to itself
the initiative in any one department of administration.
It is to be regretted that, with respect to the great
Australasian and Canadian groups of colonies, which
are so important from an emigration point of view,
England has only reserved to herself a negative con-
trol exercised through the Governor appointed by the
executive authority at home and responsible only to it.
The distance of the Australasian colonies and the
propinquity and attractive force of the United States in
the case of the Canadian Dominion would, in any case,
render constant intervention from England peculiarly
difficult. But if the practice of intervention had never,
in deference to false analogies between local and
colonial independence and under the haunting memory
of the breach with the thirteen American Colonies, been
abandoned, it would not have been found insupportable.
Indeed, it would, when exercised in behalf of emigrants
and the children and grandchildren of emigrants to
whom the parent State owed a lasting debt, have been
seen to be founded in reason and justice.
It has, however, been admitted that a time may
come when the question of separation from the parent
State seriously presents itself. It has yet to be seen
how far a substitute for actual separation will be found
FUTUEE OF THE BEITISH COLONIES. 333
in the erection of great and nearly independent Con-
federations such as that which has already been formed
in North America and legislatively provided for in
South Africa. Nothing but farther experience, for
which the world must wait, can decide whether such
a colonial system as that of England will continue
much as it is now ; or will resolve itself into a multitude
of independent States of the type of the present States
of Europe ; or will be transformed into new political
units in which England will simply preside over an
aggregate of co-equal communities, in somewhat the
way in which Prussia has a certain precedence in the
constitution of the German Empire.
Nevertheless the case is more clear in respect of
countries like British India, in which, through a series
of fortuitous circumstances, England has been called to
govern a population of alien race, language, and customs,
out of all numerical proportion to the English residing
in the country. In such a case, the duties of Govern-
ment can neither be ignored nor resigned nor transferred.
They are a trust for a coming generation and for a new
age. Every opportunity must be taken, as it is being
taken in practice more and more, to habituate the
native population to the duties of self-government and
to prepare them for a time when the imposed and alim
rule can prudently be first relaxed, then shared, and
finally withdrawn.
Between the obvious case of prospective inde-
pendence because the inhabitants can never amalgamate
with their rulers, and the equally obvious case of the
possible independence of the Australasian and North
American colonies because of the identity of race and
attainments between the inhabitants of the Colonies and
334 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
those of the Mother Country, there are the mixed cases
of the Cape Colonies, of the West India Colonies, and
of foreign settlements such as Hong-Kong, Malta,
Gibraltar, and Aden, retained only for purely commer-
cial or military objects. The questions appertaining to
these several cases will probably be found more soluble
than they were when selfish economical doctrines, now
obsolete, and vainglorious military sentiments, favoured
the retention of colonial possessions at any expense to
the legitimate national pride of other countries, and
even when they cost more than the maintenance of
them was worth.
There are two questions relative to the general
subject, not altogether of a speculative nature, which
have attracted some interest of late, and vvhich may
hereafter assume a practical importance. One question
is, whether the principle and machinery of direct repre-
sentation are available in the government of an extended
Colonial Empire. The other question is, whether in
any novel form of extended confederation which may
be adopted, it will be possible to draw, in advance, a
permanent line of separation between the legislative or
administrative topics of mainly local concern, and those
which either ought to be treated in an uniform manner
for all the parts of the system, or which, at the least,
ought not to be treated in one part independently of
reference to the interests of all the other parts.
The two classes of obstacles in the way of the
extension to a vast colonial empire of the principles
of representative government, are, first, those due
to the inevitable delay occasioned by distance, and,
secondly, those due to the presumed incompetency of
COLONIAL EEPEESENTATION. 335
a representative of a remote colony to take part in
legislation for other colonies and for the Empire as a
whole.
The essence of representative government, as now
applied in all constitutionally governed countries, is,
that each deputy, though specially conversant (it may
be) with the wants of a particular area of territory
and section of the population, is none the less held to
represent the nation as a whole, and is bound to legislate
for the good of the whole, while seeing that the interests
of his own constituents are neither misunderstood nor
overlooked.
Even in Assemblies which have most of the Federal
character and, historically at least, have been based
on Federal institutions in the past, — such as the Legis-
latures of the Swiss Confederation and of the German
Empire and the United States Senate, — this is the fixed
constitutional doctrine. The members are reputed to
be not merely delegates bound each to contend for the
claims of his own constituents at any cost. They are
rather statesmen, enjoying, indeed, the special con-
fidence of a definite portion of the population of the
State, peculiarly cognisant of its situation and needs,
and bound to advocate its proper interests. But they
are none the less responsible to the country at large,
as well as to their own constituents, for the general
government of the country in the interests of all, by
the subordination of what is small to what is great,
of the few to the many, and, it may be, of what is
lasting in the future to what is only an ephemeral,
though conspicuous, advantage in the present.
This theory of representative government has existed
in England from the early days when the House of
336 THE SCIENCE OP POLITICS.
Commons, as a condition of its assent, on behalf of
the constituencies, to grants of subsidies, insisted on
concerning itself with the conduct of the general
government and on obtaining remedies for general
grievances. Indeed this spirit of subordinating the
personal to the general interest, and of connecting the
demands of special classes with the common policy, may
be traced back at least as far as the action of the
Barons at Runnymede. The latest and most profound
exhibition of the same doctrines is found in the re-
sistance made by Edmund Burke against attempts in
his own constituency of Bristol to convert him from a
representative into a delegate.
The same conception of representative government
has travelled into all continental legislatures, and may
now be treated as of the essence of what is understood
by that form of government. It constitutes, in fact, its
main ground of distinction from true federal govern-
ment, as was found in the various attempts at con-
federacy made by the thirteen American Colonies before
the establishment of the existing constitution of the
United States.
But for representative government of this sort, it is
indispensable that each deputy should have sufficient
opportunities to inform himself of the circumstances of
other parts of the national dominions besides that which
he specially personates ; that he should have leisure,
skill, and disposition to avail himself of these opportu-
nities ; and that there be sufficient correspondence in the
needs and circumstances of all parts of the dominions
represented in the same Assembly for time not to be
unduly wasted nor energy dissipated in bringing all
the diverse peculiarities of opposite regions adequately
REPRESENTATION OF COLONIES. 337
ander the notice of the general legislature. The case
of the French, German, and Italian Cantons of Switzer-
land (the last across the Alps) probably marks the limit
of possibility with respect to satisfying these con-
ditions ; though the representation of States so remote
from each other as California, Virginia, and New
York in the United States Congress, and, still more, the
representation of Algiers and other Colonial possessions
of France in the French Chambers, would seem to go
beyond this limit.
Nevertheless, neither the Italian Cantons of Switzer-
land, nor California, nor Algiers, present such differ-
ences of needs and position, coupled with such remote-
ness from the more geographically integral parts of the
national dominions to which they respectively belong,
as do the Australasian, and even the South African and
the Canadian, colonies of Great Britain. It is not so
much that a colonial-born deputy from one of these
colonies could not easily master all the political ques-
,tions which immediately concern Englishmen at home,
and might not give as just and impartial a judgment
upon thern as an Englishman, as that he would not
seem to be doing this in the eyes of the English people
at home ; nor could he do this efficiently without pro-
portionately sacrificing the claims of his own colony
on his time and attention ; while, at the same time,
the representatives of English constituencies could only
master the political circumstances of all the Colonies
represented by similarly sacrificing the claims of their
own constituents.
The only alternative would be that of having a
special Assembly formed exclusively of colonial repre-
sentatives, which would, at least, have the advantage
z
338 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICa
of securing attention to colonial needs and would afford
an intermediate agency for sifting them and for grouping
them and bringing them into relation with each other
before the debate in the central Legislature.
What is here said is, of course, no disparagement to
the suggestion that the colonies should be represented,
simply for the purpose of imparting information to the
central Legislature, something in the way in which
organised territories, not yet erected into ' States,' are
represented in the United States House of Eepresen-
tatives by ' delegates,' who have a limited right to
debate without a right to vote. It may be noted, inci-
dentally, that in two territories, Wyoming and Utah,
the franchise for the election of these delegates extends
to women.
If the colonial dominions of Great Britain assumed
the form of a confederacy (and even to the extent to
which they tend towards the assumption of such a form
— as they certainly do now — ), it becomes a prominent
question how far Colonial can be separated from what *
are sometimes called Imperial concerns. Attempts have
already been made in such embryonic confederacies
as those of North America and of South Africa to
settle a list of topics for which the central colonial
Legislature is alone competent, and another list of
topics left to the determination of the provincial Legis-
latures.
But, outside lists of this sort there must be a third
list of topics in respect of which only the central Legis-
lature of all is competent, — be that body the Parliament
of Great Britain, or be it some new federal body of
representatives, or of delegates, which time may call
into being.
GOVERNMENT OF DEPENDENCIES. 339
It seems to be admitted that if a common foreign
policy is indispensable to maintaining unity in the
organisation, the cost and administration of the Army
and Navy beyond the point needed to maintain internal
order and, perhaps, protection against marauding
native tribes, is a matter of common and not of private
concern. On the other hand, customs-laws and com-
mercial regulations are recognised as of private and not
of common concern. It may be presumed that the
utmost pains would be taken to promote the formation
of a common criminal code, admitting, possibly, a few
local peculiarities adjusted to national habits, a common
procedure, and the utmost facilities in bringing crimi-
nals to justice.
With respect to the conduct of great public works
between colony and colony, or in which two or a few
colonies have some preponderant interest, the arrange-
ments and distribution of the expense would lie outside
the cognisance of the supreme Legislature, unless some
universal interests were also at stake. Nevertheless
that legislature would always be available for the pur-
pose of supplying the needful organisation or, in case
of dispute, facilitating settlement by voluntary arbitra-
tion. It need not be said that international, postal, tele-
graphic, and locomotive arrangements generally would
properly fall under the control of the central Legis-
lature.
Before leaving the subject of the Government of
Dependencies, some special remarks must be made on
the peculiar case of British India, which has already
been referred to from an historical point of view. This
BTibject can only belong to Scientific Politics (which
z 2
840 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
deals with universal principles) so far as universal prin-
ciples are implicated.
But such principles are directly concerned in an-
swering the question whether a large dependency, —
requiring for its Government the special knowledge
and attainments required by those who govern, or
affect to govern, a people so ancient, gifted with so
rare a form of civilisation, and so remote in language,
religion, and temperament from their rulers, — can
be justly and wisely governed by a popular Legisla-
ture, elected for quite different purposes, in a country
thousands of miles away. The question, when thus
put in the abstract, can only have a negative answer ;
and it was some such answer as this which the late Mr.
John Stuart Mill (who, equally with his father, had an
exceptional knowledge of Indian administration) made
to the question when it was proposed to transfer the
direct government of India from the East India
Company to the Crown, — that is, to ministers of the
Crown chosen and supervised by the House of Com-
mons.
Later experience has gone far to justify Mr. Mill's
answer, because the House of Commons has shown
an amount of indifference to the good government of
the great dependency which could hardly have been
expected ; and, step by step, the preservatives, at first
legislatively provided through the medium of the Indian
Council, against undue concentration of power in the
hands of the Central Executive Authority, — that is, of
the Secretary of State for India and the Cabinet, — have
been removed one by one. An almost irresponsible
Secretary of State has been substituted for the Directors
of a Company, themselves having special knowledge.
GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH INDIA. 341
and being directly responsible to an intelligent and
keenly critical body of interested shareholders.
No doubt, in theory, the new state of things is
better than the old, and it was an anomaly for one of
the most important possessions of the Crown to be
administered, in peace and in war, by a commercial
company, only indirectly controlled by the supreme
government. Possibly the only remedy is to be found
in the mode already becoming too prevalent, that of
wars, famines, and commercial losses, which bring home
to the popular imagination the truth that the duties
of Government cannot be neglected without early and
condign punishment.
In such a case the best services that an unskilled
body of popular representatives, sitting at a vast
distance from the scene of action, can render, are to
secure fitting governors on the spot, to insist on their
accountability to itself, and to exact statements of the
condition of the revenue at such periods as may afford
ample time for consideration and discussion. It is
almost certain that misgovernment will disclose itself
at an early stage through the medium of finance, and
now, as of old, it will be through its right of inspecting
and checking a common-place balance-sheet that the
House of Commons will most effectually exert its con-
stitutional authority, and lift the scrutiny up to a higher
and nobler platform.
342 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
CHAPTEE IX.
FOREIGN RELATIONS.
Tt needs but a superficial gla.nce at the altered consti-
tutional condition, and the change in mutual relation-
ships of the leading States of the world during the
present century, and even during the last half century,
to be assured that a new era in international policy has
been entered on, of a kind to which history presents no
parallel.
How far this era is an exceptional and transitory
one, destined, in a shorter or longer time, to give
way to unexpected developments, there are, of course,
few materials for judging. There is, however, this
promise in favour of stability for so much as seems
good and desirable in the new state of things, that
each modification which has taken place, if looked
at singly by itself, results rather from the removal
of artificial fetters than from the adoption of artificial
institutions. Each modification harmonises with the
marks of human progress in individual, domestic, and
social life. It purports, on the face of it, to be
* natural ' in the only true sense of that word, that is,
being in conformity with the trained and fully developed
nature of man as a social being.
In searching, then, for those principles in politics
which are lasting, ubiquitous and independent of
CAUSES OF WAR SINCE 1815. 343
arbitrary interference by rulers or statesmen, it may
be expected that a brief, review of the sort of changes
which have passed over the international relations of
the chief European States since the Congress of Vienna
may exhibit the direction and force of tendencies still at
work. These, if scientific foresight be not disappointed
by some new and unlooked-for development, may be
treated as supplying the laws of political motion in the
future.
The settlement resulting from the Congress of
Vienna, and expressed in the Treaty of Paris of 1814
and its contemporary Annexes, was based not on the
interests, — from a national point of view, — of the popu-
lations concerned, nor, — still less,— from any transcen-
dental consideration for the claims of justice and right,
but solely on the necessity for making such a compromise
of pressing claims as might seem likely to secure the
longest duration of peace.
The main causes of war in Europe during the past
fifty years were traceable to the dislocation of the
German Empire as a barrier against Fmnce ; the
facilities which, first, the centralised French monarchy
and then the imperfectly organised Eepublic afforded
to military enterprises and the rise of military ad-
venturers ; the weakness of Austria as the recognised
leader of Germany ; and the want of tenacity in the
constitutions of the smaller States which rendered them
too easily subservient to an invader or to intriguing
diplomatists.
In spite of all the cross-purposes, personal aims, and
diplomatic designs of a sinister kind, of which the
memoirs and despatches of the great diplomatists, —
especially the representatives of Austria, France, and
344 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
England, are full, — the assemblage of Treaties which
constitute what is usually known as the Treaty of Paris
certainly succeeded in doing away with these causes of
war ; and it is no small credit to the arrangement not
only that peace endured for forty years after it, but
that when it was first broken by the Crimean War, the
cause was the misgovernment of Turkey, followed by
the aggressions of Russia, — a cause not provided for
by the Treaty, — while the succeeding series of wars for
the aggrandisement of Prussia and the depression of
Austria were waged in direct reversal of the policy of
the Treaty, in consequence of a change of circumstances
since its date.
Nor is it true, as is often said, that that Treaty had
been so often set at nought that it was, forty years
afterwards, treated as if it were not in existence.
Considering what intractable, and at the saine time
soluble, material the Treaty dealt with at the moment
of the greatest exhaustion of the States concerned, when
peace and order were peremptory necessities, it is ex-
traordinary how durable the arrangements of the Treaty
were. It is no discredit to an arrangement made for
the purpose merely of ascertaining existing legal rela-
tions and rights, and consolidating a status quo at one
epoch, if within half a century the political pendulum
has made a fresh oscillation and the preponderating
forces have passed from one side to another.
New dangers were indeed beginning soon after the
settlement was made ; but they came, not from the
infirmity of the settlement itself, nor from doubts as to
the original wisdom of its provisions, but from a number
of social and moral causes soon destined to reflect
themselves on the political mirror with a clearness for
DOCTRINE OF NATIONALITY. 345
which statesmen had not been prepared by previous
experience.
The secondary influence of the ideas and aspirations
set free in France and Germany, — many of the soberest
of which England had long before incorporated, for
herself and the United States, in a constitutional form,
— told with silent though sure rapidity in France
herself under her reinstated monarchy, in Italy, and in
Germany.
Another idea traceable to a different origin, but of
potency equal to that of the revolutionary doctrines of
France, proved a momentous ally of these latter. This
was the doctrine of Nationality. It was an idea which
when once broached, and especially when allied with a
growing apprehension of the rights of Protestant inde-
pendence, was fatal to the dominion of Austria on the
other side of the Alps, and of the Bourbons in Naples,
as well as to the ascendency of Catholic Austria over
Protestant Prussia and Northern Germany.
The solution was obtained through the partly astute,
partly knight-errant, and partly corrupt, policy of
France, in the hands, for the time, of that same dynasty
which it was one main aim of the Treaty of Paris to
exclude for ever from the throne. There remained the
final controversy between the two final aspirants for
European leadership ; and it was emphatically decided,
for the time, in favour of Prussia, and of what was
immediately erected into the ' German Empire.'
Such have been the outward movements of States
since the settlement of the Treaty of Paris ; and it is
to be noted that, while military in form, they have
been less determined by such superficial causes as
dynastlcal ambition, religious fanaticism, or complicated
346 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
statecraft, than anj corresponding movements in times
past.
The wars of the third quarter of the nineteenth
century, beginning with the Criruean war, and ending
with the Russo-Turkish war, have not been mainly if at
all due to far-sighted apprehensions of a change in the
balance of power; nor to antipathy of Protestant to
Catholic, of Catholic to Orthodox, of Christian to
Mussulman ; nor to the mere personal ambition of the
King of Prussia to be dubbed an Emperor, or of the
Princes of Servia and Roumania to be crowned Kings ;
nor to the covetous desire of Savoy and Nice by France,
or of Lombardy by Italy; nor even to a momentary
freak or personal necessity on the part of Napoleon III.,
leading him to distract the attention of his people by a
popular war. All such motives have been hitherto the
sole ones in the case of all European wars which have
not strictly fallen under the head of wars of Inde-
pendence ; and it is well known that one or another of
these motives did enter into the consideration of those
who were responsible for the wars which have just led
to the reconstitution of the central European States.
But what is important to notice is that in the case
of all these wars, national, social or religious feelings
of a rational kind, — diffused in each case throughout
the whole extent of the population, — were for the first
time appealed to. These were in fact the causes which
alone rendered the wars possible, and in every case
determined their success on the side of national inde-
pendence and progress.
The least progressive State of Europe, — Austro-
Hungary— has suffered most. Next to her, the greatest
sufferer was France, who was in danger of bartering her
N^W PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSHIP. 347
dearlj-won republican spirit and institutions for mili-
tary glory and the glitter of an Empire. Italy, Prussia,
and the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire —
all of which were representatives both of a strict and
broadly diffused sentiment of nationality and of the
cause, not of religious fanaticism or antipathy, but of
religious freedom, — have gained most.
The reconstitution of Europe on such a new and
apparently sound basis has been accompanied, as might
have been anticipated, by certain novelties in the
principles and conduct of international relationships
which connote the enlarged functions now performed
by the population of States, as contrasted with the
limited concern in such matters conceded to the people
by the professional diplomatist of former days.
One novelty is a certain modification in the strict-
ness of the older doctrine as to the independence of
every true State and the equality of all States to each
other. The doctrine of the Independence of States
was, indeed, always subject to considerable qualifications
from the feudal relationships which frequently existed
between the sovereign monarchs of different States.
But, nevertheless, the definite legal character of the
fendal tie and the feudal obligations rather tended to
intensify the distinction between State and State than
to obliterate or weaken it.
There was brought about in the States of con-
tinental Europe a general substitution of constitutional
and popular government for the system of government
prevailing at the time of the Congress of Yienna,
which was based solely on antique and spontaneously
vanishing dynastical assumptions. This substitution
favoured the demolition of a notion of independencd
348 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
of a narrowly legal kind, resting ratlier on a sentiment
of isolation and mutual distrust than on the true needs
of uninterrupted national existence.
In fact, the advance of popular Government, and
the proportionately increased interest vy^hich the mass of
the population now take in questions of foreign politics
and in international relationships, have tended to in-
crease the political dependence of State on State. ISTo
doubt such theories as that of the ' Balance of Power '
and the systematic policy of grouping States together
on principles traditionally handed down through genera-
tions of statesmen, tended to call into existence a vast
number of treaties of alliance, of marriage, of succession,
of partition, and for the settlement of disputed claims
which had, as their offspring, a vast assemblage of
mutual obligations of a complicated and usually em-
barrassing kind.
But all these obligations assumed a strictly legal
form ; and the common training in the Civil and Canon
Law of those who usually conducted those negotiations
conduced to the same result. The consequence was
that, in spite of all these multiplied and formal ties,
the notion of legal, and thereby of political, inde^
pendence was retained in quite as unmutilated a shape
as is the notion of his personal freedom by a modern
citizen, in spite of all the multifarious contracts by
which he has bound himself, or the obligation of
which has accrued to him by succession.
The difference lately brought about is that, owing
to the closer approximation in thought, speech, habits
of life, and, above all, in forms of government, of the
populations of different States, coupled with the in-
creased influence of these populations on their several
MUTUAL APPEOACH OF STATES. 349
Governments, the relations of States to each other are
found to be much more numerous and important than
was at any previous time imagined. It is disclosed that
not only are the large sections of humanity, personated
by the different States, morally bound to concern them-
selves actively in each other's welfare and progress, but
that, economically, the advance of each is the advance
of all, and, politically, disorder or retrogression exist-
ing anywhere tends to diffuse itself everywhere. It is
being found less and less possible for a State, however
signal its geographical advantages in separation from
its neighbours, to venture to ask whether it is its
brother's keeper ?
Not only generally accepted (though as yet im-
perfectly applied) doctrines of trade and commerce,
but incessant improvements in locomotion, in means
of communication, in the use of the journalistic
press, and in the facilities of travel, are bringing the
populations of States, traditionally enemies, and des-
tined always to be rivals, closer and closer to each
other. This closer approach is signaHsed in the pro-
gressive assimilation of political institutions, and still
more emphatically in the acceptance of a common
standard of moral and political obligation. Inter-
national Law is no longer cited as the last test of what
a righteous State ought to do, but only as the standard
to fix what even an unrighteously disposed State must
at least do.
A new sense of moral and social relationship between
the populations of different States is not restricted in
its effects to the prevention of gross political wrongs
which the larger meshes of International Law might in
other days have allowed to pass uncensnred. The
S50 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
same sense is beginning to act positively in bringing
States together for the achievement of higher and ever
higher ends. The recollections of such hypocritical
and tyrannical associations as the Holy Alliance are
still sufficiently lively to produce a genuine and
wholesome caution in the minds of statesmen invited
to take part in extended coalitions ; and even in the
numerous political Congresses for which this century
will be memorable the States represented have usually
shrunk at the last from bending themselves to any
corporate action.
Nevertheless, there are many symptoms which show
that politically, as well as socially, many States are
being drawn together by the strong attractions of
common political sentiments, common aspirations, and
common interests of a permanent kind. These com-
mon grounds of cohesion are likely to grow out
of all proportion to the grounds of repulsion, though
the latter will always be liable to reappear and, for a
time, to disappoint the hopes of mankind. The main
obstacle, however, to increased union and co-operation
will not be found in the more advanced States, but in
the unequal rate of growth of some States and in the
inevitable mixture of the sound and unsound States in
one common society.
The main hindrances to a final European settle-
ment are disclosed not so much in the antipathies of
France and Germany, — which might one day be as
satisfactorily adjusted by pacific settlement as by a
fresh treaty of peace following on a war, — as in the
composite and feebly organised constitution of Austro-
Hungary, in the backwardness of Russia, and the
intrusion of Turkish principles of government and
CO-OPERATION OF STATES. 351
Mussulman institutions into an advanced European
society. Such infirm or putrefying elements form
centres round which every disorderly and selfish in-
stinct in v^ell-ordered States gathers ; and the interests
concerned are great enough to afford a constant tempta-
tion to the aggressive spirit which is latent somewhere
in all States and cannot always resist the neighbour-
hood of an easy and too seductive prey.
Thus the notion of the independence of a State no
longer means exemption from moral responsibility to
other States, any more than it has meant, since the
days of Grotius, the exemption from legal responsibility.
The conception of moral relationships of a distinct and
positive kind, reaching far beyond the rights and duties
alone recognised by International Law, has been much
fortified of late years, — and will, probably, be still more
so in the future, — by the inducements to commercial
and industrial co-operation which increasingly prevail.
No doubt the universal acceptance of Free Trade
doctrines will do away with commercial treaties and
customs-unions, together with all like instruments for
drawing together particular groups of States. But the
existence of such instruments is a modern phenomenon,
and when they are finally superseded by perfect freedom
of commerce, the gain to political association, generally
and on the whole, will be far greater than the loss, as
estimated by the disuse of special and artificial ties.
To the class of subjects in respect of which industrial
and commercial co-operation between State and State
is becoming conspicuous, belong international canals,
tunnels, railways, navigable rivers, and postal and
telegraph communication. Many of these enterprises
involve the construction of great works and the sub-
352 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
scription of a considerable amount of capital, and,
sometimes, years of labour before they are completed.
All this demands a high amount of economic organisa-
tion, mutual trust and financial credit, and the con-
tribution of capital, labour, and skill, from all the States
concerned. The multiplication of such works and
projects is the best testimony that a reign of perpetual
peace, if not yet quite arrived, is, nevertheless, a more
familiar idea and hope than the expectation of incessant
war.
There still are, indeed, military authorities who
regard some of these improved means of international
communication as fraught with peril to their own
States, and they have influence on the minds of the
people and of statesmen. But the disposition to
annihilate the repellant effects of all artificial and
material boundaries between State and State is far too
strong to be allayed by terrors which are every day
more obviously fanciful. The boundaries themselves
still remain as testimonies to State-independence and
as supports of the individuality of national character.
There is, in all this, a transmutation of the older
notion of political independence. The newer aspect
of political independence, which may be assumed to
be the permanent one, rests upon real and not upon
fictitious, accidental, and temporary, foundations. It
has deep roots in distinct geographical lines of demar-
cation, in language, in race, in community of religion,
and of political antecedents. But it is not restricted by
any limits, arbitrarily imposed by such elements, nor
by any assemblages of them taken together. Nor is it
possible to assign finality to any existing or future dis-
DOCTRINE OF I.NT£EV£x\TION. 353
tribution of the population of the world into national
groups. Suffice it that clear indications have al-
ready been presented that the independence of States
will not hereafter rest on mere legal circumscriptions
contained in treaties, nor on the frail support ot
djnastical relationships. It will rest on Nationality, as
described, not by sharp legal definitions, but by the
multifarious elements which combine to create and to
nourish a living political community.
The practical form in which the notion of political
Independence presents itself as requiring limitation
or expansion is in connexion with Intervention on the
part of one State in the affairs of another. The leaal
ductrine of intervention has been laid down agfain and
again of late years with a considerable amount of pre-
cision ; and it will be found, in the text- books of inter-
national law, that a number of distinct grounds are
detailed on which intervention is held to be legally
allowable. Among these grounds the restoration of
order after protracted anarchy, and the abolition
of institutions held to be inhuman, occupy a place of
marked prominence. But, as a matter of fact, the
legal prescriptions which it is affected to lay down with
such minuteness are all founded on historical acts of
intervention in recent times, especially in the case of
slavery, the slave-trade, and Ottoman misgovernment,
which, at the time, proceeded wholly from political, and
not at all from legal, considerations. Indeed the at-
tempt to apply, in a legal way, the test of humanity
as a legitimate ground for intervention almost confesses
its own inadequacy. The term must have different
meanings for each progressive step in civilisation, aud
A A
354 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
the use of it serves rather as an explanation of a per-
manent principle than as a precise limit of future
action.
In fact, the grounds of intervention in the future
will, as in the past, be the consequence and expression
of the existing notions of political independence and
of the mutual relationships of States. Intervention
is but the converse of independence ; and, as it has
been shown that, in one sense, the dependence of
State on State is largely increasing and promises to
become indefinitely close as time advances, it becomes
proportionately difficult to assign limits to the right of
intervention. It may be expected, however, that such
limits will practically be found in the general disuse of
war, and in the disappearance of the secret and astute
diplomacy which has characterised international rela-
tionship in the times now passing away.
The publicity of diplomacy in consequence of the
popularisation of Government no doubt has a bad as
well as a good side. When there is a real ground of
misunderstanding or disagreement between States, or
when some complicated arrangements involving com-
promises and. fine adjustments of interests are proceed-
ing, or when a sudden emergency presents itself, the
disadvantage of popular institutions is at its highest.
Nevertheless an adequate compensation is obtained in
a broad popular interest in foreign policy; in the
public political training which conversance with ex-
ternal relationships on the largest scale is sure to
impart; and in the immediate responsibility of the
Executive to a popular Assembly unsparing of criticism
but not incapable in real emergencies, as history has
fchown (in Greece, in Rome, and in England times with-
THE TREATY-MAKINO POWER. 355
out number), of discretion, reserve, and self-restraint of
the loftiest order.
The Constitution of the United States has made a
happy provision for strengthening the executive autho-
rity in the conduct of foreign relations, in the appoint-
ment of ambassadors and in the conclusion of treaties,
by requiring the President to obtain for some of these
matters the consent of a majority — or, in certain cases,
of two- thirds — of the Senate.
In England an attempt has been repeatedly made
to prevent any Government of the day concluding
a treaty without the knowledge and the assent, express
or implied, of Parliament. Such limitations, however,
on the power of the executive authority would tend
unduly to hamper its action and so to prejudice the
free movements of the State without obtaining advan-
tages not to be otherwise procured. The true remedy
for executive incompetency and wrong-doing in a con-
stitutional government is not to be sought in weakening
public action at home and abroad, but in increasing, if
necessary, the responsibility of the Executive, or even
by specially supplementing it for certain classes of
work. The loss encountered through occasional abuse,
which might have been checked by Parliament, if in-
formed in time, is a small counterpoise to the weight
of an Executive powerful in the possession of popular
confidence. It would be a discredit to popular insti-
tutions if the energy of the State in which they were
found could not compete with rival States governed in
a more despotic way.
Having considered what are the essential differences
which civilisation is bringing to light between popu-
A A 2
356 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
larly governed States in their mutual relations with
States resting on dynastic or aristocratic interests, the
next question which presents itself is whether an j cor-
responding change is being disclosed in the objects of
policy. The objects of the older time, only now slowly
passing away, may be described as eminently self-
regarding, jealous, suspicious, negative, and military,
whether from an offensive or from a defensive point of
view. The dominant purpose manifested by European
diplomacy was to promote such alliances, to bring about
such combinations, and to stimulate such sentiments of
national cupidity or fear as might enable a State to
dispense with the necessity of war, or to have a good
chance of success if compelled to fight.
Of course such astute and connected aims as these,
which only took form in the ablest statesmen of France,
Italy, Austria, Spain, and England, Avere crossed over
and over again by transient religious antipathies, ex-
tending, as in the case of the Thirty Years' War, over
many countries ; or by casual personal aspirations, as
those of Edward III., Charles Y., and Philip II. ; or by
a momentous sense of common danger, as in com-
binations against the Turks.
But, on the whole, the policy of the States of Europe
between the times of Charlemagne and Napoleon was
of a defensive and jealous kind.
If it be alleged that during this period the two
Buccessive dominions of Spain and of France came into
existence as the products of successful diplomacy and
offensive wars, and the kingdom of Prussia showed
promise of expanding from a small stone into a great
mountain destined to fill the whole world of diplomatic
interest, these instances, when properly examined, only
DEFENSIVE POLICY OF STATES. 3j7
go to establish the proposition laid down. In the 15th
and 16th centuries, when the characteristic policy of
this age of the world was at its climax, no State could
subsist unless hedged round bj treaties, or protected by
special alliances, or overshadowed by some more power-
ful State or union of States. In the weakness of law
and the absence of morals, so far as political relation-
ships went, the first necessity for a large State was
to secure allies, and for a small State to secure the
guardianship of a larger one. For this end all sorts of
devices, of a legal kind mostly, were resorted to ; of
which royal marriages, the recognition and enforce-
ment of feudal bonds (gradually becoming obsolete),
royal wills, sales, and exchanges, are the most familiar.
It is a misreading of history and biography to
attribute to mere personal ambition and covetousness
the febrile eagerness of European monarchs and states-
men to direct the succession and to increase the terri-
tory of their States. No doubt such sentiments affected
at times even the best and the most patriotic diploma-
tists and courtiers. But the expediency of multiplying
trustworthy allies, and of attaching the populations of
other States, was far too obvious for it to be necessary
to have recourse to low passions and vulgar greed
in order to explain policy often consistently pursued
through a tvhole century or longer.
In the course of this constant accretion of State to
State through the medium of alliances, dynastic rela-
tionships, and feudal ties, it was inevitable that the
stronger elements should prevail over the weaker ; that,
in fact, the loosely coherent republics of Italy, and the
feebly compaoted States of the Holy Roman Empire,
should succumb first to Austria, then to Spain, then to
358 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS,
Prussia, then to France, and tlien to England. Then
a fresh distribution of power was effected by the settle-
ment of the Congress of Vienna.
In the international political world it has always
been the case that original, or assumed, necessities
of self-defence, have generated wide- spreading empires.
Nations which might be immortal cannot stand still
in their growth without nurturing the seeds of death ;
though, as in the case of some Oriental States, these
seeds may be of slow growth. So long as no real
relationships of common interest and reciprocal moral
obligation are yet discovered, nations endeavour to
protect their frail existence by artificial ties and bonds
one with another. But the effect of these ties and
bonds is to produce new aggregates of accumulated
force before which the smaller and weaker elements
lose their independence. This process has been re-
peated again and again in the modern world as it was
in the ancient, and it is the most hopeful symptom
of the new era which this century has ushered in that
natural ties are being everywhere substituted for those
which are artificial, and that the strength of those
natural ties is being made to rest on doctrines which
promise them permanence.
These ties have already been described as those of
nationality,— deQning this term with reference to all
the multiform and somewhat indefinite ing^redients
which it connotes. The novel doctrines which tend to
impart to it permanent validity are the economic one,
*iiat the wealth of one nation is promoted not by the
poverty but by the wealth and prosperity of its neigh-
bours, or rather of all other nations ; the utilitarian
one, that, on the whole, a nation serves its own intereot
CHANGE IN THE OBJECIS OF POLICY. 359
best by contributing to tbe utmost to promote the
conjoint interest of all nations, including itself; and
the moral one, that there is an abstract right and wrong
in Politics (a subject hereafter to be separately treated),
and that it is the moral duty of each State to do good
rather than evil to other States, and to take pleasure —
even, at certain moments, at its own expense — in the
sense of a common progress and happiness for all, of
which the particular gain of individual States is a re-
assuring token.
The prevalence of such an assemblage of doctrines
as this is markedly opposed to all those sentiments which
have in past times kept up incessant jealousies, irrita-
tions, and suspicions, between States, with the effect of
producing unintermittent war, and of an alternate
merging of small States into unwieldy Empires, and
violent dissolution of the Empires so artificially com-
posed.
This change of international sentiment has its
roots not merely in the convictions of a narrow class of
diplomatic statesmen. It lies deep in the minds and
hearts of large classes of persons in each State capable
of making their influence felt and of sustaining each
other by all the agencies of publicity, of free correspond-
ence, and of organised association for purposes not
wholly selfish. The practical consequences of the
change mirror themselves in a silent modification of
the objects of political action. Not, indeed, that the
old objects are not still present, especially in the less
advanced States, and, unfortunately, too often in the
intercourse between the more advanced States and the
less advanced ones. But there are many unmistakable
signs that international political action is concerned
360 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
not merely with remote contingencies of a self-pro-
tecting kind, but with arrangements or contracts
having in view contributory aid to common and worthy
purposes.
The abolition or simplification of border customs-
duties, the abolition of passports, and the prevalence of
more and more wide-reaching commercial treaties ; the
combinations between States for the purposes of cur-
rency, extradition, postal and locomotive uniformitj^
and the convenient use of navigable rivers and harbours ;
the common abolition of inhuman institutions, such
as slavery and the slave trade; the construction of
engineering works in common, and common arrange-
ments for facilitating exploration and scientific enter-
prises ; the prevention of the spread of disease ; and,
not least of all, concert for the purpose of reducing
the atrocities of war, and even for reducing its frequency
or the apparent necessity for it in any case ; these are
a series of objects which are now being carried out on
every side by the political association of State with
State, and yet which have before the present century
few precedents in the history of the international isola-
tions of the most civilised States.
It is impossible not to discern in all these things
indications that, in spite of the enormous armies and
navies which are such a startling feature of the times,
many of the causes of war are being progressivelj^, if
slowly, moved out of the way, so far as the more
civilised States of the world are concerned. The size
of these armies and navies, and the corresponding
military and naval organisation which proceeds un-
restingly even in times of profound peace, are not a
fair measure of the warlike disposition of the age.
DISINCLINATION TO WAE. 361
It is not contended here that the warlike instincts
of mankind, or even the real necessities of resorting to
force, are yet obsolete ; and it is the part rather of the
pious prophet than of the scientific politician to fix a
point on the visible horizon at which they will become
so. It is sufficient that these instincts and necessities
are, for the first time, findino^ vast classes of competing
and ever strengthening claims for supremacy in the life
and mutual action of States, and that the region of the
grounds for war is becoming incessantly narrowed. So
far as these grounds still remain, it might have been
expected that war would borrow from peace all its
hitherto unexampled capacity for economic concentra-
tion of capital and scientific organisation. In this
way the most alarming symptoms of a new era of war
are, in truth, but testimonies to the arts of peace.
It may be expected, indeed, that war will destroy
itself by consuming all the resources on which the
elaboration it calls for in time of peace can alone be fed.
It is being felt, as never before, that war is a question
of competing capital, and of competing scientific and
engineering device, which can be paid for and has a
fixed price in the market. The result will be, not only
to rob war of its gloss, and to reduce it to a huckstering
pursuit, or at the best to a ruinous police agency, but
to introduce into diplomacy that habit of pecuniary
calculation which is favourable to delay, negotiation,
and compromise. Never, as now, have wars been
anxiously shrunk from by States armed at all points,
and averted at the last moments by successfully con-
ducted overtures of peace.
The hope has of late years been gaining ground in
362 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
many quarters that a day is not far distant when political
questions will find their solution in a higher form of
association among civilised States amenable to the
same legal discipline and to that uniform standard of
moral obligation which now binds together the popu-
lation of each single State. This speculation, which is
captivating to the generous imagination and has found
repeated expression in the writings of the most ad-
vanced thinkers of different countries, demands, at the
least, that its basis should be carefully considered, and
such truth as it has be brought oul into clear relief.
It is no doubt true that the national diff'erences
between the existing States of the civilised western
world have been largely brought about by historical
accidents, and that the eff'ects of these accidents are
already being constantly modified, and might some day
be almost obliterated. The vast differences of language
and of religion might even become less significant than
they are now, not through assimilation, but through
the diffusion of a common education and a common
literature, and by the general recognition of political and
social principles in the application of which religious
peculiarities would count for far less than they do now.
It has also been seen that a general reassortment of
States has been rapidly proceeding during the present
century, the effect of which will be to annihilate
merely artificial divisions derived from the chance
caprice of rulers, the events of war, the calculations of
diplomatists, and the * long result of time.' For these
divisions are being substituted others based on com-
munity of national sentiment and on geographical
convenience.
In the conception, however, of such a continuance
NAllONAL DISTINCTIONS AEE ESSENTIAL. 363
of the assimilative process as might ultimately abolish
all national distinctions, except as sentimental recol-
lections and rallying points, the true value of the dis-
tinctions themselves is ignored or underrated. Not
only history (the teachings of which might be objected
to as hitherto too paitial to be available for the pur-
poses of prevision), but the profoundest views of the
constitution of man and of human nature, enforce the
notion that national distinctions are indispensable to
universal political progress. Beyond a certain limit,
which is partly fixed by extent of territory, partly by
population, and partly by accumulated elements not
assignable in advance, government only gains in uni-
formity what it loses in worth and strength.
The example, indeed, of the enormous regions
governed, not altogether unsuccessfully, by the United
States Congress at Washington, and of the British
Indian and British Colonial Empire, governed by a
Parliament sitting in London, certainly show that any
attempt to fix limits to the extent of a single dominion
would be, at present, premature.
It has already been seen that it is the characteristic
problem of Local Government, of the Government of
Colonies, and of Federal Government, to render central
control compatible with a large amount of local inde-
pendence. But it is one thing to cling to a formal
unity long maintained and having its roots deep in
historical causes. It is quite another thing for States
already enjoying an independence which the history of
centuries has guaranteed to them amidst all fluctua-
tions to sacrifice the characteristic advantages of that
independence, in pursuit of the questionable good of a
dominant unity.
30*4 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
As the area of nationality becomes extended,
througli causes of the nature of forced amalgamation
rather than of ethical adhesiveness, the sentiment of
patriotic identity handed down from generation to
generation becomes weakened through diffusion and
through having less and less relation to the real facts.
Even in modern Greece, with all the advantages of
common records of resistance to the Turk, the common
use of an ancient language consecrated by the best
literature of the world, and the occupation of a soil
the traditions of which the world will not willingly let
die, — the struggle to maintain the sense of national
continuity (with something of what it means in this
special case) has proved to be of the hardest, especially
as new territory is annexed. There is, probably, no
sentiment more powerful for good of all sorts than the
national sentiment, and the loss or general weakening
of it would be irreparable.
Of course it must be expected that all the move-
ments of the new age will tend to reduce this sentiment
in many of its aspects and modes of expression. Nations
will no longer value themselves on their exclusive
military prowess, or on their monopoly of virtue, of
intelligence, or of good manners. But each nation, so
long as its limits admit of the national sentiment being
duly fostered, will be conscious of its own history and
of the moral and intellectual contributions which its
antecedents and qualifications specially call upon it to
make for the general good. It will know in what
respects, through hereditary defects in the character of
the population, or through physical disadvantages,
or through historical misfortunes, it is at a disadvan-
tage as compared tc others. But it will also calmly
ASSOCIATION OF STATES. 365
and gravely, like Pericles in liis Funeral Oration,
ascertain and know in what its characteristic strength
and excellence lie. It will use this strength and excel-
lence, but not abuse them. It will remember that no
nation is bound to be the slave, but that all are bound
to be the free servants, of humanity. And humanity
will gain infinitely more by this free and independent
contribution from a multitude of centres, each sus-
taining its own national altar and worshipping its own
gods and heroes, than by the best organised company
of nationalities who have purchased the show of uni-
formity and political tolerance at the price of universal
infidelity.
This prospect, however, of associated national life
is limited at best to Europe and America and the
European Colonies. There are still the large outlying
nations of the East, which cannot be left out of the
political survey ; and there are the rude populations of
Africa and of the Oceanic islands, and the aboriginal
tribes still inhabiting territory otherwise appropriated,
with whom civilised nations are brought into necessary
contact.
The narrative of the political relations of nations
calling themselves civilised with nations they have
deemed uncivilised is a discreditable part of human
history. It would seem as if the irresponsible savagery
of primitive barbarism, after being expelled by the ad-
vent of law and government from the relationships of
man with man, had taken refuge in the relationships of
nation with nation.
The tales of the treatment of the native inhabitants
of the American Continent by the Spaniards and
Portuguese may perhaps be treated as exceptional
366 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
barbarities due to a transient conspiracy of money -
greed and intolerant superstition. But even in very
recent times the persistently overbearing treatment of
China by England, the dealings of France w^ith the
civilised Arab races of North Africa, and the cruel
tyranny exercised over all the inhabited communities,
civilised or uncivilised, capable of supplying what are
known as coolie labourers specially fitted to labour in
tropical countries, by some of the British Colonies, by
France, and by Portugal, combine to show that mere
progress in civilisation is no guarantee against the
abuse of its responsibilities.
Many of the questions raised by international rela-
tions between countries at different stages of civilisa-
tion are ethical rather than political in the narrower
sense, though the results of particular modes of solving
them are political in all senses of the term. The sort
of questions which are presented relate to the recog-
nition of institutions in one State which are, not only
alien but repugnant, to the sentiment of the inhabi-
tants of another with which it is brought into contact.
Such institutions are polygamy, slavery, torture, ido-
latry, and commercial exclusiveness.
In Europe, indeed, the several States grew up at
very different rates of progress, and there were parts of
North Germany and of Western Britain which retained
pagan and inhuman customs long after Roman law and
Christianity had saturated the States of Central and
Southern Europe. But the centralising influences of
Feudalism and of the Roman Church triumphed over
the dislocating effects of diverse institutions, and the
international law of the West became the expression
of both the fact of, and the aspiration after, moral unity.
CAUSES OF COMMERCIAL WARS. 367
There has been no parallel set of influences at work
to amalgamate Western and Eastern civilisation ; and it
has unfortunately happened, from the nature of the
case, that contact between the two has been mainly
conducted under the rough and ready conditions found
in cosmopolitan sea-ports. Commercial relationships
have often sprung up long before the character, laws, and
practices of one party to national obligations are known
to the other.
For a time, it may be, and so long as negotiations
are strictly confined to the merchant class, all works
well. But so soon as the area of transactions becomes
extended, and a number of fresh persons, not originally
contemplated, become involved, either through suc-
cession or through transfer of engagements, serious
disputes are sure to arise. For want of a tribunal and
of a definite system of laws recognised by all, legal
points instantly become matters of personal recrimi-
nation. The reign of misapprehension, of confusion,
and of ignorance on all sides, extends itself more and
more widely ; till the executive authorities on the
spot are forced to interfere in order to protect life and
property ; and war, usually made by the stronger against
the weaker, is precipitated in a day. The result of the
war is, of course, endless and ignominious concessions
made by the weak to the strong.
It may be, of course, that instead of the hypothesis
of commercial relationships being the origin of the
contact, it begins in proselytising effort, in ill-advised
enterprises of travellers, in disputes as to the rights of
fugitive slaves, or as to the requirements of courteous
ceremonial in conducting international correspondence.
Whatever be the immediate occasion of the controversy.
368 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
it is inevitable that some such controversy must sooner
or later arise between States the institutions of which
widely differ, and yet the inhabitants of each of which
happen to come into frequent contact.
The remedy will probably be found in the firm and
practical retention of two political truths ; one, that a
State cannot be forcibly driven ahead in such a way as
to enable it to evade the necessity of passing through
all the intermediate stages of progress from the first to
the last ; the other, that a more advanced State can, in
a variety of ways, help a less advanced one to pass
through these stages with a rapidity and ease it could
not attain in default of such aid.
Now it will be generally admitted that the assimila-
tion, — though not the identification, — of moral habits
and institutions, and of political and legal ideas, between
all the States of the World is, prima facie, desirable as
favourable to union and to communion. It will be
quite as generally admitted by the more advanced
States that the continued retention by less advanced
ones of unsocial and inhuman institutions is undesirable
from a purely self-interested point of view. On both
these grounds it may be maintained that the most
enlightened policy in the future will compel the more
advanced States to do their utmost to promote and not
to retard the development of the less advanced ones.
The gains of a few Portuguese merchants three cen-
turies ago were a poor compensation for excluding China
from all contact with the rest of the world from that
time till a quarter of a century ago. Even the gains of
English merchants, acquired in China first by smuggling
connived at by the British Government, then secured
by wars engaged in for their benefit, and by a Treaty
RELATIONS WITH LESS CIVILISED STATES. 369
imposed on China by force of arms, have poorly compen-
sated for the political discredit attached to the British
character, for the stinted commercial transactions
between China and England, and for the jealousy,
suspicion, and distaste, directed against Englishmen,
which rob commerce with China of all its natural and
healthy stimulus.
If, then, it be a well-recognised political object to
hasten the time for the disappearance of barbarous
institutions, the best mode of bringing this about is to
facilitate to the utmost intercourse between the inha-
bitants of the less and of the more advanced States.
This can only be done, however, by abstaining from
giving rude shocks to the sensibilities of those who
continue attached to their traditional institutions,
however bad and even immoral these may be from a
higher standpoint; by the practice of a courteous and
respectful demeanour in travellers, missionaries, and
merchants towards all national observances and cere-
monies ; by recognising, if not by actively contributing
to maintain practices which may be objectionable in
themselves, but which it would be premature at present,
even for the Grovernment of the State in which they
are found, to endeavour to extirpate ; and lastly^ by
going the utmost lengths in recognising the national
independence even of the weakest State, so as to
encourage confidence and to supersede the necessity of
precautions which act as trammels on perfect freedom
of association. Some such policy as this was generally
pursued and recommended by the East India Company
in tlieir relations with native States, as they came into
contact with them one by one; and if some of the
B B
370 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
institutions of British India and of the Native Indian
States have shown an extraordinary tenacity, it is
probably beca,use the European element has been
numerically small and confined to the official and com-
mercial classes. There is also reason to fear that the
British Government in India has erred on the side
of positively encouraging, and thereby prolonging the
vitality of, institutions v^hich ought to have been, er^
this, dying a natural death.
r"
371
CHAPTER X.
THE PEOVINCE OP GOVERNMENT.
A OONSIDEEATION of what a Government ought to do
and what it ought to abstain from doing is a topic which
has attracted the attention of modern writers more i\\^u
any other in the region of serious political speculation.
In ancient times, — that is, in the best days of Greece
and of Rome, or even in the da3^s of the best political
Greek and Roman writers, such as Aristotle and Cicero,
— no doubt seems to have perplexed the thoughts o\
men as to the place Government ought to take in human
affairs. As soon as political speculation again awoke,
at the time of the growth of the Italian Republics and
the collapse of the feudal system, though the source of
all government, the duties of rulers, and the rights of
the people shared with the topic of the best form of
government the attention of such writers as Machia-
velli. Bacon, Montesquieu, Harrington, Hobbes, and
Locke, — yet it seems to have been assumed in theory,
as it was in practice, that, provided the government
was good and had an accredited authority, there was
no limit to its free right of action.
Now that the other questions as to the source and
even as to the form of government are approaching a
solution, it may be asked why there still remains
wholly unanswered the question as to the restrictions
VU'I
THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
by which governmental action ought to be, — and there-
fore will be,— hemmed in.
Wilhelm von Humboldt's concise and remarkable
work, in which he advocates the extremest govern-
mental apathy and inaction, is perhaps the most im-
portant contribution to the statement and discussion of
the question, though the consideration of the same
subject by Mr. John Stuart Mill in some of the later
pages of his ' Political Economy,' and by Mr. Herbert
Spencer in his ' Social Statics ' and his ' Essay on Over-
Government,' should be studied as essential portions of
the Literature of this topic.
Nevertheless these treatises and casual discussions
have not exhausted the subject. Indeed they have done
little more than indicate its inherent difficulties. Mr.
Mill chiefly confines himself to pointing out the in-
conveniences which follow from too great an extension
of the area of governmental interference in some
directions, and from too restricted an extension of it
in others. But he scarcely lingers to propound all the
principles of judgment which must guide the statesman
as to when to act and when to refrain from acting.
Mr. Herbert Spencer again, with his masterly com-
mand of illustration, mainly confines himself to dwelling
on all the disadvantages and disabling weakness which
follow from reliance on government aid without con-
sidering historically how this reliance sprang up, and
how, consequently, it can, as things are, be dispensed
with.
Among the causes which have led to the question of
the proper limits of Governmental action being opened
out in England, — and thereby in all the countries which
are sharing, either through inheritance or imitation,
THE PROVINCE OF GOVERNMENT. 373
its political institutions, — are to be counted, first, the
independent individuality of which the development of
the English constitution is at once the cause, the effect,
and the best expression ; and, secondly, the economic
doctrines which have attained ever increasing predomi-
nance since the days of Adam Smith.
No doubt the principles of religious independence
which attained their climax in the days of the Com-
monwealth, which coloured the circumstances of the
Revolution of 1G88, and which were recalled to a
second life by Wesley and Whitefield, made a favourable
atmosphere for the criticism of all secular government,
as an alien and purely human institution which must
be submitted to just the same tests of suitability and
usefulness as any other instrument contrived for definite
ends.
In a similar way, in America, the shock of political
thought brought about in the interior of each of the
thirteen colonies, by the delegation of important pre-
rogatives to a new-fashioned central government, ren-
dered the criticism of that Government, of its functions,
and of its rights and duties, as natural as, in other times
and circumstances, was the unquestioned submission
to the claims of any Government believed to be duly
authorised.
The origin of a disposition to reject the pre-
tensions of Government to occupy any field of action it
chooses, without accountability to any other standard
than the apparent demands of the moment, must be
sought chiefly in the first of these causes. Modern
political society in the West, unlike that of Greece and
Rome and that of the oriental world, has been built up
out of the magnificent ruins of feudalism. This system
374 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
has passed through much the same stages in each of
the leading countries of Western Europe, but at very
different rates.
It took longer in France than in England for
the feudal monarch to obtain undisputed supremacy-
over the Dukes, Counts, and Barons. But when that
supremacy was attained the French King was nearly a
despot who had annihilated his opponents, while the
English King was a constitutional ruler who competed
with his nobles for the loyal support of an enfranchised
people. Thus in England, at an early date, the notion
of individual rights against both the Crown and the
Aristocracy prevailed ; and the early and rapid develop-
ment of the House of Commons gave practical efPect to
a conception which became every year more distinct
and more popular.
In the times of the Edwards and the early Tudors
the House of Commons, except on questions of granting
supplies, was little more than an organ for enforcing
.on the people the capricious policy of a monarch or
of his favourite adviser. By the time of the Stuarts
the same House had become an organ for enforcing
the will of the people on the King, — and the only
progress made since has been that of annihilating
more and more decisively all impediments between tlie
expression of the people's will and the act of carrying it
into effect. Thus, while a state of mind fa.vourable to
an outside criticism of the duties and claims of govern-
ment has been in course of incessant cultivation, the
people themselves have had cast upon them the charge
of government to an extent which may well make them
pause to ask whether power may not be abused in their
bands as well as in the hands of an aristocracy or a
THE PEOVINCE OF GOVEENMENT. 375
monarcli? Is there any limit beyond wliicli, even in
the name of an authorised government itself, they
ought not to advance ?
This aspect of Government has been brought into
clearer relief during the present century from the
development of the science of Political Economy in
the hands of Adam Smith and his successors in this
country up to Mr. John Stuart Mill. This science had,
indeed, been cultivated with success both in England
and in France befoi'e the publication of the 'Wealth
of Nations'; and the bearing of some of its leading
doctrines on practical politics had been appreciated,
or, at least, divined. But, between the publication of
Adam Smith's * Wealth of Nations ' and that of Mr.
Mill's treatise on the same subject, events of an un-
precedented character and on an enormous scale had
happened, enforcing public attention to the mutual
relations of economical and political science.
The question of the right of taxing colonies had
been mooted in England and in America in a form in
which it required all the genius of Adam Smith and
of Edmund Burke to separate the claims of economic
advantage, of moral right, and of political expediency.
The collapse of the social, industrial, and financial
system of France, — represented by the state of things to
be known for all time as the first French Revolution, —
threw into the crucible every familiar theory of the
basis of government, and illustrated with only too
brilliant a glare the dependence of all governments on
economic conditions which they may control and con-
form to, but which they cannot, with impunity, ignore
or defy.
In England, again, the recovery of the national
376 THE SCIENCE OP POLITICS.
energy expended in the war with France was signally
retarded by the agricultural distress following on a
return to the lower prices belonging to a time of peace,
by the desperate efforts to find redress in multiplied
Protective duties, and by the aggravation of all the
other perplexities brought about by the scandalous
operation of a Poor Law system which was the in-
heritance of times of economic childhood, and which
was successful only in the rapid manufacture of paupers.
It was in order to solve such urgent practical
problems as these that such writers as Adam Smith,
Ricardo and the two Mills addressed themselves to ques-
tion afresh, from a purely logical standpoint, whether
there were any laws governing the production and dis-
tribution of national wealth which were, in a true sense,
laws of Nature, and which, as such, could not, without
disaster, be trifled with by Governments.
The true purpose which scientific writers on what is
now recognised under the title of Political Economy
proposed to themselves has very generally been mis-
conceived, and their labours have, consequently, been
in many quarters regarded with a prejudice and distrust
quite undeserved — at least so far as the most eminent
of these writers is concerned. It has been supposed
that they set before themselves the object not of showing
on what conditions national wealth depends, but of
enforcing on governments and on individual persons
the obligation of creating wealth in preference (if it
must be so) to the discharge of other and competing
obligations.
Thus Mr. Malthus announced an economic law that,
in certain countries and in certain conditions of society,
population tends to increase more rapidly than the
o ' 'P-
INFLUENCES OF POLITICAL EC0X0MY>^^^3;w'
means of subsistence, and but for certain cbects ^whidi'
lie enumerated) would, witliin a limited time, gain upon
those means in such a measure as to involve widespread
penury and misery. The consequence has been that
the name of Malthus has been erroneously identified
with a doctrine that it is the duty of all men every-
where, both individually and by corporate action, to
devise all sorts of artificial means to restrict popu-
lation.
In the same way the political economists who have
pointed out how indiscriminate poor relief, whether
accorded by the State or by private persons, promotes
pauperism and saps the sense of independence and
self-reliance, have been habitually charged with in-
difference to the culture of the charitable virtues, and
with hardness or cruelty to the poor. Even those
writers who have attempted to help working men to
understand the necessary effects of Trade Combinations
and strikes on wages and prices, with a view to
ascertaining the principles on which these combina-
tions and strikes can, and cannot, be resorted to in the
true interest of the labourer, have been too frequently
misrepresented and supposed to be the enemies, and
not the friends, of working men.
No doubt the attitude occasionally adopted by some
leading writers, and the want of strict adherence to
the true limits of their subject-matter, have given some
colour to these reproaches. But the subject of economics,
— dealing with nothing else than the laws of the pro-
duction and the distribution of wealth, as determined
at any time and place by the constitution of man and
the physical universe then and there, — has gradually
been clearing itself from all complicating materials, and
378 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
in the severely scientific treatises of such writers as the
late Professors Cairnes and Jevons has at last attained
the solid proportions of a compact and demonstrative
science.
Now it happens that the main discoveries or con-
(ilusions of economical science during the last hundred
years have been adverse to State interference. The
doctrine lavourable to recognising the claims of colonies
to self -taxation ; the doctrine which, overthrew all such
impediments to commerce as protective tariffs and
navigation laws, and which abolished the old Poor
Law with its artificial obstructions to a free circulation
of labour, and with its monstrous system of supple-
menting wages out of the poor-rate, of encouraging
improvident marriages, and of granting indiscriminate
out-door relief ; and the doctrines which have recognised,
within just limits, the right of labourers to free com-
bination ; — these several doctrines have been alike in
this, that they have marked out clear and definite limits
to the beneficial activity of Government, and in every
case this activity has been theoretically contracted
rather than enlarged.
The result has been that there has gradually grown
up, in the consciousness of the population of European
countries generally, an entirely novel sentiment as to
the position and functions of the State. In the older
political systems, whether of the classical or the modern
world, the only oppositions known were those of the
State to the private citizen or perhaps of the State
to the chartered corporation. In the new era inde-
pendent forces are recognised of a kind which wholly
differ from those centering in any individual person or
wielded by any aggregate body of persons, and which are
SOCIALIST DOCTRINES. 379
yet capable of assuming a position of lasting antagonism
to the State. The question, indeed, is being asked
whether, in view of these stupendous, jet highly
organised, independent, forces, future civilisation will
leave anything for government to do, except to punish
occasional crimes, to protect property, to collect taxes,
and to superintend the conduct of relations with foreign
Powers.
The modern growth of what may be characterised
under the generic name of Socialism is partly a product,
and partly a contemporaneous symptom, of this novel
attitude towards the State. The outburst of Socialism
in its various forms in the different countries of Europe,
and under the different titles of Nihilism, Interna-
tionalism, Communism, and Socialism (in a special
sense), while it is directly due, in each particular coun-
try, to actual misgovernment or to well-founded or
ill-founded discontent with the existing government,
really has its roots in the same soil as that which, in
England, favours a disparaging view of the usefulness
of government in the abstract.
The discovery has been made, with almost staggering
suddenness, in some countries, that government is not
the mysterious circumambient entity which, by some
eternal necessity, wraps in impenetrable folds the very
consciousness of all men at every moment of life from
its beginning to its close. It is found that govern-
ment is an historical institution, like any other growth
of time and circumstances; that governments can be
either good or bad, and that most governments have
hitherto been very bad, and that many still are so;
that governments, however, as they may be criticised
and compared one with another, can also be altered
380 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
and improved ; that the bulk of the population of all
countries have, in common with each other, a more
pressing interest that governments generally should
not do harm than that time and energy should be
expended (perhaps fruitlessly) in trying to make par-
ticular governments do all the possible good within
their reach; that, finally, inasmuch as the bulk of
mankind must be poor, in any dividing of the world's
goods, property is, in the view of this large portion of the
race, to be held a matter of subordinate account, and
its interests are to be always subordinated to claims of
more universal concern.
Such are the common postulates on which the so-
cialistic conception of the world now actually held by
no insignificant number of persons in Germany, Russia,
Italy, and France, is based. The proportion of socialists
is probably least in England, America, Belgium, Holland,
Switzerland, and Greece ; and these are just the countries
in which government is, — in profession, if not always in
fact, — most thoroughly popularised, and in which there
is the least place for the notion of a standing antagonism
between the people and the Government.
So far, however, as Socialism diffuses an indirect
influence on countries little affected by it directly, that
influence operates in favour of bringing into antithesis
the organisation of the State and the spontaneous
organisation, for all sorts of purposes, of the population
regarded as outside the State. The conclusions of
modern political economy, already adverted to, tend in
the same direction ; and it may be said, generally, that
now for the first time government is put upon its trial,
and required to justify its retention of a hold upon any
part of human activity, — and to justify it on exactly
AEGUMENTS RESTRICTING PROVINCE OF GOVERNiVIENT. 381
such grounds as would supply a logical test of the
justice of any other usurpation on human liberty.
<
The extreme view in favour of restricting the limits
of State activity has been most ably argued for several
years past by Mr. Herbert Spencer, the founder of a
school of thought on the subject. He has discerned in
the habits of modern society a disposition to have
recourse to government for the supply of all its corporate
wants, and to be neglectful of the disadvantages of all
State interference, as well as the relaxed habits of mind
which dependence on government creates and fosters. ^
\ The result is the multiplication of laws, and the end-
less generation of legal and administrative mechanism.
The police force has to be indefinitely enlarged, and
ever new and incompatible duties are cast upon it, the
number of the officials required involving a deterioration
in their quality and attainments. So soon as a popular
working majority is obtained, the conversion of any
project into law is only a matter of sufficient publica-
tion by the Press, and, thereupon, the minority becomes
bound. It is bound, too, beyond the hope of deliverance ;
because, whatever the amount of opposition to a law
before its enactment, after its enactment all the forces
of conservative loyalty, as well as of the new interests
springing from its mere operation, begin to work in its
favour, y
<C In this way it is contended that there is no limit to
the possible trespasses on human liberty. The result
is the more disastrous from the very insufficient know-
ledge and thought through which new projects obtain an
extraordinary popularity. If they become encrusted
upon the social system through the agency of law, all
382 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
those fine modifications and delicate adaptations which
increasing experience is sure to suggest, and, if un-
impeded, to introduce, become impossible. The only
substitute for them is found in some more or less com-
prehensive amendments, introduced at long intervals in
a spirit of reaction, and often enough, through their
inelastic character, v^^orking as much evil in the new
direction as the unamended law worked in the old. >
^ To these more latent disadvantages are to be added
the greater expense involved in all work conducted by
a cumbrous Government Board; the insuperable diffi-
culty of securing effectual control in the true interests
of the public ; the opportunities opened out for cor-
ruption and crooked dealings of all sorts ; the multiplica-
tion of officials 5 and the consolidation of a bureaucratic
interest, which universal expedience proves to operate
adversely to the general welfare.
<^ Writers of the class of which Mr. Herbert Spencer
is the most eminent English representative take as an
illustration of these evils the working of a government
Poor-law, and of the laws which are passed from time
to time for the purpose of checking the spread of
disease. It is argued that any State measure for the
relief of the poor must tend to nurture pauperism, by
insuring every one against the consequences of his own
imprudence or idleness or vice ; while, from the mere
fact of its assuming the form of an universal organisa-
tion, hardened and blunted by its legal form, it must
fail generally to meet just those cases of undeserved
misfortune and want which only the discerning hand
of voluntary charity can relieve adequately and de-
licately without leaving any vicious results behind. V
In a somewhat different way special legislation for
EVILS OF GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION. 383
the prevention of any particular disease tends to per-
petuate tlie views of that disease and its remedies v^^hich
are prevalent, at the moment of legislation, among that
section of the medical profession which has succeeded
in gaining the ear of Government. If new views, or a
modified method of treatment, gradually comes to the
front, — owing to the subsidence of panic or to the
larger knowledge derived from the longer pursuit of
comparative methods of enquiry perhaps conducted in
other countries, — they can hardly hold their footing
against the robust institutions, the multiplied and
interested officials, the fixedly conventional notions,
which owe a fortuitous but unassailable strength to the
old law.
To these obvious disadvantages of excessive govern-
mental intervention are opposed the benefits which might
flow from independent action. There are few fields of
human energy, it is contended, in which perfect freedom
does not in time vindicate the worth of its pretensions.
The power of associated labour may be rendered as
effective when wielded by private persons, freely and
voluntarily combining together, as when exerted by the
State. If there is wanting the compulsion of law, the
defect is more than compensated by the superior dis-
cernment and not less potent pressure of a vigilant
public opinion.
At the same time, voluntary agency provides for
indefinitely wider openings to fresh discoveries, new
departures, modified schemes, and continuous trans-
mutations of plans, even to the finest degree of delicate
variation. Habits of espionage and police tyranny are
excluded, public corruption is impossible, expenses are
kept within the smallest limits, and work is distributed
2»84 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
in the way likely to promote the utmost amount of
economical eflSciency. Some political theorists, indeed,
are so fascinated with their conception of the incom-
parable value of private action as to wish to with-
draw from the State even the management of purely
mechanical departments of the administrative authority
such as the Post Office and the Telegraph department,
leaving to the Government little else than the adminis-
tration of Justice and the management of the Army and
Navy.
The opposite view, in favour of extending to the
i*tmost the functions of government, is professed, —
])ractically, if not theoretically, — in some of the older
Continental countries, such as France and Germany,
which have only recently emerged out of the condition
of a feudal monarchy, and in the Australian colonies
of Great Britain. The grounds of this favour shown to
government action are, however, very different in the
European and in the Australian instances.
In France and Germany, in spite of the social and
revolutionary storms which, in very different forms,
have swept over both countries within the present
century, a real constitutional opposition between the
people and the Government, such as was described
above as having discovered itself in England some three
or four centuries ago, and as having gained strength
and distinctness ever since, has hardly yet been mani-
fested. Even in the most tempestuous crises of the
first French Eevolution the question was not one of
popular resistance to Government as such, but of who
were to get the Government into their own hands.
The later Socialistic and Communistic movements, as
already shown, have been of a different stamp ; but their
BUREAU CflATIO POLICE SYSTEMS. o85
iniiuence on tiie broad field of politics is only beginning
to be felt.
At the latter end of the past century, and for
the first half of the present one, the schemes of all
political reformers, both in France and Germany, have
been devised so as to work through Government and
not independently of it and against it. In neither
country has there been even yet witnessed, on a con-
spicuous platform, any of that firm resistance to the
encroachments of government in the name of broad
human or alleged constitutional or moral rights, with
which the history of the English race, at home and on
the continent of America, is so notably distinguished.
The result is that, while the form of the government
is in both countries matter of urgent popular concern,
and has in France undergone repeated changes, with
every kind and degree of manifestation of popular
enthusiasm, the functions of government and the limits
of individual liberty have hardly attracted attention
elsewhere than in the little-studied Treatises of such
closet students as Wilhelm von Humboldt and Auguste
Comte.
In France and Germany, there is to be found all
the apparatus of representative government ; and in
France even the forms of purely republican institutions,
Yet in both countries the power of the executive
authority, in the shape of a highly organised and
bureaucratically managed police system, renders in-
dividual liberty little less precarious than it could be
under an absolute despotism; the only difPerence being
due to the possibility of bringing outrageous trespasses
on liberty under the notice of the Press and the repre-
c c
386 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
sentative assembly. But this relief can only apply to
a scanty uumber of exceptional acts of violence, and
affords no remedy to the crushing weight of fear and
self-distrust which an ubiquitous and irresponsible
police imposes on the most dependent, — that is, on the
most numerous and needy, — classes of the community.
Both in France and Germany, again, the military
habits and antecedents of the two countries co-operate
with the traditional subservience of the people to the
Government of the day to make it seem natural that
all work that wants doing, and can be better done on a
large than on a small scale, should be done, as of course,
by the Government. Hence the extent of government
interference in all the affairs of life, the recognised
right and duty of Government to manage the locomotion
of the country, the restrictions on the right of free
testamentary disposition, and the highly centralised
superintendence of education, of health, and of purely
local affairs, scarcely even excites discontent or criticism.
The right of absorbing such affairs into its own hands
is practically assumed to be of the essence of all govern-
ment, and if any field of actioii is to be cut off from the
government domain a presumption has to be rebutted
which is of considerable, and often of insuperable,
strength.
The case of the Australian colonies, in which, like-
wise, the extension of government activity is very wide,
is different and peculiar. The habit of depending on
Government was formed in the oldest colony, — that of
New South Wales, — during the existence of the colony
as a convict settlement. In those days the whole
country was a diffused prison, the free emigrants being
only scattered loosely about among a population con-
PEOVINCE OF GOVERNMENT IN COLONIES. 387
sisting of prisoners, soldiers, officers, magistrates, and
gaolers.
In this state of things all public works were
naturally and necessarily undertaken by Government,
and were almost exclusively constructed by convict
labour. The older public buildings, the harbour works,
and the fine broad roads stretching for hundreds of
miles across the Blue Mountains into the interior, and
from one end of what was then Van Diemen's Land to
the other, were thus called into being. The provision
for Public Worship and for Education, such as it was,
was solely governmental; and the financial economy
of the country was managed almost as directly from
the centre of government at home as in the case of the
convict establishments at Portland and Dartmoor.
So soon as, in 1855, New South Wales and its
separated sister colony, Victoria, obtained the grant of
free parliamentary institutions and a popular repre
sentative government,- -the Crown yielding to the
Colonial Government its prerogative rights in the soil, —
the population of the colony, as represented in the
Colonial Legislatures, instantly stepped into the place
of the British Government at home. But, as soon as
this transformation was effected the new colonial
Government acquired all the rights, privileges, and
inherited traditions of the British Government which
had preceded it ; and, acting, as it did, in the name of
popular constituencies no longer at an indefinite dis-
tance, could and must needs personate the whole
people in providing for the urgent wants of the still
immature settlement.
In the meantime the constant sale of government
lands, and the incoming rental from pastoral lease-
c c 2
388 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
holds, brought money into the hands of the Govern-
ment which, there being as yet no debt, it could nc>t
but expend on the improvement of the colony. The
consequence was the incessant struggle in Parliament
between the representatives of one district or township
and another, for works snch as roads, harbours, rail-
ways, bridges, waterworks, public buildings, and public
libraries, to be done at the expense of the central
colonial government. The times of this surplus national
wealth and freedom from debt are rapidly passing away
in all the colonies, and perhaps the efiect may be the
adoption of new principles of regulating government
intervention.
The real province of government in opening out
a new colony rather belongs to a subject already dis-
cussed, — the ' Government of Dependencies.' But it
may be said here that while the habit of leaning on
Government for every kind of public enterprise which
could be undertaken better, more cheaply, and with
less friction, by private co-operation is demoralising in
the extreme, there are some classes of works, such as
roads, railways, and the convenient planning out of
new towns which, if left to the chances of a fluctuating
and partial demand for them, instead of being well
made once for all in the common interests of all,
posterity included, may entail disastrous consequences
in the future which can never be undone.
From this review of the actual position of the
oldest and newest communities in the world with re-
spect to government interference, it results that all
States are largely committed in practice to govern-
mental intervention in a vast number of matters which
LIMITS OF GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION. 389
certainly could be undertaken by private persons, acting
either individually or in voluntary combinations.
Thus the question can hardly be treated as though it
were a new one now propounded for the first time. The
case rather is, that a practical answer has long been
given to it, and the world has been fashioned in habit and
sentiment to the artificial conditions thereby created.
It may be bad to recognise the legal right of the poor
to relief at the hands of the State ; but if such right
has been recognised for generations, and if economical
and social conditions have adjusted themselves to this
state of things, it may be impossible to annul the right,
or to do more than restrict and rigidly define it, or,
at the most, to ascertain the true conditions on which
alone it can be any longer recognised.
So with the right to have all classes of contracts
enforced by law. It might have been a question once
Avhether the legal enforcement of all contracts was
really favourable to public morality and did not tend to
substitute an outward and more easily evaded sanction
for an inward and more searching sanction of inexor-
able authority. But, as things have been from the
foundation of existing States, contract-law has been a
prominent part of all law; and society, commerce,
industry, and civil relationships of all kinds, have been
built up on the supposition that contracts will be
enforced in Courts of Justice. Thus this expectation
of the intervention of the State for the support of
the validity of contracts must now be treated by the
statesman as one of the ultimate, — even though artifi-
cially produced, — facts of man's nature ; and as such he
must provide for its claims, though he may slowly
attempt, if he pleases, to modify this expectation.
390 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
To UDderstand how it comes about tLat, at a
certain stage in the history of a political community,
the limits of Governmental interference may have to
be readjusted, it is necessary to make some historical
reflections.
At the outset of political life, when the population
has become settled within definite territorial limits ;
when agricultural habits have succeeded to those of a
nomad or pastoral type ; when the coalition of tribes is
developing a monarchical form of Government, and
when the civilisatioix is becoming refined and established
by the foundation of towns, there are present certain
predominant political conditions, which gradually fade
away as the community advances, and, at a certain stage
of its progress, wholly disappear. Such conditions are,
first, the indefinite amount of available land in proportion
to the needs of a population, sparse, and as yet in-
disposed to steady agricultural pursuits ; secondly, the
equable distribution of such elementary kinds of wealth
as are alone appreciated at this ea.rly stage of society,
and the consequent absence of a large pauper class ;
thirdly, the eminent superiority of the small governing
class in respect of knowledge, practical capacity, and
political foresight, over all the rest of the community ;
fourthly, the ignorance, which prevails generally and
extends to the governing class, of the laws of wealth
and of all those scientific principles of Government
which nothing but long experience could discover or
historical reading communicate.
As the community advances, all these conditions
undergo continuous, though scarcely perceived, changes
till at last they are almost reversed. Except in the
rare case of incessant colonisation or annexation of
PROVINCE OF GOVERNIVIENT RE-ADJUSTED. 391
fresh territory, the population gains on the land, while
the national improvemeiii at all points enables the
larger population to demand far more of the same land
than the simpler resources of early society could even
suggest. Wealth becomes more and more unequally
distributed, till the physical and moral power of the
society is shifted from the few to the many, the prin-
ciples and basis of Government undergoing a corre-
sponding transformation, and a pauper problem being
always at hand, and ready to attain alarming propor-
tions.
Gradually, too, the knowledge and thought of the
society, even in respect of purely political matters, is
found also outside the group of persons on whom the
task of Government devolves, and these persons have
increasingly to take their instruction and e\en their
orders from the outside public, rather than to impose
on others the unquestioned results of their private
lucubrations. Lastly, economic principles are dis-
covered, false doctrines are finally exploded, and the
reign of capricious conjecture as to the consequences of
large classes of legislation, — such as that relating to
crime, taxation, health, sumptuary matters, and reli-
gion, — is at end.
It is not making too large an assumption in
favour of many modern States, including nearly all the
European ones, to assert that the later stage here
indicated has been already attained. In such States
as England, France, Germany, and Italy land has
become inconceivably precious when viewed in the light
of the population which in these several countries
claims to have its residence upon it and its support
out of it.
S92 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
The reciprocally opposed conditions of tlie few who
are very rich, of the many who are just free from
solicitude about the means of existence, and of the
too large class of the very poor, present problems,
social and political, which strain to the utmost the
sagacity and scientific acquirements of the modern
Statesman. The governing class, again, are finding
themselves no longer masters but servants, and are
bound to learn of others rather than to propound what
doctrines they please. In the meantime Political
Economy, in spite of its unscientific treatment in many
quarters, has laid down principles of taxation, of cur-
rency, of commercial freedom, and of poor relief, which
no statesman or legislative assembly could any longer
dare either to remain ignorant of or to disown in
practice.
The result is that, while existing facts, and conditions
or predispositions resulting from the past, must be
recognised by statesmen as the material with which
they have to deal, it is no argument for the retention
of any principle of Government that it suited a difierent
and earlier state of society. In mapping out afresh,
in these days, the province of Government, it is of the
utmost importance to bear this in mind, because it
is here, perhaps more than anywhere else, that the
reversed condition of society has its most important
bearing.
¥or instance, the only apology which could be
made in England, in the reign of the later Planta-
genets and the Tudors, for the sumptuary laws and the
laws regulating wages and Poor relief was, that the
Government which devised the laws knew better than
the persons to whom the laws were addressed what was
PKOVINCE OF GOVEKNMENT RE-ADJUSTED. 393
the fitting private expenditure for dress, what was the
right rate of wages, what were the best means of re-
stricting pauperism. It is now established as a scien-
tific fact that in all these matters the Government was
wholly mistaken either in its apprehensions of economic
principle, or in its interference, and generally in both ;
so that it erred, in interfering for an object which was
itself bad.
In the present day, neither the executive govern-
ment nor any popular assembly in an European State
would affect to act independently of reference to
principles of political economy established elsewhere,
though often misconceived or mis-cited ; nor would
they assume that they contained within their own body
an exclusive monopoly of the wisdom of the country.
The whole representative system of popular govern-
ment is opposed to any such conception ; and, as
government becomes more and more popular, and the
people better educated, the proportions of knowledge
between the governing classes and those they repre-
sent will be more and more altered, in a way unfavour-
able to the former. Those who govern will need to be
specialists in their own art, but, for that very reason,
they will be less and less well equipped with doctrines
concerning broad masses of knowledge on which in-
formation is from time to time needed for their due
co-ordination to a political end.
Hereafter those who govern will cease altogether to
be presumed to be wiser or better than the rest of the
community. They will merely enjoy the privilege of
serving it. In the discharge of this task of service
their first duty will be of the negative kind, implied in
merely protecting the large but important classes of
394 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
the community who, owing to the unequal distribution
of wealth, are likely to suffer certain peculiar dis-
advantages from which they have a moral claim to be
exempted.
Such disadvantages may come (1) from the absorp-
tion of the soil of the country in a few hands ; (2) from
accidental oversights in the modes of imposing or of
distributing social burdens, particularly of a financial
kind; (3) from monopolies of the means of locomotion
or of comraunication ; (4) from a neglect, on the part
of the few, of the conditions of public health affecting
the many ; (5) from the weight of associations of
persons forming influential commercial organisations,
and having large amounts of capital at their disposal ;
and (6) lastly, from the pressure of large religious
organisations which, through the hold they too readily
obtain on conventional sentiment, are a continual
menace to individual liberty.
With a view to the orderly examination of each of
these possible subjects of a State intervention under-
taken for the purely negative end of protecting the
more dependent and numerous portion of the com-
munity against a variety of classes which, in a pro-
gressive society, tend to become increasingly influential
and overpowering, it will be convenient to exhibit them
in a brief tabular form, as follows :
State intervention may be justifled on behalf of
its negative purpose of protecting the dependent and
more numerous portion of the community in respect
of
(1) The absorption of the National Soil.
(2) The unequal distribution of Social Burdens.
LIMITS OF STATE INTEKVENTION. 395
(3) The monopoly of the means of Locomotion
and of Communication.
(4) Public Health.
(5) The power and undue influence of Commercial
companies, Industrial organisations, and
large Capitalists.
(6) The power and undue influence of Churches
and Religious Associations.
(1) The National Soil.- -It has already been
pointed out that, in def}iult of incessant annexation
of adjoining territory or special facilities and aptitude
for colonisation, the amount of available land always
tends to become disproportioned to the wants of the
population. Superior organisation of the modes of
living, the growth of towns, the introduction of superior
methods of cultivating the soil, and, most of all, free
commercial intercourse between country and country, —
especially in respect of the necessaries of life, — make it
possible for this growing insufficiency of the soil to be
long overlooked.
But, at the same time that these facts are dis-
closing their consequences, the growth of capital, and
its inevitable tendency to get concentrated in a few
hands, lead to the land being absorbed into the hands
of an ever diminishing class. Here again the pheno-
menon is long disguised through the general improve-
ment in all classes of the community, and the more
diffused acquisition of small landed properties, though
at a far slower rate of advance than the rate of accu-
mulation of large properties in the hands of a few.
Of course, in countries such as those still partially
feudalised, like England, where the policy of the law is
396 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
in favour of hereditary ownership, and the transfer of
laud in the market is hampered by artificial fetters,
the concentration of land does not strictly follow the
concentration of capital, although, so far as the com-
peting claims of the bulk of the population go, it pro-
ceeds just the same, and this, too, in a form still more
unserviceable from an economic point of view.
The logical and necessa.ry consequence is, that the
mass of the population not only cease to be landholders
themselves, but, owing to the necessity they are under
of living on the soil and, — in the case of a large pro-
portion of them, — of earning a livelihood by its culti-
vation, they are in an ever growing danger of being
servilely dependent on the proprietors of the land.
This dependence, which is brought about by the play
of purely economical conditions, is of a very different
kind from that dependence of serfdom or villenage
which is found at an earlier stage of society, and which
is due to a very different class of causes.
In that relationship of agrarian dependence which
results from nothing else than the absorption of the
national soil by a limited class of the community, there
are no sentiments of moral reciprocity, of personal
allegiance and protection, to soften the grating hardness
of economical competition. There is not even, of neces-
sity, the difference of education or of social antecedents
to interpose a sort of natural and impassable barrier
between the proprietor and his tenant or labourer.
Apart from new laws made to meet the new emer-
gency as it arises, there is little to prevent the land
proprietor, — whose command of the market which
supplies tenants and labourers is only restricted by the
possible rivalry of an easily assignable number of other
LIMITS TO LAND LEGISLATION. 397
proprietors like himself, and whose interests are iden-
tically the same as his own, — from accepting what
tenants, exacting what rent, making what bargains,
or paying what wages, he pleases.
In one and another country of Europe a condi-
tion such as this has been nearly attained through the
mere regular operation of the causes, — such as those
of over-population and the concentration of capital, —
which have been just adverted to.
In some countries, such as France just before the
first Revolution, and Germany before the reforms usually
attributed to Stein, the persistent endurance, in a semi-
fossilised form, of feudal institutions and relationships,
helped to precipitate a catastrophe which the mere
development of modern commerce would, of itself, have
in no long time brought about.
In some provinces of British India a similar crisis
has been reached by the mere agency, for the most
part beneficial, of the Government itself. It has not
been so much that population has grown out of pro-
portion to the available supply of land, as that the
greater preservation of life, brought about by exemption
from war and from other means of wide-reaching de-
struction, has been equivalent to a sudden growth of
population. The British Government itself made the
mistake of prematurely dissolving the system of village
proprietorship, and of substituting the practical pro-
prietorship of an intermediary, — a tenant, on the one
hand, of their own, but, on the other hand, an indepen-
dent capitalist, who, by advancing money on exorbitant
terms to the sub-tenants, gradually brought them
wholly under his power. It is to this state of things
that the Government has recently been addressing
398 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
itself, by measures of land-reform favourable in au
almost unprecedented degree to the sub-tenants and
actual cultivators of the soil.
The land problem in Ireland is only a small fraction
of the general problem here stated, and it is ov^^ing to
some exceptional historical incidents in the relations of
England and Ireland that it has, perhaps prematurely,
been thrust into prominence, and attained such por-
tentous proportions.
In Ireland all the causes which, in other countries,
have usually worked singly, or by twos or threes,
towards producing a disproportion between the claims
of the people and the supply of land, have worked in
combination and contemporaneously. Owing to physical
peculiarities, the land available for cultivation is com-
paratively small in quantity, the uses to which it can
be turned are limited, and the improvement of which
it is susceptible is less than in most other countries
having an equal population at the same stage of civili-
sation.
It also happens that both imported feudalism in
respect of the hereditary proprietorship of large estates,
and the concentration of commercial capital, have com-
bined together to aggravate each other as causes for
the withdrawal of the soil from the hands of the people.
It further happens that, whether from the indestructible
instinct of territorial clanship, or from an inherited
indisposition for aU pursuits other than a superficial
cultivation of the soil, the ' hunger ' for land on the
part of the bulk of the Irish population seems to be of
a peculiarly insatiable kind.
All these conditions, taken together, have precipi-
tated in Ireland a crisis which must come sooner or
LIMITS TO LAND LEGISLATION. 399
later in all old countries, tliough the absorption of
labour in manufactures, the extension of towns, the
popularit}^ of emigration, or the sudden opening out of
new fields of largely remunerative labour, such as the
construction of railways or the working of a new gold
district, may long defer its arrival.
The universal problem is, of course, further per-
plexed by the fact that there are many points in which
the analogy of movable property is not applicable to
land, and therefore the duties and rights of govern-
ment in the matter have to be considered now for the
first time, without deriving any help either from ancient
precedent or from recognised principles of policy in
respect of other species of property.
The sentiment of an owner or even of an occupier
of land is capable of acquiring a peculiar colour and
intensity. It may, and does in countless cases, associate
itself with the recollections of a lifetime and, through
the practice of hereditary transmission, with the sense
of continuity of relationship and with affectionate asso-
ciations of the most inefi'aceable kind. Nor can the
State afford to treat sentiments like these as being of
no account, or to tamper with them too recklessly in
legislation. Such feelings, diffused throughout a popu-
lation, afford the strongest guarantee for loyalty and
patriotism. They connect together the successive gene-
rations of the life of the State, and are among the
richest of the elements which contribute to mould the
national consciousness of the people and to ensure
stability for their traditional institutions.
• But such considerations as these are rather an
argument for distributing the ownership of land as
widely as possible than for acquiescing in its continued
400 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
and accidental absorption by a few. True it is fnat, to
arrest the process of accumulation, some stringent policy
J II ay have momentarily to be resorted to which will, in
some quarters, awaken the cry of .' confiscation.' But,
if the step is delayed, the problem can only increase
in magnitude, and its solution be attended with ever
greater difficulty and apparent, if not real, injustice and
hardship. Happy are those countries in which the
inevitable problem is seen afar ofiP, and the absolute
claim of the State to deal unrestrictedly with the national
soil, in the interests of itself and of all classes of the
community, is early recognised.
It is unfortunate that in the British colonies in
Australia the rights and the duties of the State in
respect of the enormous tracts of land within its control
have been very imperfectly recognised ; and this too at
an early era in the growth, of the colonies, when the
government could have taken its own way with the
smallest possible injury to existing interests.
The general practice pursued in most of the colonies,
including New South Wales and Victoria, has been, so
far as the agricultural settlements have gone, to sell
the land absolutely at a cheap rate, most favourable
terms being devised for the payment of the purchase
money. The result is that as time goes on, and unless
the policy is reversed, all the best land for agricultural
and building purposes will be in the hands of a limited
number of persons, who, by natural processes of accu-
mulation and concentration, will tend tq become fewer
and fewer.
The same problem which has racked the brains
and sb'ained the consciences of European statesmen
will be always hanging over these colonies; and one
AGRAKIAN PROBLEMS OF ROME. 401
day it will have to be solved, as elsewhere, either by
confiscation, or by revolution, or by both together. A
simple substitution of long leases from the State for
absolute sales, with rights of renewal or re-valuation,
coupled, perhaps, with provisions against undue accu-
mulation, would have been open to no fair objection at
the time, and would have prevented difficulties scarcely
as yet conceivable in the future.
In contrast to these modern agrarian problems and
to the now recognised mode of their solution by decisive
State interference, it is instructive to recall the agrarian
problems of Rome, which were due to causes both like
and unlike.
In the later days of the Roman Republic the large
national domains were for the most part occupied
by rich capitalists who either paid a merely nominal
rent to the State or evaded payment of rent altogether.
These lands were cultivated by slaves, and the bulk of the
free Roman people were being gradually excluded from
the use and ownership of the land of Italy altogether.
The successive agrarian movements and seditions which
took place in consequence are remembered by ail.
Passing remedies were found in the acquisition and
distribution of newly conquered or forfeited lands among
the people, in colonisation, and in the absorption of
the population in military expeditions and interests.
But these remedies were insufficient, and the result
appeared in the Servile wars, in the exhaustion of the
treasury by grants of corn to the populace, and in the
social disintegration which rendered the Republic an
anachronism and the Empire the sole salvation of
society.
D D
402 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
(2) Public Burdens. — One of the natural conse-
quences of the unequal distribution of wealth, brought
about, to an ever increasing extent, in the progress of
civilisation, is the unequal distribution of social burdens,
especially those of a financial kind. As society becomes
organised the necessity for regular contributions, or at
least of periodic contributions, devised on a systematic
plan makes itself felt.
In very primitive times the mode of levying con-
tributions for the expenses of the State is of the rudest
sort and scarcely goes beyond free gifts in kind, persojial
military service, and the concession of peculiar rights in
the soil. As tribal chieftainship develops into national
kingship, and government acquires greater complexity,
the king, as representing the government, attracts to
himself a number of prerogative rights of the nature
of monopolies, exemptions, pre-emptions, and personal
dues, which it becomes the first business of a popular
representative assembly, as it emerges into existence,
to ascertain and to restrict.
There thus conies about a re- distribution of the func-
tions which are directed to supporting the mechanical
business of Government. Their course is no longer
left to be determined by the accidental institutions of
a primitive society. The popular will is consulted, —
or, at least, a show of consulting it takes place, — and
some broad theories of public obligation and of general
taxation are acted on, if not formulated. Nevertheless,
in the course of conducting this secondary adjustment,
which will proceed slowly and almost unconsciously, it
is always probable that the bulk of the population, that
is the less moneyed classes, will be disproportionately
burdened in comparison with the more moneyed classes.
DISTRIBUTION OF PUBLIC BURDENS. 403
According to any numerical statement of the mode of
distribution, it may be hard to demonstrate the unfair-
ness, because any numerical statement must proceed
upon the basis that the elementary units of money, time,
and labour, are of the same value for one person as they
are for another. But there are large classes of society for
which any taxation whatever, any increase in the price
of the necessaries of life, any withdrawal of marketable
time or labour, may mean either utter destitution or
such loss and accompanying anxiety as can have no
counterpart in the privations incurred by their more
fortunate fellow countrymen through their share of the
public burdens.
An illustration of this is supplied by France before
the first Revolution, when some of the wealthiest
classes of society were wholly exempt from taxation,
and the poorest classes were crushed by its incidence
in innumerable grinding forms. A sort of morbid con-
gestion of wealth had set in, in consequence of long
years of feebleness and corruption on the part of the
central Government, and the causes must rather be
sought in the continued impotency of the multitude
than in any intentional policy of oppression on the part
of the more favoured classes.
Another illustration equally apposite was found in
the indisposition of the landowning and farming classes
of England to risk any loss themselves for the purpose
of saving a considerable portion of the population from
the suffering, loss, and pauperism brought about by a
purely artificial system of excluding the importation of
foreign corn. The loss (such as it was) to the well-to-
do agricultural classes meant, at the most, a deprivation
of certain luxuries and comforts, and perhaps, in the
D D 2
404 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
case of the more needy among them, of some of tl:e
conveniences of life. To the mass of the population
a difference in the price of bread meant the difference
between sordidness and decency, penury and independ-
ence, health and sickness, life and death. Yet it re-
quired all the energy of a Minister of rare independence,
and commanding a strong Government, to overcome
the social and political influences which weighed so
heavily against the many and in favour of the few.
It is sometimes said or thought that the progress of
popular institutions will tend to adjust the burdens
of the country in such a way that the richer classes will
be overborne and the bulk of the people exempted even
from their proper and equitable share. Such a state
of things might be brought about under a dominion of
pure mob rule, where all social and political organisa-
tion is lost sight of, and the voice of the loudest and
most numerous has unrestricted sway. But this is a
disease of the body politic which has its own special
causes, symptoms, and remedies. It has nothing to do
with the healthful condition of a State resting on the
broadest basis of popular government.
In such a government, the highly organised, edu-
cated, and leisurely (because wealthy) classes will
always tend to become supreme and to override all
other classes in the community. It is, then, in such
circumstances the most indisputable province of govern-
ment to effect a counterpoise to these influences, and
to secure an equable distribution of all kinds of
burdens, so that the actual amount of sacrifice to the
support of the State be, not only quantitatively but,
really proportioned to the means of each.
PUBLIC FACILITIES FOR LOCOMOTION. 405
(3) Locomotion and Communication.— The ques-
tion of the province of government in respect of loco-
motion and of communication is, again, one which must
be treated primarily from the point of view of the claims
of the more dependent classes of society. It is these
classes which, in the conflict of the economical forces,
tend to become proportionately the most numerous, and
which, if revolution is to be avoided, most need protec-
tion at the hands of government.
The iiiodern means of locomotion and communica-
tion by railways, by telegraphs, by telephones, and b}-
steamships all tend, through the advantage they obtain
from being conducted on a large scale, to produce
practical monopolies. It needs no special concession of
legal privileges to construct such monopolies. They
spring up of themselves by the mere force of accumu-
lated and concentrated capital. The result is a short-
lived competition between project and project, company
and company, and, at last, the survival of the strongest
or an adjustment of terms between two or more of the
rivals. The ultimate sufferer is sure to be the public,
and it may be that large classes of the public may
suffer so much from the monopoly-prices and conditions
that, while losing all the primitive means of locomotion
and communication now superseded, they are equally
excluded from the use of the improved means which
everywhere have taken their place.
It is here that the regulative duty of government
finds its place. Grovernment is bound to see that the
])ulk of the population, or even that considerable classes
of the population, are not put at an undue disadvantage
by the improvements of which the wealthier classes
make so great and profitable a use. It may be a queb-
406 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
tion whether this interference is best exercised by the
government acquiring the actual proprietorship of the
great undertakings in question, or whether it suffices to
prescribe by general law, and by occasional legislation,
and by acts of administration, what enterprises shall be
permitted, and on what conditions, and within what
limits of time and place.
The question of one or another mode of inter-
position will turn upon political considerations which
must vary with the occasion and the state of society.
There is one problem for a largely extended territory,
like that of the United States, where official corruption
seems at present beyond the reach of any popular
censure or means of detection, and another for a small
territory like that of Belgium or of Switzerland, where
every official concerned may be always subjected to
microscopic supervision by the public. The problem,
again, is different for new countries like the Australian
colonies, where the government is able to proceed
systematically and is bound to prevent opportunities
being lost for ever by the self-interest of a few, and
different for an old country like England, where rail-
ways had already acquired a history and prescriptive
rights before even Sir Robert Peel, in 1844, interposed
to vindicate the claims of the State. The right of the
State to interpose is indisputable. The duty, nature,
and extent of its interposition at any particular time
and place belongs to the Art, and not to the Science,
of Politics.
(4) Public Health.— The subject of Public Health,
as belonging to the province of government, when
scrutinised from the negative side, of protecting the
GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC HEALTH. 407
dependent classes of the communitj, presents some
peculiar difficulties. On the surface there would seem
to be no matter to which the force of the whole com-
munity, as wielded by government, could be more
beneficially and safely directed than to the prevention
of the indefinite spread of disease through the careless-
ness or ignorance of a definite number of private
persons easily brought within the control of law. Nor,
indeed, is any difficulty, theoretical or practical, experi-
enced, so long as the intervention of government is
restricted to those sanitary safeguards, or measures of
precaution, as to the value of which a very large amount
of popular agreement exists, and which in themselves
are of so simple a nature that they can be carried out,
or the neglect of them detected, without any undue
intrusion on personal liberty.
The ordinary requirements of efficient drainage in
towns, of wholesome and decent accommodation for the
poor in towns and country villages, of suitable fever
hospitals small and large, with due provisions for the
insulation of cases, of a plentiful supply of pure water,
for purposes of drinking, washing, and bathing, and of
open spaces in towns, all fall within a range of subjects
which government can conveniently take under its con-
trol with no more risk or loss than inevitably adheres
to all. government action, in the weakening of private
energy, and in the autocratic, if not corrupt, agencies
through which government must always do its work.
But the progress of medical science in the present
day, and the extraordinary popular influence, even in
the political field, which all specialists acquire through
the confidence reposed in them because of their indis-
putable claims to attention in their own departments,
408 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
have led to a dangerous extension of toe province of
government in this direction.
It may be granted that, if the whole population of
a country could be handled like a regiment of soldiers
or a company of prisoners, and could be subjected, at a
doctor's will, to exactly equal conditions of life, not
only might many of the worst diseases with which
mankind is afflicted be kept at a distance, but njany
interesting experiments might be conducted for the
purpose of elucidating the nature of certain diseases
and of discovering their remedies.
The common tendency of medical practitioners is
to treat mankind in this way. The political mistake
committed is two- fold. In the first place, in spite of
the rapid metamorphoses which medical science is con-
stantly undergoing, and the very unsettled and unsatis-
factory condition to which it has, as yet, attained, the
medical profession are always so enamoured with a new
theory or discovery that, if they can only agree among
themselves, they are prepared to avail themselves of all
the forces of Government to compel the nation to
conform to it, and to try their new-fledged theory or
crotchet on the largest scale.
In the second place, the medical profession, even
when justified in recommending Government inter-
vention for a sanitary end, are apt to pay no attention
to the peculiar political dangers and inconveniences
which this sort of intervention necessarily involves.
For the doctor's purpose no sanitary measure is good
for much if it is not universal and unflinchingly com-
pulsory. But to make it either the one or the other
there is needed an accomplished and ubiquitous police
force, a vast extension of the magisterial jurisdiction,
GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC HEALTH. 409
and a serious addition to that part of the law which,
though not called criminal, has most of the penal
character and consequences of criminal law without its
solemnity of administration, and without jury-trial.
When it is considered that the extension of police
agency means the necessity of drawing the police from
a lower stratum of society in order to fill the enlarged
ranks, and that the necessity of a comprehensive exe-
cution of the law means the large use of espionage and
an absence of the securities accorded to an accused
person in all real criminal proceedings, it is obvious
that no sanitary measure of the kind here alluded to
can be carried out without a very serious limitation of
public liberty.
The evil is likely to be aggravated in practice
through the imperfect scientific knowledge on which so
vast an organisation is often set to work, and the small
amount of popular attention and vigilance it usually
attracts at its earlier stages. It is an incubus fixed on
the neck of the people, like the Old Man of the Sea on
the back of Sindbad, before they are aware of it, and
it is long before they can shake it off. An army of
salaried officials is called into being, deep-rooted in-
terests are created, national habits and practices become
adjusted to a state of things which has been crystallised
by the silent operation of unquestioned law, and even
science itself is scarcely listened to when it lifts up its
voice to revoke its own decrees.
It must then, be laid down that, while the sanitary
protection of the people against individual extrava-
gances, recklessness, or perilous ignorance, is certainly
within the true province of government, yet there
should always be a strong antecedent presumption
410 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
a^inst the expediency of bringing any particular
scheme within the range of governmental action ; a
presumption only to be removed w^hen Science has said
its last, and not only its first word, and when all the
inconveniences of any government interference, for any
purpose whatever, have been evaluated to the full.
(5) Power and Influence op Commercial Com-
panies. — There is one special sort of pressure against
which the bulk of the community need the protection
best supplied by government, and yet which often
eludes attention. The progress of society and the accu-
mulation of wealth tend to bring about the amalgama-
tion of the wealthier members of the community into
groups which take the form of industrial or commercial
associations. These associations, which, in their modern
form of Joint-Stock Companies, often include a vast
number of persons whose names are unknown, but
whose interests are all one way, necessarily exert a
considerable social and political influence, which may
or may not tally with that of the bulk of the com-
munity. Their wealth and cohesion are pretty sure to
secure for them a disproportionate amount of repre-
sentation in Parliament, the result of which is that
their interests are likely to be something more than
adequately protected there.
The railway interest, in England, is said to be thus
superabundantly represented in the House of Commons,
a consideration which is often found to be of no small
importance when a movement is made for compulsory
legislation for the reduction of fares, the prevention of
accidents, and the increase of the speed of workmen's
trains. In the same way it has been found that the
GOVEKNMENT AND PUBLIC COMPANIES. 411
shipping interest is so largely represented that it is
difficult to carry through any measure which benefits
mariners at the expense of ship-owners. Similarly, the
banking community is abundantly protected by its own
representatives ; and, both in and out of Parliament,
the richer traders and shopkeej^ers make common cause
for the suppression (if it might be) of the natural
remedy against unfair prices found in co-operative
stores.
Against all such undue pressure as this, exerted by
the mere power of associated wealth and enterprise, it
is within the province of Government to protect the
great mass of the population who may be described as
un moneyed.
To accord such a protection might be a good reason
in itself for a government to assume into its own
hands the ownership and management of all the rail-
ways. It might also justify the institution of savings
banks, insurance societies, and a vast class of insti-
tutions which would, or might, be just not remu-
nerative enough to attract private capital, owing to the
amount of labour required in collecting small contribu-
butions and performing small transactions, and yet
which would involve very slight loss to the State. A
vast number of such State institutions have long ex-
isted in Italy; and England has, of late, entered on
the same path.
Of course it would be a misfortune if the inter-
vention of the State in such matters went at all beyond
the necessity of protecting classes which must always
be too much weighted to compete with those who, in
the race for wealth, have advantages which are in a
measure due to the credit and security afforded by the
412 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS
State itself. It may be lioped that the gradual im-
provement of the labouring class in all countries, the
better distribution of profits, so as largely to raise
wages, and the general improvement of the means of
living, will enable workmen's unions, becoming ever
larger and more intelligently managed, to do all that
the State could do in these respects, and to do it better,
because with a more elastic application to changing
necessities. But in the meantime the task of pro-
tection cannot be deferred, and it indisputably falls
within the province of government.
(6) Eeligious Associattons. — The grounds of in-
terference of the State with Eeligion have undergone
a conspicuous change, in modern times. The change
dates from the epoch of the Protestant Reformation ;
and the new system acquired fresh force in England
during the Revolutionary period which intervened
between the accession of Charles T. and that of Wil-
liam III. On the continent of Europe, the spasm of
controversy between the Temporal and the Spiritual
Power has lasted during the whole of the present
century, having had its origin in the intellectual ante-
cedents of the first French Revolution. It would seem
that, so far as rational and scientific principles go, the
time is approaching when the limits and grounds of
interference by the State in religious matters will be
definitely fixed.
In the meantime there are too many vested in-
terests at stake, and too many deep-rooted sentiments,
not to say prejudices, involved, for the application
of newly established principles to be effected in prac-
tice, without friction and much recalcitrant opposition.
GOVERNMENT AND EELIGION. 413
For some time to come the main task of European
statesmen in reference to existing religious beliefs and
organisations will be that of determining how far
recognised principles ought to be applied, so as to
do practical justice and satisfy reasonable and long-
formed expectations.
It can only be by a slow and gradual process, — in
default of revolution, — that a really logical r-elationship
between Church and State can be attained, and it may
be that in some States it never will be attained. Ee-
ligious ties are so ancient, — more ancient, indeed, than
the fabric of any existing State, — and their hold on the
deepest elements in man's nature is so strong, and
the capacity for effective organisation is so notable a
characteristic of that Christian Faith which dominates
in the Western world, that it must be very long before
the purely secular State can place itself in a position of
sheer antithesis to every form of religious association,
and deal freely with them as with all other corporate
communities.
The principles which, not so long ago, rendered the
path, of the State more clear, are beginning to be held
with a wavering faith ; and in countries such as France,
Germany, and Switzerland, where Catholicism, Pro-
testantism, and what may be called, — for want of a
better name, — Agnosticism, exist side by side, and often
in the closest civil intermixture, it is impossible for the
State to do its duty to all by throwing all its moral
weight into the scales of any one of the contending
Faiths. In Italy, where the State is pitted against the
Church in behalf of civilisation itseK, and in England,
where the absence of the more extreme religious anti-
pathies and the dominant spirit of religious belief
414 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
render the side taken formally b}^ the State a matter
of comparative political indifference, the problems are,
again, of a wholly different kind.
But it is this very variety in the ecclesiastical
problem in each of the older countries of Europe which
demonstrates the impossibility of treating it by any
uniform method of solution. The most that can be
done is to disentangle the few broad political pro-
positions which have been gradually evolved on the
subject, and then to apply them in practice, as oppor-
tunity presents itself, it being of course the duty of the
statesman, here as everywhere, to do what he can from
time to time to hasten the arrival of such favourable
opportunities of reform.
The main proposition on this subject which has
attained +lie quality of an axiom, and which underlies
all the ecclesiastical controversy with the secular
authority in different States at the present time, is that
the State is bound (1) to protect each of its individual
members in the enjoyment of such religious freedom as
is compatible with the religious freedom of all, and with
the performance of their secular obligations by all ; and
(2) to protect both the mass of the population and
small minorities of it against the superincumbent
weight and influence of religious organisations, whether
small or great.
The first of these tasks is tolerably simple in these
days; though up to modern times and before the
doctrine of toleration had been thoroughly preached
and apprehended, it was the only problem recognised.
The second task is hard; mainly because of the in-
ordinate strength of the opposition organised to resist
its being carried, and of the impalpable form of the
GOYEENMENT AND RELIGION. 415
obstacles whicli olten liave to be encountered. It
seems sometimes as if the statesman were clinging
with pedantic tenacity to a bare shred of principle,
when he is really fighting a great battle for justice.
Thus the form the struggle takes in many Euro-
pean countries is, that the State claims of the subsistence
of a civil marriage without CathoHc rites ; then the
exaction from the Catholic schoolmasters of a certain
minimum of secular training ; the control of the Epis-
copate so far as appointments and discipline go ; the
right to inspect conventual communities and to disband
disloyal confederacies; and the right to put a limit on
the exemptions enjoyed by the clergy from secular
burdens such as military service and taxation.
Now in all these matters it is obvious that religious
bodies, — and pre-eminently the most highly organised
body of all, the Church of Eome, — have indefinite
opportunities of encroachment on the functions of the
State, and that from the point of view of their own
existence and aggrandisement they have every induce-
ment to avail themselves to the utmost of these oppor-
tunities.
Indeed, even in England, where the ecclesiastical
problem is a comparatively minute one, w^ere the
Anglican Church deprived of all the advantages which
constitute it a State establishment ; were the creed of
the monarch treated as a matter of political indifference ;
were the Bishops excluded from the House of Lords ;
were the clergy qualified to sit, equally with noncon-
formist ministers, in the House of Commons ; were the
Act of Uniformity repealed ; were Convocation substi-
tuted for Parliament as the only Church Legislature;
were all special Church Courts abolished except as
416 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
exercising voluntary and disciplinary jurisdiction ; and
even were the Church largely, or wholly, disendowed ;
yet, even after all this, the Church might still be the
Church of the preponderant and most influential classes
of English society and, by its wealth and organisation,
exert an influence against which the secular State
would find it very hard to contend.
It is of little use for the State to recognise a civil
marriage if an influential church includes under a
social ban all those whom its own ministers have not
joined together. Intolerance may exist without formal
law to support it, and law may even be practically
impotent to grapple with it. So far as the English
problem goes, it is probable that nonconforming in-
fluence and political strength will continue sufiiciently
united to resist any purely ecclesiastical combination
which might threaten English liberty ; and in any
scheme of church-disestablishment and disendowment
there is no doubt that pains would be taken to prevent
the independent church from becoming an irresponsible
social despotism.
In other countries, the problem is complicated by
the extra-national aspects it has, owing to the foreign
allegiance of Catholics to the Pope, and the inter-
national sympathy between Catholics in different coun-
tries which is roused into active and combined lesist-
ance when any State vindicates decisively the civil
liberty of its subjects against ecclesiastical aggression.
It will not be questioned, then, that in marking out
the negative province of State activity, there must be
included in this province the protection of its citizens
against ecclesiastical aggressions of all sorts, whether
this protective power be exerted by provisional but
PKOVINCE OF GOVERNMENT. 417
sharply-defined recognition, as by ' Concordats ' and
' Organic Articles ' ; or by incorporation in the struc-
ture of the secular constitution of some parts of the
ecclesiastical organisation, for the sake of a more con-
stant and subtle control, as in England now ; or by
equally ignoring and equally permitting all forms of
religious organisation, as in Greece, Ireland, the
United States, and the British colonies.
It is more difficult to determine the province of
Government in respect of matters in v^hich the positive
vp'elfare and progress of the country' is concerned, and
not merely the protection of large classes of the popu-
lation against undue pressure due to the forces generated
by civilisation and by the social organisation themselves.
It is in respect of positive good to be sought by govern-
mental intervention that all the general objections to
State action specially apply. It is here that the danger
is presented of paralysing private enterprise, and so of
arresting beneficial experiments and consequent inven-
tions ; of indefinite extravagance, waste, and secret
corruption, without adequate checks ; of extending the
range of government patronage to a degree which not
only infects the moral character of the whole public
service, but reacts most prejudicially on the habits of
the executive authority at its very centre and tends to
make all government primarily a machinery for illicit
self-advancement.
In view of these dangers, not only must there be a
constant presumption against the expediency of govern-
ment occupying itself with tasks which can be done
bv private persons or associations, but there is need
for the exercise of the most unremitting vigilance in
E E
418 TILE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
respect of all the work of which, for one reason or
another, government assumes the direct management.
Furthermore, the consideration of the special dangers
to be guarded against affords a means of marking out
the class of operations to which direct government
activity can be applied with least risk and most un-
mixed advantage.
Such will be those operations the conduct of which
is simple and uniform and capable of being thoroughly
and easily understood by the general body of the popu-
lation. There must not be room for a great variety of
rules and methods of work at different points. Oppor-
tunities for the exercise of discretion must be as far as
possible avoided. If the matter have a financial side,
the statement of accounts must be able to be mastered
without special or professional knowledge. If patro-
nage has to be exercised, the exercise of it should be
rendered as independent as possible of irresponsible
choice on the part of the central executive.
Subject to these tests, the sort of tasks which will
profit most from being undertaken by Government will
be those in whicli uniformity, certainty, punctuality, and
the cheapness which may come from a monopoly without
temptation to use it for profit, are such important
considerations that they outweigh all the general ob-
jections against government intervention. Whether
such considerations are in any given state and con-
dition of society a counterpoise to such objections will
depend upon the circumstances of the case. Thus in a
very early primitive society, or in a growing and simply
organised Colony, the people are so near to the govern-
ment that the government is little more than a large
commercial company of which all the population are
LIMITS OF THE PEOVINCE OF GOVERXMENT. 419
members. In such a condition of things government
can with advantage do much which, in a more complex
stage of society, might become the source of indefinite
corruption and national indolence. The main objec-
tion to government intervention in this case is, that
the habit of relying on government is difficult to
shake off, and becomes more and more vicious just as
the difficulty of exchanging it for indepenj
prise increases. /^>^-^"^-^:^^ >.^
It will be admitted generally in the pVeai^t aay ma^'
the management of post and telegraph communication,
and a very considerable control of the railways, satisfies-
the above requirements, as supplying a .test of what work
government should undertake. In speaking of the
negative reasons for government activity it was noticed
that government has a necessary function to discharge
in guarding the national soil against absorption by a
limited part of the population. One remedy for this
was said to be the assumption of proprietorship of all
the land of the country by the State itself. But, in
tbis case, as in that of the ownership of the railways, if
this should be resorted to it must be remembered that
the government cannot itself act as a land-proprietor or
railway-director (though this is done in many European
countries) without leading to a transgression of the
principles just laid down as defining the area of the
positive functions of government.
The management of an agricultural estate, and, still
more, of building land and household property, and only
in a less degree the direction of a railway, calls for all
that incessant personal exercise of discretion and of
capacity for suddenly adjusting unpremeditated means
E E 2
420 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
to new ends, which implies, if the work is performed by
an agent, the highest species of confidence on the part
of his principal and employer.
When such delicate and varied tasks are extended
all over a great country, according as the task of cen-
tral superintendence comes to be delegated through an
endless hierarchy of subordinates, the possibility of
popular control by a representative Assembly is out
of the question. The Government of the day is itself in
the hands of the permanent officials, who alone hold in
their hands the vast skeins of business so ready to be
tangled and so difficult to pass on from hand to hand.
If there is incompetency, fraud, or mismanagement, it
may be only an accident which discovers it, and, as
often as not, inquiry is checked, through the danger
that in so intricate a system the wrong persons will
bear the penalty of an exposed flaw. Thus popular
criticism is either lethargic or spasmodically unjust,
and the government becomes a huge organ of popular
demoralisation and degradation.
The remedy, of course, is, for the government to
retain in its own hands no industrial or commercial
undertaking of the sort indicated, but in all cases to
make fair and public contracts for their management
by others. The terms of such contracts can be under-
stood by all, and the modes of performance, expressing
themselves chiefly in figures and accounts, can also be
understood by most. Even in this case, inspectors of
work and agents empowered to decide on questions of
repairs, improvements, and prices, or fares, will have
to be appointed and superintended by government.
But they will be comparatively few in number and their
reports can be systematically arranged and published
FINANCIAL FUNCTIONS OF GOVEKNAIENT. 421
at brief intervals so as to reduce the inevitable dangers
from State-managed labour and capital to the smallest
amount.
There is yet to be considered, in connexion with
the positive functions of government, the practice
common in most European States of imparting to the
Executive government a certain measure of control
over commerce and of giving certain legal privileges to
a National Bank or Banks. The origin of these privi-
leges, and perhaps the continuing justification of them,
is the fact that not only is the government, — as was
before seen, — the greatest capitalist in the country,
but, in the case of most of the older States, it is the
greatest debtor in the country. The result is that its
financial movements, in making occasional arrangements
with its creditors, altering its rates of interest, funding
its debts, increasing them and paying them off and
transferring them, constitute it, as of necessity, a Bank
almost in spite of itself. The Government cannot avoid
discharging many of the most important functions of a
true Bank, and when a National Bank is constituted by
law for the purpose of being the agent of Government
in the investment of its capital, in the payment of in-
terest (that is, of dividends) to its creditors, and in the
receipt and retention on deposit of its revenue, this is
only a mechanical expression of an existing fact,— an
expression of the greatest convenience to the com-
mercial public.
This is so because, through the Government allying
itself with a Bank, or calling a Bank into being, ur
subsidising a Bank for its own purposes (as was done
originally with the Bank of England) it enables that
422 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
Bank to employ the government funds for the benefit
of mercantile loans. This may seem a startling pro-
position, but it is a true one ; and it will be found on
examination that if the governments of England and
France withdrew from all concern in the Banks of
England and of France and established no substitutes,
the loss to commerce of the amount of floating credit
available at a moment's notice on trustworthy security
would be almost incalculably great. Thus the inter-
ference of governments in banking is a necessary con-
sequence of taxation, of national debts, and of expen-
diture on an enormous scale. The National Bank is
only the material witness to this, which, by a sort of
innocent legerdemain, is made profitable to all parties,
and serves simultaneously the commercial public and
the government.
It need scarcely be added to the remarks that have
been made in respect to the management by govern-
ment of land and of railways that all interference by
government in commerce, except for the purpose of
protecting, on principles already laid down, the more
dependent and helpless classes of society, is to be looked
upon with the greatest suspicion, and circumscribed and
restricted wherever it has taken root. There is no doubt
but that government will in the future be wholly ex-
pelled from this sphere, from which it has, during the
last century, been everywhere slowly withdrawing.
Closely akin to the claim of governments to interfere
in the supervision and control of commerce, is that to
interfej-e in and regulate Navigation. Up to a recent
date, when the domination of Free Trade doctrines finally
abolished all the national privileges of a commercial
kind formerly monopolised by the shipping of each
GOVEENMENT AXD NAVIGATION. 423
State, the governmental control of navigation was
merely a necessary means of enforcing the policy ot
the State. At the present time the only grounds for
exerting such a control are : — first, the importance of
distinguishing national and foreign shipping in time
of war; secondly, the necessity of carrying into effect
customs laws, laws of quarantine, and harbour regula-
tions ; and thirdly, the protection of the dependent class
of sailors against the effect of avaricious contracts of a
fraudulent nature, against ill-treatment, and against
hazards of the sea brought about by the carelessness or
reckless loading of vessels by ship-owners.
The intervention of the State for all these purposes
not only seems to be justified by common political con-
siderations, but, being of a purely preventive and cor-
rective kind, is little exposed to the abuses to which the
direct management by the government of large concerns
has been seen to be so obviously open. Nor is it plain
that intervention of this limited sort weakens, in any
considerable, or at least in a proportionate, degree, the
independent energy of private ship-owners. There is,
no doubt, the recurrent difficulty that superintendence
of a large mercantile marine implies a vast amount
of inspection and the employment of a large body of
inspectors of different grades. Against this really
valid objection can be opposed only the compensating
advantages which are sought ; and the evils which this
objection recognises are much reduced when they are
not ignored, and when the amplest opportunity is
afforded for popular censure and for the detection
and exemplary punishment of illicit transactions in the
name of the government.
424 THE SCIENCE OE POLITIC&
Of late years tlie duties of the State m respect of
National Education have been much debated, and, in
almost all countries where the question has arisen, the
practical decision has been in favour of recognising tho
duty of the State to enforce on all its subjects the
acquisition of the elements of primary education. The
arguments which have finally prevailed have been that
the children born into a State have a moral right to
claim, first of their parents and, if they fail, of the
State, to be put into a condition to understand the duties
obligatory upon them and to earn an independent liveli-
hood ; and that the State has a corresponding moral
(^luty, — as it has, furthermore, a cogent interest, — to
provide the opportunity for the training thus claimed,
and to vindicate the claim of the child, if need be,
against the parents themselves.
These broad arguments have, no doubt, been per-
plexed in their application by the peculiar traditions
or prejudices existing in different countries in reference
to the necessity of including some kind of religious in
struction within the range of primary education imposed
by the State, and to bhe degree and kinds of compulsory
force which may be legitimately exerted in order to
render it effectual and universal. If once it is admitted
that a certain minimum of education is the right of
every child, and the duty of the State, the remaining
questions as to where the minimum is to be fixed, of
what it ought to be composed, and how the duty of the
State in this matter ought to be performed in the special
circumstances of each particular country, are questions
of jDolitical Art and not of political Science.
PROVINCE OF GOVERNMENT. 425
There yet remains a class of topics in respect of
which the functions of the State are more indubitable
than any of those hitherto alluded to. These topics
are such as directly concern the subsistence of the
State itself, and its maintenance against disorder
within and assaults or injustice from without. They
are (1) the management of the Police and the adminis-
tration of Justice ; (2) the management of the Army
and Navy ; (3) the collection of the Taxes.
As to all these matters the objections to govern-
mental management of large and complex concerns
apply in the fullest measure, and it has been seen,
while discussing the subject of ' Local Government,'
that one of the advantages of decentralising govern-
ment is that the means of inspection, and the direct re-
sponsibility of the administrative agents, are increased.
Such local delegacy can be applied with marked
advantage to the Police, to important departments of
the administration of Justice, to some supplementary
departments of the national Army, and even to the
collection of Taxes for purposes of purely local ex-
penditure.
But there will still fall on the shoulders of the
central government a sufficient burden of direct ad-
ministration, in respect of all these matters, to open out
the floodgates of every form of abuse and corruption
in default of incessant public vigilance. This vigilance,
however, must be exerted in a way to co-operate with
truly conscientious statesmen, and not so as to hamper
endlessly, and thereby to weaken dangerously, all their
best efPorts. A strong government is one which can
always rely on adequate and faithful popular support,
426 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
even when it is exerting to the full its most centralised
powers; and the best government is weakened inde-
finitely when every exertion of power is popularly mis-
taken for aggressive violence, and comprehensive activity
within its appropriate limits for a treasonable conspiracj-
against popular rights.
427
CHAPTER XI.
EEVOLUTIONS IN STATES.
Theee is something anomalous in the attempt to in-
corporate a treatment of the Science of Revolution into
the study of the Science of Politics. It might seem, in
the first place, inconsistent with the very notion of
Revolution that it should be classed and organised, by
anticipation, as an ordinary or necessary phenomenon ;
and the anarchical elements on which it rests might be
held to exclude the possibility of its being made the
subject of precise scientific statement. In the second
place it might seem that no State or government could
subsist if it contemplated Revolution in advance, and
that the attempt to do so by including it in the provi-
sions of the constitution deprives it of its essential
character as an incalculable, and not a calculable and
regular, phase of political existence.
Nevertheless there is no doubt that it is round the
theory of the right or duty of revolution, and of the
rights and duties which spring from it, that the most
celebrated controversies on theoretical politics have
been waged. It seems to have been during the Parlia-
mentary struggle with Charles I. that the first notion
of an abstract constitution was conceived and worked
out by Harrington and his political associates. It Avas
the revolutionary resistance to the claims asserted by
428 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
the Sinart dynasty to have a ' right divine to govern
wrong ' that called forth the imperishable arguments of
Hobhes and Locke on the basis of all government and
on the Social Contract.
It was the revolt of the American colonies which
called forth the political propositions broadly formu-
lated in the Declaration of Independence and elaborated
in argumentative detail by the authors of the ' Fede-
ralist.' It was the French Revolution which in 1791
originated the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and
which suggested Burke's ' Reflections ' and the replies
of Thomas Paine and Sir James Mackintosh. _
It is, again, the American Secession War whicn has,
in our own day, established on deeper bases than ever
the doctrines of political right and duty in a constitu-
tionally-governed State, and has given a^ new spring to
theoretical speculations on the true nature of the con-
stitution of the United States, as distinguished from
that of a federal government. The recent revolu-
tionary movements in Poland, Rassia, the provinces of
the Ottoman empire, Germany, and Ireland have kept
alive political controversy on the profoundest topics of
constitutional existence, but without, as yet, obtaining
any complete or satisfactory solution, even in theory, of
the problems raised.
This indisputable connexion of revolutionary facts
with the history of political speculation in modern
timts certainly suggests that the study of some of
the most notable revolutionary agitations of the past
two or three centuries may be expected to throw light
upon the class of permanent truths with which scien-
tific politics alone deals. It may be that revolution
itself will, as constitutional government grows, become
HISTORY OF EEVOLUTIONS. 429
an anachronism. There is reason to suppose it will,
because the characteristic of every good constitution
is to provide, by anticipation, for its own gradual
amendment, and to supersede the necessity for violent
and cataclysmic demonstrations of the popular will.
But, while these happier times are still being ex-
pected, it may be profitable to turn to account the chief
revolutionary epochs which have been of late both the
occasions and the tests of political controversy, and to
endeavour to remove from their history the spurious
coating in which party spirit and popular ignorance have
enveloped it.
It is not necessary to go further back than the
seventeenth century of the Christian era, and it would
be unprofitable to dwell on any revolutions which have
arisen in States having no shadow of constitutional
government. The revolutions of Greece and Eome,
and of early monarchical France and England have, no
doubt, their important lessons. But the more recent
revolutions in constitution ally- governed States, or, — as
with France at the close of last century, — in States
infected by a revolutionary spirit manifested in other
States with which they had political relations, convey
all these lessons, and others besides.
While, then, the history of the world's political
revolutions in their entirety would be full of profit as a
contribution to political science, the field it would
cover would be too large to form only a part of another
treatise. It is sufficient for purposes of scientific
exactness to concentrate the attention on those revo-
lutions which have a distinct bearing on the charac-
teristic aspects of modern political society in some of
the most advanced and advancing States.
430 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
Such revolutions are that of England, beginning
with the Parliamentary Wars against Charles I. and
ending with the establishment on the throne of the
Orange, and afterwards of the Hanoverian, dynasty;
that of the American thirteen colonies, concluded by
the recognition of their independence by Great Britain ;
that of France, beginning in 1789 and concluded (to
fix a purely arbitrary date) by the battle of Waterloo
in 1815; the American Secession war from 1861 to
1865; and the revolutionary movements at different
epochs in the present century in Poland, Hungary,
Russia, Germany, the Ottoman empire, and, it is
almost necessary to add, Ireland.
By way of preface, it is necessary to notice that
revolution is of three kinds, each of which is usually
strongly marked, so as to render it clearly distinguish-
able from either of the others.
A revolution may be, first, essentially anarchical,
\ that is, it may proceed from a general undisciplined
\ temper in the revolting population, and be directed to
» the upsetting of the existing government, or government
and constitution combined, without those who conduct
it having any views as to substitutes for one or the
other, and being in fact other than indifferent as to the
i..^_ political prospect of the future. This form of revolution
is likely to be chiefly manifested in a primitive stage of
civilisation, when the advantages of orderly and settled
government have not been long experienced, and when
these advantages, indeed, only exist in a moderate
degree, from the political weakness of the government
and from the imperfectly organised state of society.
A second form of revolution is when no thought is
entertained of reverting to anarchy, but the object of
DIFFERENT KINDS OF EEVOLUTIONS. 431
those who take part in it is, primarily, either to change
the personality of the government or to resist som(
legislative or executive meas ure. J This measure may
presumedly be in accordance with the constitution, in
which case the movement is directed to bring about a
new interpretation of constitutional rules, or a modi-
fication of the constitution, or a better use of dis-
cretionary powers on the part of the authorities
complained of : or the measure complained of may be
contrary to the rules or spirit of the constitution, in
which case the object of the movement is to re-enforce
the constitution and establish it on surer foundations.
A third form of revolution is where the object,^
conscious or unconscious, is to change the constitution
itself from its foundations and to introduce a new form
of government.
The confusion of these different forms under the
general name of Revolution has been rife with much
political misapprehension, having, at times, serious
results.
A caution has, however, to be interposed, to guard
against the supposition that any revolution can be
readily classed under one or other of these heads with-
out looking below the surface, or even, in certain
cases, reverting to recent historical conditions. Thus
it seldom happens that the leaders of a revolutionary
movement and the great mass of their followers are
exactly of the same mind, or that they continue long to
be of the same mind, if they were so momentarily ; oi
that the facts resulting from the movement itself do
not undergo such a change as to produce divisions of
parties and to alter the entire complexion and object
of the revolution.
432 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
In fact, this is one of the most calamitous incidents
of a revolutionary period, — that, the usual landmarks
being removed, all the anarchical and undisciplined
dispositions latent in the community have free course,
and assume a positive energy which is injurious to the
cause of wise political reconstruction. There ensues
for a time a condition of flux and chronic instability
highly favourable to fanatical parties, to usurpers, to
pretenders to power of all sorts.
Every historical revolution, both secular and reli-
gious, has witnessed phenomena of this sort, — from the
incessant changes of leadership which toolc place during
the protracted revolution during the last hundred years
of the Roman Republic, to the Anabaptists of Miinster,
the two Napoleonic regimes and the ' Commune ' in
Paris, and the more extreme modern Separationists in
Ireland.
It may happen, indeed, that this very tendency of
revolution to generate within itself a temporary organi-
sation, having its roots, not in the broad political
instincts and exigencies of the country, but in some
superficial and partial sentiment, may act as a preser-
vative against prolonged anarchy. It is possible, too,
that the man, or party, or section of opinion, which for
the moment comes to the top may represent some
valuable truth or long despised cause, which is recalled
to life with lasting benefit to the State. He or it
teaches his or its lesson, leaves his or its impress, and
passes away.
There is, too, a really close connexion between the
grounds of revolution above distinguished which pre-
vents them from being always separable in theory or in
practice. Thus in cases where a reigning dynasty
CAUSES OF EEVOLUTIONS. 433
represents particular principles of government, a
change in the dynasty may necessarily involve a change
in the constitution. In autocratically governed States
this is likely to be especially true, and the truth o£ it is
the only conceivable apology for political assassination.
Furthermore, the change of a dynasty as a con-
sequence of a revolution, whether democratical or aris-
tocratical, is itself not without necessary effects on the
constitution. There is always a doubt as to the
theoretical foundation of an existing form of govern-
ment, and this doubt is most prevalent and harassing
when a dynasty has long occupied a throne on no other
pretext except that of hereditary descent.
In one sense this is the strongest foundation of
all, — so long as popular criticism is not aroused, —
because it carries all the pretensions due to a mysterious
origin in the far past, and to a traditional reverence
almost amounting to superstition. But when once
popular criticism is fairly aroused, and, owing to some
conflict, the person of the Sovereign is treated with
contumely, and the dynasty displaced in fact, a new
condition of the popular consciousness supervenes.
Government goes on without interruption, and it is
found that its basis is not in a person, or in a family, or
in an historical accident, but in the will of the people,
or, it may be, in the will of some narrow and auto-
cratic section of the people, who represent themselves,
and are really felt to be, the vicegerents of the people.
Thus, in the course of changing the personality of
the government, a constitutional change has also been
effected. It is likely enough (as has happened over
and over again) that the new dynasty, sovereign, or
ruler, introduced to take the place of the old, will be
F F
434 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
formally bound to recognise the new source of power,
and to repudiate the principles of his predecessor.
This new obligation and act of repudiation becomes
henceforth a constitutional bulwark, and is the starting
point from which future revolutions take their rise.
In the same way there is a genuine anarchical ele-
ment present in all revolutions, inasmuch as they can
only be distinguished from mere local seditions by pro-
ceeding from a broadly diffused popular determination ;
and this implies the co-operation of a vast number of
persons who can appreciate (like the Kentish men in
Jack Cade's time) the misgovemment from which they
suffer, but are ignorant of the necessary conditions of
government to which they owe the security of their
lives and property and the maintenance of their poli-
tical existence.
It is the main function and duty of revolutionary-
leaders to avail themselves of their inordinate influence
to check the extravagance and fanaticism which comes
from this ignorance, and to do their utmost to teach
their followers to distinguish the evils they are entitled
to rid themselves of, from the equable and inevitable
pressure which belongs to the very existence even of
the best and best-administered Government.
The fact that rational efforts after change open the
door for irrational impulses in the direction of mere
disorder is aggravated by the presence, in every com-
munity, of a certain class, not numerically important
in quiet times, who have a direct persona? interest in
relaxing the bonds of society, and in weakening the
action of the Executive Authority.
In the continental countries of Europe, where the
boundary lines between State and State are usually of
REVOLUTION W ENGLAND. 435
a very artificial kind, prolonged anarchy in one State
results in its collecting within its territory all the out-
lawed scum of surrounding States. Life and property
become unsafe, the police become impotent, and the
magistracy overawed ; the taxes cannot be collected, and
the army is recruited by foreign adventurers ; while, all
the time, the attainment of the real political object
which is at the root of the revolutionary movement is
impeded, rather than advanced, by these wholly extra-
neous incidents. The worst is, that the revolutionary
reformers, however good their cause, have to suffer
from the obloquy properly attaching to such needless
disruption of order. This was especially the case
during the time of the Paris Commune in 1870, and
has occurred repeatedly in the revolutionary movements
in the European provinces of the Ottoman empire.
In the light of these observations, bearing on the
distinctions between the leading causes of revolution
and on the modes in which these causes often co-operate
or simultaneously present themselves, it will be
expedient to refer to the chief characteristics of the
series of revolutions already enumerated, which, in the
aggregate, may be said to have prepared the way for
the existing constitutions and mutual relationships of
the chief modem civilised States.
In English politics, the revolution period, — extend-
ing from the breaking out of the Parliamentary War
against Charles I. to the accession of William III., —
has supplied the main principles which have been
applied by statesmen and political authors to the dis-
cussion of the subject of revolution generally. It was
Thomas Paine who pointed out that this limitation of
F !• 2
436 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
view was the main ground of tlie erroneous reasoning
which underlies Edmund Burke's otherwise magnificent
' Eeflections on the French Revolution.'
It would seem, in much of the reasoning contained
in these Reflections, that the author conceived no other
way of effecting a revolution, and no other just cause of
revolution, than those which could be illustrated by
the history of what has been called the Whig Revolu-
tion, of 1688; In fact, Burke does not seem to have
connected in his mind and in his arguments the whole
of the revolutionary events, extending over more than
half a century, of which the final expulsion of the
Stuarts in the person of James II., and the establish-
ment of a new dynasty by Act of Parliament was
merely the climax. If he had looked at all these
events in their sequence and connexion, he would have
seen that the lessons they taught were wholly peculiar
to England at that time, and might have little appli-
cation either to another country or to another a,ge.
From the first distinct outcry against the high-
handed proceedings of Charles I.— expressed in the
refusal of ' Ship-money ' and in the ' Grand Remon-
strance ' — to the trial of the seven bishops, the
foundation of the English Revolution was a conception,
right or wrong, of an English constitution to which the
King and the Parliament were equally subject.
It was, indeed, no new thing to make such appeal
to laws and customs which the monarch could not
violate with immunity. The reiterated enforcement of
Magna Charta and similar constitutional formularies of
ancient repute ; the repeated use of the impeachment
of Ministers of the Crown for acts done in the monarch's
name; the dethronement by a quasi-judicial process,
EEVOLUTION IN ENGLAND. 437
however rough, and irregular, of Edward TI. and
Richard II. ; the successful resistance to the aggressions
on Parliament attempted by Queen Elizabeth, and the
disallowance of torture as applied by the Privy Council
for the purpose of obtaining evidence ; and, finally, the
stem check imposed on James I. in the matter of
monopolies ; all these were but anticipations of the
practical belief in the existence of a constitution to
the requirements of which King and Parliament, as
well as the people, were all equally amenable.
It is true that, as is the case in all revolutions.,
soon after the purely constitutional position had been
taken up by the Parliament, and public order was sus-
pended in consequence of the King's firm stand against
concession, religious differences played an important
part both in widening the feud and in determining the
form of the temporary reconstruction. The Puritan
movement, whether in the form of mere non-conformity
or in the more organised character which it assumed in
the hands of the Presbyterians and the Independents,
co-operated with the purely constitutional movement,
but did not merge it in itself.
No doubt, in the early days of the Commonwealth,
a rage for positive legislation set in, which was rather
an anticipation, by some two or three centuries, of the
progress of the constitution than a denial or contra-
diction of it. But a passion for positive legislation is
a result of such a disturbance of a familiar national
routine as brings people face to face with long-seated
but real evils and gives them a novel experience of
the act of law-making. During the past half century
in England the spirit of legislation has been almost
rampant, and the Acts of Parliament probably far
438 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
exceed in volume and mass all previous legislation from
the time of the Conquest. Yet the constitution has
been maintained on the same general lines, and has
always been regarded, by the most opposed political
parties, with almost superstitious reverence.
Of course it is true that the establishment of the
Protectorate involved a very distinct alteration in the
form of government; but the founders of it were,
probably, incapable of estimating how great was the
constitutional change. For them the true English
constitution was not so much to be found in the
hereditary monarchy, and in a House of Lords, as in the
general principle of a popular representative assembly ;
in broad intelligible principles concerning the free
exercise of religions worship, and free speech ; and in
exemption from illegal taxation, from arbitrary im-
prisonment, from central executive usurpation, and
from unjust State trials.
These principles were patently essential ; and were
guaranteed by ancient traditions ; though one Sovereign
and another, and, most of all, the Stuarts, had in
practice outraged them all. So long as they were
vindicated, the constitution, or all that was vital and
precious in it, was maintained inviolate. If they were
impaired, there was nothing worth maintaining.
The result of the Catholic proclivities of James II.,
following upon the moral laxity of the reign of Charles
II., was to recombine the secular and religious revolu-
tionaries. The only points round which they could
momentarily meet were the elementary constitutional
principles which were independent of any particular
dynasty, as they had already nearly proved themselves
to be (and in truth are) even independent of the insti-
BUEKE AND THE FEENCH EEVOLUTION. 439
tution of an hereditary monarchy and a House of
Lords.
The Whigs who, in a somewhat cold and dis-
passionate manner, conducted the final negotiations
which resulted in the abdication of James II., were in
fact intermediaries between those who were earnest on
both sides, whether as ardent protestants or as clear-
sighted republicans. As a dominant faction, they
cared little for spiritual religion, and had the reverse
of any class interest in abolishing social and hereditary
distinctions. Their natural object was to rehabilitate
the constitution with the help of more ardent reformers
than themselves, whilst retaining the direction of affairs
in their own hands. Thus the revolution ended in
reinstating the essential principles of the constitution
as finally embodied in the Bill of Eights, and in per-
petuating the outward forms of monarchical and
aristocratic institutions as a testimony to the claims
of formal continuity.
It will be convenient for purposes of contrast, though
at the cost of chronological order, to oppose to the
consideration of the English Eevolution of the seven-
teenth century the consideration of the French revolu-
tion at the close of the eighteenth century. Burke
committed a double error in first supposing that the
French in 1789 had anything deserving the name of a
constitution to appeal to, as against the depravation of
monarchical institutions in the person of Louis XYI. ;
and, secondly, in assuming that all political disorders
can be cured by orderly processes recognised and im-
plicitly provided for within the limits of the constitution
itself.
440 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
It is true that the latent political discontent flamed
out into revolution before the third Estate had had
an opportunity of making its constitutional voice fairly
heard. But an Assembly which has not been sum-
moned for some three centuries can only by force of a
strained antiquarian superstition be reckoned as part
of the existing constitution.
The act of summoning it was a desperate measure
devised to stave off national bankruptcy with some
show of political regularity. That it was alien to the
spirit of the despotic and aristocratic rule which, by
long prescription, in fact governed France, was instantly
proved when it tried to set itself to work to express the
real voice of the people without allowing itself to be
swamped by the privileged classes already in possession
of the Government.
Thus, while the old feudal constitution, which re-
cognised the political and representative rights of the
freemen, had long been dead, the joint aristocratic and
monarchical constitution, which had gradually super-
seded it, was in the act of perishing by its own corrup-
tions. It was found, by the experience of a day, that
what was dead could not be made alive again, and what
was dying could not be saved. There were too many
distinct and reasonable causes for local disaffection
throughout the country for a moment's delay to be
brooked.
In the case of the English revolution the House
of Commons had not only been continuously sitting,
even in the reigns of the most despotic and over-
reaching monarchs, but it had, amidst all obstacles,
retained and enlarged its right to control taxation and
to check the action of the executive. The usurpations
THE FEENCH KEVOLUTION. 441
of the Plantagenet and Tudor kings were conducted,
not by rendering the House obsolete, but bj domineer-
ing over it, or bj corrupting it, or by unfairly influencing
some of its prominent leaders. Thus the way was kept
clear for a reformation of government; and neither
the king himself nor the ingenious crown-lawyers and
judges, whose courteous services he usually succeeded in
purchasing, could deny the broad claims of the House
and of its members to independence. The true consti-
tution can thus scarcely even be said to have been in
suspense, — not even when Henry YIII. succeeded in
procuring Act after Act of Parliament for his own
personal and family aims, or when Charles I. appeared
on the floor of the House and ordered the seizure of
the Five Members. The constitution might be out-
raged, but it could not be ignored.
In France, on the other hand, a constitution could
not be established by galvanising a mummy. New
political sentiments had to be created among the
people, new machinery had to be constructed, and new
relationships between the people and the government
had to be establiahed. And this all had to be done
while the crumbling edifice of the discredited constitu-
tion had not yet quite disappeared ; while the mass of
the population were hungry, excited, and ignorant ; and
while surrounding nations were becoming fearful and
aggressive, from the belief that the revolutionary doc-
trines prevalent in France would shortly extend to
themselves. It is obvious that no analogy whatever
exists between this condition of things in France and
the condition of things in England a century earlier.
A natural question is suggested as to whether the
442 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
revolution in the American colonies, — which only pre-
ceded by a few years the first French revolution, — in-
clined rather to the English type in the seventeenth or
to the French type at the close of the eighteenth century.
Everything points to the fact that the English and not
the French type was before the eyes, and in the hearts,
of the leaders of the American War of Independence ;
and that in the conduct of their revolution they were
more English than the English themselves. There is
less of religious fanaticism, less of the effect of mere
personal influences, less disregard for the consequences
of violent political change visible in the American
revolution than in the English. In every step of the
American revolution, there is a conspicuous appeal to
unassailable principles (though often wrongly formulated
and dangerously wide), and the recognition of existing
ties, obligations, and conventional relations, which be-
token calmness of head and deliberateness of intention.
The Am|Tican people rebelled, — but it was in order (as
they took it) to repel novel and tyrannical invasions
on their long-established and often-chartered rights
of Local Government and self > taxation, not to obtain a
licentious independence, and still less to enjoy the
supposed sweets of anarchy, or even of a newly invented
form of government.
An instructive contrast to all three revolutions is
afforded by the history of the Secession war. The best
arguments alleged by the Southern slave-holders for
seceding from the Union were, first, that the right of
dissolving the Union by withdrawing from it was an
inherent right of every State, and had never been ex-
pressly withdrawn by the constitution ; and, secondly.
AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 443
that in every free government, each member of the
State is entitled, as bj an indefeasible rights to with-
draw from connexion with it in case he regards the
conduct of the government or the nature of the consti-
tution as incompatible with his own physical and moral
existence.
Mr. Calhoun had formulated the first of these
positions as early as December 27, 1837. In his
speech upon the Rights of States {' Works,' vol. iii. 155),
he said :
" The only remedy is in the States Rights doctrines ; and, if
*' those who profess them in slaveholding States do not rally
*' to them as their political creed, and organise as a party
*' against the fanatics in order to put them down, the South
" and West will be compelled to take the remedy into their
" own hands. They will then stand justified in the sight of
" God and man, and what in that event will follow, no mortal
" can anticipate."
So far as relates to the federal constitution of the
Union which Mr. Calhoun here treats of, no general
question on the abstract right and nature of revolution
was involved. And events have decided on an inter-
pretation of the constitution adverse to Mr. Calhoun's
views.
But, as to the larger proposition included in Mr.
Calhoun's statement that a mere discontent (however
profound) with the conduct of the government in power,
with the working of the constitution, or with the con-
stitution itself, can of itself justify revolution, either as
a matter of political expediency or as one of morality,
to maintain the affirmative is to go far beyond the most
extreme revolutionary doctrines which have ever pre-
vailed in France or now prevail anywhere in Europe.
444 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
No reasonable person attempts to justify or recom-
mend a revolution except as a last and desperate
resource. It must be the only conceivable remedy ; a
probably successful remedy ; and a remedy for an evil
so great as to be incompatible witli moral and political
existence deserving of the name.
To cite the language of one who was a trenchant
reformer of political abuses and who wrote before the
Secession War :
" The evils must have become intolerable before the resist-
" ance is to be attempted ; the parties whose rights are invaded
" mnst first exhaust every peaceful and orderly and lawful
" means of redress. An insurrection is only to be justified
" by a necessity which leaves no alternative ; and the proba-
" bility of success is to be weighed in order that a hopeless
" attempt may not involve the community in distress and
" confusion."
Every one of the tests was decisively against the case
of the Southern States. It is only necessary to read the
Declaration put forth by the Southern Congress at
Richmond, and to compare it with the liberal pro-
vision for representation of the whole population of
all the States in the House of Representatives, and of
each State equally in the Senate, and with the equal
share of all in the election of the President, in order to
see how wide is the diiference between the position of
the Southern Confederacy and their forefathers who
founded the American Union. The Declaration says
that
*' we fell back npon the right for which the Colonies main-
*' tained the War of the Revolution and which our heroic
** forefathers asserted to be clear and inalienable."
DECLAEATIOX OF THE SOUTHEEN STATES. 445
It further sajs :
" Compelled by a long series of oppressive and tyrannical
" acts, culminating at last in the selection of a President and
" Vice-President by a party confessedly sectional, and hostile
" to the South and her institutions, these States withdrew
" from the former Union and formed a new Confederate
*' alliance, as an independent government based on the proper
" relations of capital and labour."
The truth is that according as popular institutions
grow, revolution should become more and more needless
and impossible. Eepresentative government, of a broad
and really effective kind, combined with ample facilities
for its own amendment, and for any amount of consti-
tutional reconstruction, must secure the adoption of
every change which is really an object of determined,
persistent, and general desire. Movements for the
carrying out of partial ends, for the abrogation of
laws injuriously affecting special classes, and objections
to the policy of government, felt (it may be) throughout
large sections of the community, will always continue
to manifest themselves ; and they are signs of health
rather than of disease. The public press, the right of
public meeting and of free association, will test the
sincerity of agitators, and accustom them to patient
and deliberate, as well as mutually tolerant, habits of
action. Sedition will always be possible, though more
and more rare.
The only cases in which these principles and pro-
spects seem out of place is where a distant — or even a
near, but alien — dependency (such as Ireland, or it
might be the Channel Islands) is governed by a popular
legislature sitting at a distance. In such a case, no
doubt, a widespread movement of discontent may partake
446 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
rather of the character of revolution than of sedition,
and deserve proportionate respect, not to say precautions.
Whether a particular revolution satisfies the tests just
laid down, is a question of practical politics and does not
belong to political science. The current revolutionary
movements in Russia, Poland, the European provinces
of the Ottoman empire, and Germany all belong to the
type of the first French revolution, the object being
rather to "found a new constitution than to re-establish
a lost or weakened one.
447
V
CHAFI'EIl XII.
EIGHT AND WEONG IN POLITICS.
There is no serious thinker at the present day who, if
pointedjy questioned, would deny the applicability of
the terms Right, Wrongs Duty, Conscience, Morality, and
Immorality to the conduct of States and governments as
well as to that of individual men and women. It is
true, indeed, that, — if these terms are used loosely and
thoughtlessly enough in pronouncing on the conduct of
private persons, where the problem, if any, is tolerably
simple in its elements, and where most of the conditions
of it are capable of being ascertained and reduced to a
certainty, — in the larger political field the inquiry is
highly complicated, and large classes of the most
essential facts are wholly out of the reach of the
judicial investigator.
Nevertheless it is manifest that in all quarters in
which public criticism resides — whether in the news-
paper press, in the more laboured and deliberate
magazine, on the election hustings, or in the political
text-book — the rightness or wrongness of the acts of
legislatures or administrators is brought to the bar of
a strict public opinion with quite as much decision and
explicitness as is the expediency or prudence of the
same acts. This use of language is at aU events a
testimony to the existence of a widely diffused con-
448 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
sciousness that States and governments have no im-
maculate conception.
The fact is, indeed, so obvious, when thus stated,
that it is almost forgotten how wholly absent from the
ante-Christian theory and practice of politics in all
Western communities was the notion of a purely moral
standard of action, and that perhaps Christianity has
triumphed almost as signally in moralising secular
politics as in spiritualising individual and domestic life.
The readers of Coleridge's lay-sermon on ' The Bible
the Statesman's Manual,' as well as of the late Pro-
fessor Maurice's ' Prophets and Kings of Old Testa-
ment History,' will recall the lesson, nowhere more
impressively taught than in the writings of these
authors, that the Bible has had an almost incalculable
influence in swaying political judgments, that it was
providentially designed to have that influence, and that
political judgments for all time can never escape from
an obligation to the immutable principles pre-eminently,
if not exclusively, revealed to the Jewish Church.
In spite of these incontestable facts, there is a
difference of some importance and magnitude between
the ethical standard and even the ethical motive, when
it is applied to vast communities consisting of an
indefinite and indiscriminate number of individual
persons organised for the ends implied in the complex
notion conveyed by the term State, and when it is
applied to the individual life of private persons.
It is obvious, for instance, that in a despotically
governed community, where the king or emperor is
above the law, and makes the law as he wills, and
executes it when and how he pleases, the rightness and
wrongness of acts of State are in fact synonymous with
MOKALITY AND THE STATE. 449
the rightness and wrongness of the autocrat's acts ; and
the critical problem is reduced to the same mode of de-
termination as in ordinary judgments on the acts of
private men.
But where the government is of a more complex
kind, or perhaps of an extremely complex kind — de-
pending, say, in the case of each of its acts, on a
concert of chambers, of representatives, and of various
executive authorities, there being much discussion and
finally broad divisions of opinion — the unity of conduct
seems to be so disturbed or confused as almost to ex-
clude the idea of moral responsibility as residing
anywhere in the nation at large.
Considering that the tendency of modern times is
certainly in the direction of an increase of complication
in the machinery of government, partly on account of
an access of intricacy in the concerns to be provided
for, partly on account of a higher susceptibility to the
claims of a distributive justice, it would be a most grave
conclusion to arrive at, that moral judgments were to
be paralysed just at the moment when they need to be
quickened into more active life.
Fortunately, experience is the other way ; and there
is no doubt that the very same causes which have made
modern political constitutions intricate in their struc-
ture, and perhaps somewhat slovv and cumbrous in their
action, have vitalised the moral energy of the critical
public everywhere, and are compelling governments to
comply with a purely moral standard of action to an
extent which even a hundred years ago, and a fortiori,
in pagan times, would have seemed to the moralist a
mere gorgeous dream.
G (*
450 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
M. Renan' has pointed out, with a force which he
mio-ht have borrowed from some of the most orthodox
inodern Christian apologists, that the interval of the
Roman Empire was in fact an interpolation of a cosmo-
politan and denationalised society between the intensely
patriotic worlds of the Roman and Greek republics and
those of the modern European States.
But M. Renan and Christian apologists place very
different interpretations on the phenomenon they com-
bine to illustrate. Whether the interval was a merely
human cause of the growth of Christianity, or was a
divine and necessary preparation for it, there is no
1 question but that, as the new Christian States arose, an
i ethical element was found to be indissolably bound up
with them, for which no place was found in republican
Rome or even in philosophical Greece.
Mr. Ward, in his ' History of the Law of Nations,'
has attributed much direct influence on the growth of
international morality first to the Councils of the Church
and then to the action of the Papacy. But, — apart from
their direct operation on such matters as the observance
of treaties, the treatment of prisoners of war, the re-
striction of private wars, the observance of the 'truce
of God,' and the censure of the private lives of rulers, —
there was a far greater though long-hidden change
manifesting itself in the nature of the standard to
which a final public appeal was made.
The Christians from the orthodox south met the
Arian Christians of the north, and amidst all the cling-
ing barbarism, the crass inconsistencies, the individual
outrages ma.nifest everywhere, the name of God and
the supreme obligation of a moral iaw occupy a place
• Hibbert Lecture*}. Loudon, 1880.
]
A^^CIENT POLITICAL MOKALITY. 451
in the thoughts of the soldier, the colonist, the serf,
the barbarian chief, and the popular assembly, which
was wholly new in the growing world.
The story from that time to this is indeed a
checkered one ; and during it the seed of the moral life
has been hidden, sometimes for generations together, in
the cell of the monk ; or wasted in the untimely visions
and utterances of the fanatical enthusiast ; or religious
wars have seemed to drown in blood the precious in-
heritance for which they were waged ; or violent per-
secutions have simulated the portents of heathendom :
till at last there dawns some hope that the nations of
the West are to have free course, with all the gains
and with all the help of finely adjusted moral criticism
for which they have so long struggled and Avaited.
Of course in these remarks it is not intended to de-
preciate the aspirations and criticisms of such of the
nobler spirits of old as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and
Plutarch; nor, still less — to deny that motives of the
most purely ethical kind were all along determining,
however unconsciously, the action of statesmen and the
Hives of patriot citizens. It is only alleged that the
conscious application of a moral test in the region of
politics, not by a few of the more highly trained minds,
but by the general and intuitive apprehensions of the
multitude at large, is a growth and attainment coeval
with the appearance of what may be characteristically
called Christian States.
The application of an ethical standard and motive
to politics sheds an instructive light on the curious
fortunes of modern Utilitarianism, and, when properly
considered, is capable of helping forward the solution
G Q 2
452 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
of the problem to which the existence of that theory-
owes its rise.
Modern utilitarianism reached its fullest, or only
logical, development in the teaching of Jeremy Bentham.
It has indeed had a history since his time to which the
late Mr. John Stuart Mill has largely contributed. But
in the countless modifications and explanations which
have attended it, it has lost what at its first birth and
mature growth was its chief recommendation — the
excellence of simplicity and consistency.
In the last chapter of his treatise on ' Early Institu-
tions,' Sir Henry Sumner Maine has drawn attention
to the fact that Jeremy Bentham was a legislator more
than anything beside; and his taste and genius as a
legislator determined his habits of thought on all
subjects whatever. But, at best, legislation is, on one
side of it, a rough practical remedy for the evils of the
world. Each person legislated for counts as one and no
more. And between two alternative remedial processes,
that generally has to be preferred which benefits more
persons before another which benefits fewer.
Bentham's celebrated treatise on ' Morals and Legis-
lation' is nothing more than a logical expansion of
this principle and its application to the whole field of
human life. The legislator transforms himself into the
moralist, and he brings with him into the new universe
he has invaded no other implements and mechanism
than the coarse materials which fully sufficed him for
his previous work.
It needed but a superficial criticism to show that,
whereas such an idea as that of happiness (or rather the
restriction of pain) may have an intelligible meaning
for the political reformer, it is far too impalpable and
UTILITARIANISM. 453
indefinite to be of the slightest service in indicating the
aim and standard of all moral acts. The measurement,
again, of this happiness, and the calculation of the
number of persons who may be affected by any specific
scheme devised for iniparting it, again imply materialistic
conceptions of number, quantity, and weight, which, in
connexion with the thoughts and feelings, as well as
with the singular phenomenon of conscience (with which
morality is alone concerned), are singularly irrelevant
and inappropriate.
Nevertheless it has been well pointed out that the
/Opponents of utilitarianism have afforded a handle to
j/ their adversaries by ignoring, or appearing to ignore,
A the truly materialistic and calculable elements that
\ often must enter into moral acts. There are many
cases in which the moral agent who is scrupulously de-
sirous of conforming to the dictates of conscience must
balance the claims of diverse alternative duties by re-
ference to the number of persons whose interests may
be affected, according as one course or the other is
adopted, or by the degree, quality, or quantity, of the
interest which is at stake.
The late Professor Grote, brother of the historian
of Greece, in his exhaustive ' Examination of the Utili-
tarian Philosophy,' was among the first opponents of that
philosophy who recognised the real utilitarian element,
inseparable from any complete moral theory; and he
did more to close the controversy for ever than any
other writer in the same field.
It is undoubtedly in the world of politics that
whatever utilitarian element really belongs to a science
of abstract morality will be pre-eminently found. Mr.
John Austin, indeed, was so impressed with this fact.
454 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
and so desirous of reconciling the teaching he derived
from Bentham with the promptings of a reverential
view of Divine Providence, that he based his utilitarian
structure on a theocratic foundation. God loves all His
creatures, argues Mr. Austin, and designs for them the
utmost happiness possible in their mundane circum-
stances ; in fact, the greatest happiness of the greatest
number of all members of the sentient creation. By an
inversion of this thought, Mr. Austin holds himself en-
titled to conclude that if the happiness can be weighed,
and the number of persons affected counted, the arith-
metical elements would be provided for ascertaining
in any given case the will of God and the path of duty.
Unfortunately there are, in the ethical regions, pro-
ducts which are lens ponderable even than pleasure, and
as heathenism certainly failed to regenerate the world
by the law of competition, it is still being seen whether
Christianity has done or can do more for it by the law
of sacrifice.
As an instance of the curious transmutations which
moral ideas and terms properly undergo when transferred
from the life of individual men to the existence of the
State — -or rather from the lives of men in a non-political,
to the lives of men in a political, aspect — there will at
once recur to the memory the persistent problems as to
whether and under what conditions patriotism, ambition,
national rivalries or antipathies, are virtues or vices.
It would be said at once that it depends on the cir-
cumstances ; that what is a virtue up to a certain point
becomes a vice if practised beyond that point ; and that
the fact that the State is the object of action cannot
really alter moral estimates from what they would be
if smaller and more insignificant corporations were
PEIVATE AND PUBLIC MOKALITY. 455
alone concerned. And yet this is not exactly true. It
is felt at once that for a man to devote the whole of his
energies towards advancing* the material interests or
even the safety of a narrow circle with which he is
identified — be it his family, his clan, his club, his
village, or his political party — scarcely differs, as a
matter for moral evaluation, from an entire devotion
of a man's life to what is in the narrowest sense him-
self. Not, indeed, that the moralist will forget that
some of the hardest and most perplexing duties and
those least well remunerated, being inward rather
than outward, may be said, however fallaciously, to be
performed solely in reference to a man's self.
I In this sense the constantly-extending groups of
pis fellow- creatures with whom he comes into relation
jiuring his earthly life represent only an ever-enlarging
^nd enriched self. He may be called upon at different
epochs to consecrate himself wholly to one or other of
these groups, or he may run in advance of his duty —
and so really lag behind it — by preferring at the wrong
time and place the claims of one group over those of
another. These claims cannot be measured nor ad-
justed by any rude appreciation of the numbers of
persons affected, or of direct effects of conduct. He
may need a lifetime of cultivated moral sagacity to
determine rightly and justly, and no bare rules or
recorded experience of others can do more than supply
him with principles or stimulate him by example.
But when the transition is made from all the
smaller societies to the State, the moral atmosphere
seems to have undergone a transformation and old
things to have become new. Duties which were
relative become absolute. Actions which were, or
456 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
seemed, partly virtuous and partly vicious are exposed
in their true colours to the light of day. The whole
judgments of mankind seem to have become concen-
/ trated and enlightened, and the experience of the race
. to be laid under tribute for the purpose of clearing
moral action and propagating throughout societ3'
straightforward and perspicuous popular sentiments.
Cari sunt parentes, cari liberi, propinqui, familiares ; sed
omnes omnium caritates patria una complexa est ; pro
qua quis tonus duhitet oppetere mortem si ei sit pro-
futurus.
In such sentiments as these are gathered up a
world-history of philosophy, which has been not only
filtered into popular truisms, but transfused into the
most inexpugnable of emotions and aspirations. It is
believed to be right to make sacrifices for the State
which no other cause — scarcely even the interest of a
man's self and his home — could justify.
, It is asked why a State or nation differs, beyond
possible comparison, in the dignity and authority of
the claims which it makes on the individual human
component of it, from what is made in the case of
any other or smaller organisation, or even by a wider
organisation, such as an empire (that is a levelling
assemblage of divers nations or States) ; it can only be
answered that the State occupies, in the constitution
of the world, a position sui generis, and to wh^h there
is nothing which presents any exact resemblance or
analogy.
■^ So far as our knowledge extends, it is in the life
of the State, and only there, that human life, in all its
ramifications, can obtain the nourishment it needs for
its appropriate expansion and development. This is
GEOWTH OF PUBLIC MORALITY. 457
equally true, indeed, of the family, and we believe it to
be true of some still higher and less materially con-
stituted society which, amidst all the limitless inter-
pretations which have been placed upon the name, still
retains for Christians the profoundest significance — that
is, the Church.
Each of these organisations has an essential con-
tribution to make to the perfection of human society
and to the perfection of individual life in that society.
Each lays claim to the devout allegiance, within
•pvopci' tTTITvtsT^ the persons who compose it ; and each,
on the other hand, owes to those persons the main-
tenance of its ow^i peculiar character and the faithful
discharge of its tutelary duties.
It is thus that the largest-minded heathen philo-
sophers, such as Aristotle and Cicero, discerned that in
a life of public activity on behalf of the State something
mf)re was concerned than the accomplishment of nar-
row personal aspirations. In the same way, even with
all the refinements of modern ethical criticism, it is
intuitively felt that the self-seeking of such men as
Henry YIII. of England, of Frederick the Great of
Prussia, and even of Napoleon Bonaparte, has to be
submitted to a very different, — though perhaps not
more indulgent, — ordeal from that which is applicable
to ordinary men acting in a more circumscribed area.
The root of this feeling is, no doubt, a true con-
i sciousness that the mere contact with State affairs, and
the lively apprehension it carries with it of the innu-
merable and lasting interests which the conduct of a
single man affects, have of themselves a sobering in-
fluence, which, by tending to dwarf into insignificance
all mere personal cravings, forces even the most narrow
458 - THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
minds into a certain largeness of action whicli suggests
a dominant sense of accountability to something other
and better than a temporary and vacillating public
oninion.
The faults of this moral inquisition, as applied in
/the pagan world, were due in a large degree to the con-
stitution of the pre-Christian States, in which a slave
population vastly exceeded in numbers the population
of enfranchised citizens. The result was that even the
most scrutinising philosophers had no types presented
to their eyes or their memories of phases of society in
which common civic virtues and, still more, prominent
civic excellences were demanded of more than a limited
fraction of all the persons in the State. Thus atten-
ion was fixed far more on the signal examples either
of virtue or vice in individual citizens of note than
on that general standard of public self-renunciation
to which even the humblest and most indigent
citizen would, according to a modern standard, be
expected to attain.
Another cause of this altered spirit of criticism is
to be found in what is sometimes regarded as the
greater gravity of modern life as contrasted with
ancient, but which is really the expression in the world
of politics of the ideas of individual conscience, of
duty, of right, and of wrong, to which the training of
eighteen Christian centuries has, with all its terrible
drawbacks, given such a magnificent extension.
In the older world duties were distinct, separate,
manifold, and, as it were, dislocated. There was no
tie to bind them together, and none to explain the
connexion which the duties of one person, or of one
class of persons, in a community had with duties of a
l/'o
POLITICAL EFFECTS OF CHKISTIANITY. 459
different kind elsewhere. Thus the duties of a man to
his country were artificially contrasted with duties to
his family, to himself, or to mankind at large, and any
impetus that might be given to one order of these
duties simply terminated there, without diffusing any
fresh light or heat beyond itself.
^ The essence of Christian civilisation and of morality,
on the other hand, is to impart to all duties a mutual
connexion, and further to link every group of duties
to a comprehensive and unique spirit of obligation and
' self-devotion, in the harmonions oneness of which the
commonest uses are strengthened and quickened by
alliance with all the rest. Hence, when once it was
recognised in modern consciousness that a man owed
a duty to his country, and could commit a sin by
neglecting this duty, the duty in question was instantly
enforced by all the sacred and persuasive sanctions by
which the whole of the reformed society was kept
together.
It will be well at this point to remark upon a few
of the concrete manifestations of this change of moral
attitude. Instances are supplied by the familiar moral
formulse now universally adopted as defining the duties
of individual citizens in respect of (1) frauds on the
revenue, (2) corruption at elections, (3) revolution.
(1) The prevention of the class of offences to which
belong smuggling and false returns to taxing assess-
ments, might be expected to be easier in modern com-
munities, into the government of which the idea of
^representation enters so largely, than in States in
which the governors and the governed were for almost
all purposes polar opposites.
460 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
Yet the extension of the range of modern govern-
ment from that of the city to the aggregate of cities
and landed territory composing the modern State-unit,
Las of itself, apart from the mere growth of moral
ideas, introduced a new class of difficulties in the
application of common morality to the relations of a
taxpayer and his government. The smaller and more
concentrated the State system, the more nearly does
it approach, in the popular apprehension, to a purely
communistic society, in which the end of the organisa-
tion is understood by everybody concerned ; in which
the supports derivable from a clear and uniform public
/opinion are of the strongest; and in which the loss
occasioned by individual defaulters is most obviously
connected with the undue burdening of all other persons
in the community.
In the present day the financial machinery of
States, — complicated and magnified as it is by enor-
mous public debts, — has attained to a portentous size
and breadth, which in other ages would have seemed
scarcely compatible with the continued existence of a
State. But the productive resources and the extension
of commerce by land and sea could also never have
been foreseen. The general effect, however, is that
such taxation as there is is spread over almost innu-
merable classes and orders of persons, none of whom
are exempt, none ( ^heog gtigally) unduly burdened, and
no one subjected to exactly the same amount of pressure
as another.
Thus, where legal contrivances for detecting evasions
fail, as little help as possible is provided by a rigorous
and keen-sighted tribunal of public opinion. Every one
knows that, if he were the only defaulter, the loss to
FRAUDS ON THE REVENUE. 461
tlie State and tlie access of burden to other persons
would be incalculably smnll. Every one also, when
arguing with himself in his own cause, is too prone to
adopt a sophistical suggestion that a self-governing
community leaves to private citizens a greater licence
to do as they like — that is, not to be governed at
all, and consequently to be governed at their neigh-
bours' expense — than is granted in less popularly-
governed communities.
Hence, — what with the privacy which the very
extent of the taxing operations involves, the unequal
incidence of the taxes, and the impotence of executive
organisations for buoying up the popular conscience, —
a sentiment too easily grows up, and is rapidly diffused,
which is inimical to stern convictions of the treachery
to the State and the real moral turpitude and shameless
cowardice which is involved in evading the discharge of
money debts to the State.
Such Pj sentiment is in fact one of the deepest
political heresy, or rather amounts to political infidelity.
It is one thing openly to refuse to pay a particular tax
in the spirit, say, of John Hampden, or even, as some
persons have done even in England of late, to take the
first step in revolution by refusing to pay all taxes, on
the ground of dissatisfaction with the representative
system, or with the conduct of the government. It is
quite another thing to continue openly to draw all the
advantages of civic concert and to breathe the air of a
full national life, and yet at the same time to turn to
private account the necessarily infirm efforts of the
State to grapple with its perplexities, and to batten
in secret over prey — however small — filched from the
common treasury.
462 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
There is growing up on every side a far higliei
morality than heretofore, with respect to the relations
of a private citizen to the State on its financial side ;
and if scandalously lax doctrines still prevail in many
quarters, this is mainly owing to the greater rate at
which modern States have grown in population, in
territorial extent, and in financial liability, than in an
ethical intelligence adequate to meet the new demands
upon it.
(2) Some of the same reasoning and the same his-
torical consideration applies to the case of bribery and
electoral corruption. The case here is no doubt a some-
what more complex one, inasmuch as the possibilities
of wrong-doing in the matter of giving a vote by no
means stop at the point of merely refusing a pecuniary
payment for it, but travel through the whole scale of
unworthy motives up to those which are just short of
an ideal and scrupulous conscientiousness.
In some countries — as in England, for instance —
the very structure of the State has almost inevitably
connected a base personal interest with the discharge
of the highest representative functions. Under the
nomination-borough system, which prevailed before the
English Eeform Act of 188i\ it was almost inevitable
that the right to send, and therefore to choose, a
member of Parliament was, in the popular conscious-
ness, an essential ingredient in the aggregate of pro-
perty rights vested in the local potentate whose will
determined the election. So soon as these boroughs
were abolished, it might well have seemed that the
new constituencies were the 'universal heirs,' for
electoral purposes, of the aristocracy whose place they
took.
ELECTOKAL EEAUD AND COEBUPTION. 463
This dangerous and confusing notion is even still
supported bj the anomalous circumstance that Peers of
Parliament are constitutionally and legally entitled to
make monetary contracts with railway companies in
respect of their vote for or against a proposed railway-
scheme before the House of Lords. They are not held
to be representatives of the public, and on behalf of the
interests of themselves and their families they may do
what they choose. Thus, just after the passing of the
Eeform Act of 1832, it is probable that not only did
corruption reach its highest point in England, but
the popular conscience in respect of it was at its
weakest.
The great extension, however, of the suffrage has
been gradually working its own cure, and the House of
Commons has only reflected, however tardily, the
promptings of the national conscience, by improving
the machinery for trying imputations of bribery by a
judicial process closely resembling that of a criminal
trial, conducted on the spot by one of the judges of the
High Court of Judicature, as well as by instituting the
ballot.
As to this last institution, indeed, some con-
troversy has taken place among critical moralists as to
its direct and indirect bearing on the public sense of
honour and of political responsibility. It has been
said that voting is discharging a trust, and that every
trust ought to be discharged openly and courageously.
To shelter a voter from the consequence of his vote is
said to be merely nursing in him habits of political
timidity, not to say cowardice.
This reasoning, however, is certainly opposed to the
universal experience of the action of the ballot both in
464 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
the United States, the British colonies, and in Great
Britain itself during the years in which it has already
been in operation. The relief which the ballot secures
from immediate and surrounding pressure, or rather
intrusiveness, of all sorts, and the quiet and decent
order thereby secured for the performance of the most
solemn and deliberate of all political functions, constitute
an almost priceless boon. The ballot need not of itself
involve any concealment of a voter's political character,
intentions; or acts. All it does is to prevent the forcible
exposure of a political act to the eyes of persons who
have no claim whatever to be acquainted with it, and
still less to control it.
If the only sort of corruption which had to be
denounced were thp.t which takes a directly pecuniary
;form, there would be a fair prospect of its shortly
becoming an anachronism. Experience, however, has
been showing of late years that one of the main diffi-
culties, which popular government, — especially when
extended over a wide area, — has to contend with, is due
to corruption of a less palpable kind, and one which,
on the face of it, less easily falls within the reach of
moral obloquy.
The individual voter in the smaller constituencies
or the more remote districts of a country, cannot but
have all sorts of private interests of himself, his family,
his township, or even his religious sect to serve by
returning one candidate to the Legislature rather than
another. It is difficult to say that it is in all cases
base to give a preponderant weight to one or other ol
these interests as contrasted with the whole claims of
the State, which are, perhaps, very imperfectly known,
and still less duly estimated at their true value.
MOHAL BASIS OF AN ELECTORAL SYSTEM. 465
To give just the right degree of regard to the
narrower interest, — which ought not to be wholly
neglected, — and to the wider interest, — which ought to
be of supreme concern, — requires a finely-cultured con-
scientiousness, which can only be the growth of long
and arduous national training, and indeed of individual
education. It is none the less proper, however, to
denounce in the strongest terms the more flagrant
kinds of preferential regard for private over public, and
for local over national objects in the selection of mem-
bers of the legislature.
It does not seem possible in such countries as
England, with its antiquated traditions the other way,
and the United States, with its federal system and
its enormous area, to dispense with the prominence of
the local and territorial element in representation.
Efforts, indeed, have been made (as was seen in a
former chapter), by some such machinery as Mr. Hare's
method of proportional representation, to add the
minorities together over a considerable district, and so,
among other advantages, to reduce the openings for
corruption. But the primary basis of the representative
system, especially in widely scattered territories, will
probably always be local; and therefore the best
securities against corruption must be looked for in
a quickened sensibility to the true relations of near
and distant demands, and to a penetrating conscien-
tiousness in preferring, on proper occasions, the general
to the more particular interest.
(3) The moral duties of citizens in respect to Ee vo-
lution have at all times opened out an unbounded field
of debate. The opinions of most persons are coloured
H H
466 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
by reference to some recent experience either of their
own, or their own nation, or their own times ; and in
proportion to the gravity of the subject is the heat of
the passion with which the discussion of it is usually
approached. In Europe, indeed, it happens that, for
the last two hundred years, the breaking up of the
pretty uniformly distributed pressure of the feudal
system has been attended by a series of revolutions of
an almost uniformly and obviously beneficial character
in each of the European states.
The experience of America has been of a more
ambiguous kind. Enough, however, has happened to
range, on the whole, the friends of political progress
with the advocates of the extreme rights of revolu-
tionists, and in their eyes to erect the right of revo-
lution into almost as dignified a position as was once
occupied by the ' Divine right of Kings.'
And yet if the modern politician could find time to
ponder at leisure on the history of the last hundred
and fifty years of the Roman republic, he would learn
that there are states of society in which there may
i prevail a facility of creating a revolution — now by the
help of the mob, now by that of a professional soldiery,
— which may constitute at once the most tempting
seduction to an unconscientious citizen, and become
the main peril to the stability of any government at
all. Bad and reckless as was the Eoman government
at the beginning of the time alluded to, and flagrant
as were the breaches in the constitution habitually
made by the constitutional authorities themselves, still
the first violent occupation of Eome by Sulla with an
armed force,— for the purpose, indeed, of maintaining
or restoring formal order,^-marks the moment from
EEVOLUTION AND PATRIOTISM. 467
which the true constitutional reparation of Rome
became for ever impossible.
Probably the actual revolution perpetrated by Sulla
was rendered unavoidable by preceding constitutional
events, including the innovations of the Gracchi, and
the choice was only between the permanent rule of
successful soldiers and the intermittent despotism of
street mobs led by capitalists.
^ Such memories are wholesome as checks on any
predisposition to glorify a revolutionary spirit as syno-
nymous with patriotism. When popular government is
completely established, it rests with the people them-
selves — ex hypothesi — to control the action of the
executive, to determine the policy to be pursued by
the legislature, and, if necessary, to recast entirely the
formal mechanism which is interposed between the
popular will and its interpretation in action — that is,
to reform the constitution. It may not be able to do
any of these things in a day, and from personal and
accidental causes the impediments to the full exertion
of the popular force may be greater at one time than
at another.
But after a sufficient interval has elapsed for bring-
ing the public mind to bear on a subject requiring
attention or a defect requiring amendment, and after
full discussion has taken place, and after all the
legitimate influences of all sorts have sufficiently played
upon and counteracted each other, there does arrive a
moment at which it may be truly said that people have
come to a definite determination and know their own
mind.
It is the part of a good citizen, who is possessed by
even the most frenzied eagerness for achieving some
H H 2
468 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
particular political improvement, to attain his object by
a legitimate use of the multiform means legitimately at
his disposal. He will do his utmost to bring the world
— that is, the ultimately effective portion of the whole
body-politic — round to his views ; he will resort, it may
be, to all the instrumentality of the public platform,
the public press, and of what is implied in the right of
association and combination. It is not till every one
/of these resources has been tried and has failed that
\ the question can so much as present itself as to the
: comparative duties of a citizen to acquiesce, for the
n| sake of order, in a hopelessly bad state of things, and
that of encountering the certainty of present disorder,
with the possibility of bringing about a catastrophe,
involving good and evil alike, in pursuit of a good not
otherwise, if at all, to be attained.
The plea for revolution in a popularly-constituted
^ State must rest on the allegation of there being some
accidental obstruction to the free action of the popular
will. This obstruction may be owing to the prepon-
derant and maliciously-exercised influence of some
individual person or group of persons, who, by the
existing forms of the constitution, happen to be placed
out of the reach of popular control ; or it may be due
to the unexpected failure of some check or balance-
wheel which time and circumstances have rendered
futile; or, again, it may be due to a deliberate con-
spiracy, in some quarter or other, by which the forms of
the constitution are complied with, while its spirit is
perverted or treacherously invaded.
Even in such contingencies as these, recent ex-
amples,— of which France at the close of Marshal
MacMahon's Presidency was a signal specimen,— have
REVOLUTION IN FEEE STATES. 4.69
shown that there may be an outlet for the reassertion
of the true popular will short of either mob or military
violence. Anyway, it is a crime of the deepest dye
for any man or assemblage of men to contemplate
revolution, so long as remedies may still presumably be
I / found either within the normal range of constitutional
j action, or by means of popular amendments of the
'' constitution, conducted after a regular and orderly
fashion.
Not, indeed, that severe and scrupulous limits can be
assigned to the excitement and even ebullient fury
which are likely to accompany the disturbance of things
long settled, and the stir of strong passions heated by
fervent appeals to them, and by a consciousness of
corporate sympathy. But the fire and fume of a
healthy political life and growth are distinguishable
at every point from the wanton abuse of the free
mechanism of popular government for the sake of pre-
cipitating results, which, either are achieved only in
appearance, or, if achieved in reality, do, by en-
throning the principle of premature, capricious, and
needless revolution, bring with them infinitely more
loss than gain.
If, as has been seen by the above brief illustrations,
the conduct of the individual citizen is properly exposed
to a moral criticism, on the ground of its conforming
or not conforming to a purely moral standard, it is still
more true that the State itself, in its relation towards
/ its citizens and towards other States, is properly sub-
/ jected to a like censure. The acts of the State are
:::f<ietermined by its executive authority for the time
being, by its legislature, and, in a popularly governed
470 IHE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
I State, by the people. It is in the interaction of these
'three elements that the form and working of the
constitution consist; and though, for one purpose or
another, one of these elements may have to take the
initiative, the action of the constitution, whatever its
form, must tend to bring them all into harmonious co-
operation sooner or later, and so to make each depart-
ment of the State, and the aggregate peojple above all,
responsible for what is wrong and fairly to be accredited
with what is right.
It is in this way that when the conscience of the
nation is spoken of, and the sins of a nation are
denounced, this is by no merely loose analogy to the
moral conformation of the individual human being.
Man is gifted with such an inherently social consti-
tution, that numbers of persons admit of being so
organised as to take up into themselves, as it were,
even the most spiritual elements which characterise
each one of the component atoms. The perfection to
which this sort of moral incarnation reaches will depend,
in a State, on the constitution of that State, coupled
with the facilities which exist for amending, controlling,
or continuously inspiring that constitution.
In whose soever hands the supreme political autho-
rity of the State at a given moment rests, that authority
has cast upon it, as its first duty, the completion of the
State itself, by the development of all the moral possi-
bilities latent in the people, and by, to this end, facili-
tating the acquisition of that organised force which
enables the real proclivities and intuitions of the people
most easily to express themselves, and most effectually
to be converted into action. Certain practical corol-
laries follow from these positions.
MORAL ASPECTS OF SLAVERY. 471
In the first place, the existence of slavery in a
X State is a certain sign either that the State has its
>r^onscience as yet only very imperfectly developed, or
else that it acts habitually and persistently in defiance
of the promptings of conscience. Wherever true slavery
is found, there the cardinal political sin, as Coleridge
pointedly described it, is committed of iurmng-fi person
into a thing. The denial of human rights thereby im-
plied, even if confined to ever so small a fraction of the
community, and even if accidentally attended by every
kind of modification and even humane compensation^
is an outrage which can never be extenuated.
The history, indeed, not only of the most en-
lightened Pagan nations, but of modern nations other-
wise Christian, has shown the terrible inertness of the
ruling portion of the community when brought face to
face with classes of persons who, either by past con-
quests or by long-inherited traditions, are found in a
condition which is very favourable to the present well-
being, or at least to the material enrichment, of all
other persons but themselves.
Experience has shown that the temptations to
moral self-delusion, and even to religious casuistry, for
the purpose of forging pretexts for an institution
incompatible with every idea of a true humanity,
including all the free moral and spiritual elements
comprised in the term, are facile and ever at hand to
an extent which will probably dismay our posterity
even to a greater extent than it does our more hardened
selves.
What is true of slavery is true in an only less con-
Ispicuous degree of every denial of full political rights
j which is based on any other necessity than those con-
472 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
tained in the disabling infirmities of age, mental
infirmity, and penal disfranchisement. If the State
has, in truth, all the essential elements of a moral and
spiritual structure, this structure can only be composed
out of the contributive humanity of .every individual
atom of the population, and not of only a portion of
those atoms, and still less of any capriciously or in-
vidiously-preferred portion of those atoms.
No doubt the course of historical development has
been that of extending the suffrage downwards so as to
embrace wider and wider classes, less obviously marked
out at first as concerning themselves with political
action, rather than of starting with the widest suffrage
and limiting it afterwards. It is no exception to this
that the first English Eeform Act of Henry YI.'s reign,
by which the county suffrage was restricted to forty-
shilling householders, was a disfranchising act. This
was a special enactment for the purpose of procuring
order in the county court at election time, and for
substituting a definite for an indefinite constituency.
The notion of universal suffrage, or of manhood
suffrage, never prevailed at any time in England, in
which country, as in all other feudal States, the origi-
nal basis of the suffrage was that of doing suit and
service at the county court as a vassal of the king.
The borough suffrage, again, had a distinct history of
its own.
The modern extension of the suffrage is usually
treated not as a moral requirement, but as a matter of
mere political expediency, or, at the utmost, of compul-
sory necessity. When once, however, it is apprehended
that, for any classes in a community in full possession of
political rights, — and therefore theoretically, as well as
' r.
MOEAL ASPECTS OF ELECTOKAL EXTENSION. 473
to a great extent practically, in command of the State, —
to refuse a concession of like rights to any other classes
of persons not demonstrably incompetent, constitutes in
the State an offence parallel to that of fraudulent mis-
appropriation in the individual person, it is probable
that political measures for a reconstruction of the
franchise will be considered in a somewhat less exclu-
sive and selfish spirit than is common. Corresponding
to this duty on the part of the State is the duty of the
citizen to exercise his right to vote, and tg^ ex^r<3r9e~ it .^
righteously. (i Oj^ o^ 1^^^%.
Assuming that the State has reached a ccmJ^kutiMraJ^
extension which affords a sufficient opening lor'me-full
exertion of the national voice, and for the effective ^
manifestation of the national will, the first concern of
those who are for the time being the legislative and
administrative organs of the State will be that of
asserting at every point the truly moral constitution
of the State itself as a supreme instrument for the
evolution of all the fairest constituents of individual
character and life.
Among the institutions which even in Pagan socie-
ties have been regarded, and are regarded, as of cardinal
importance for the sustenance both of individual exist-
jence and of the State itself, is that of family life and
of monogamic marriage, on the rigorous maintenance
of which true family life can alone ultimately depend.
In every wide national society very great latitude may
properly be allowed for private associations of all kinds,
whether for mere social purposes or for the higher ends
of economic, industrial, scientific, religious, or political
co-operation. But the character and circumstances of
474 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
the initial family groups, — on tlie vitality, strength,
cohesiveness, and modes of reciprocal interaction of
which the healthiness of the whole body-politic turns, —
are of so momentous an importance that they cannot be
left to individual choice or to the vagaries of scientific
experiment, without the gravest dereliction of duty
somewhere, and — if such a state of things is allowed to
continue — everywhere.
In the older feudal monarchies of Europe, pene-
trated as they are by the crystallised spirit and formal
institutions of Christendom, monogamic marriage is so
unassailably established, and contains so many con-
servative guarantees, that the main difficulty in some
of these countries is to make just provision for un-
avoidable divorces, and to provide equitable arrange
ments for the unhampered marriage of persons be-
longing to different religious societies.
The phenomenon in the United States of a large,
well-populated, industrious, fertile, and otherwise highly
organised district — always aspiring to be a State — being
professedly built up on a foundation of polygamy, is a
portent which can otjly fail to astonish and alarm the
home, as well as the foreign, critic because of that long
familiarity with an evil which is at once its most
dangerous consequence and its sorest punishment.
Repeated indications in Presidents' Messages, in
desultory acts of Congress, and in intermittent sallies
of the central executive government, have always had
at least the effect of making an overt confession to the
world that the wrong is one the flagrancy of which is
nowhere denied, and to which the government is en-
titled and morally bound to apply a stringent and
effective remedy.
THE STATE AND PUBLIC LOTTEEIES. 475
A problem of a peculiarly modern kind lias been
presented by the practice, long habitual in European
States, of utilising by Lotteries the speculative tendencies
of the mass of mankind, in order to enrich the State
without apparent pressure in the way of taxation. This
practice is now being abandoned in those States in
which a liberal constitution has brought the conscience
of the people adequately to bear, and it will at no
distant time probably go the way of all other dese-
crating stains on the ideal dignity of the State.
It does not require any refined ethical analysis to
demonstrate the viciousness of the practice. !Not only
are the vices of men rendered tributary to the State,
and therefore inevitably regarded with political favour
— an objection which so far equally applies to raising a
large part of the revenue from the consumption of
spirituous liquors; but^ — over and above this operation
which it has in common with excise duties on spirits
fixed at a point which shall carefully fail of being
prohibitory, — State lotteries stimulate to the utmost
the vices on which they repose, extend the temptations
to them over vast classes of persons of all ages and
positions to whom they would otherwise be strange, and,
by the mere force of associated interest and a sort of
riotous conspiracy in ill-doing, affect to build the stern
fortunes of an immortal State on the most sandy of
all foundations — public excitement for a flagitious
cause.
What is here said of State lotteries properly so
called — that is, the practice of raising revenue directly
by the institution of all the mechanism of general
contribution, a few great prizes, a vast number of
blanks, a widely extended system of advertisement.
476 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
and all the glamour capable of being imparted to it by
a superficial decorum in the elaboration of details, all
under the direct executive administration of govern-
ment, — applies with little less force to all public patron-
age of gaming-tables, to fixed institutions for the direct
encouragement of gambling, and to the permission,
whether legislative or executive, of even occasional
lotteries which are on a scale extensive and pretentious
enough to entrap and delude those innocent classes
of society which, from their previous experience, are
least likely to be able to save themselves from a wholly
novel infection.
Nothing, indeed, short of a determined recognition
of the illegality of all public gaming-tables or insti-
tutions, permanent or temporary, which rest on a gam-
bling basis, can vindicate the honour of the State in this
matter. And it will not be sufficient for the State to
make laws, however severe, unless it practicall}^ secures
that they are consistently and effectually enforced.
There are other modes of raising a revenue or of
temporarily increasing the national resources, wbich,
however supported at the moment by the popular voice,
and however successfully they may evade the criticism
of even the more sceptical members of society, are none
the less tainted with immorality, and, to the extent
that they prevail, are fraught with danger to the
stability of the nation.
To this class of expedients belong all remedies for
current evils which really partake of the nature of
confiscation of property, of repudiation of debts, and —
what usually involves both the one and the other — of
depreciation of the coinage. This is by no means
saying that revolutionary crises may not arise in which
FINANCIAL IMMOE.iLITY OF STATES. 477
measures of these kinds, which usually must be cha-
racterised as suicidal, may not be morally justifiable,
as courses to be preferred to an instant plunge into
anarchy. If these desperate adventures were only
reserved for such epochs, they would scarcely come
within the ken of the general moralist.
It needs, however, only to glance around at the
actual practice of some States, otherwise enjoying a
reputation for justice and public honesty, and at the
language occasionally used in the legislative assemblies,
and even at diplomatic correspondence with other
Stat^, to see that the current line drawn between
justice and injustice, truth and falsehood, right and
wrong, in the case of such financial topics as those
adverted to, is far too often shamefully flickering and
indistinct.
There is indeed one special abuse in this direction
which is a peculiar growth of modern times, and is a
product of the very increase of stability and of moral
reputation to which, on the whole, modern States, as
contrasted with ancient ones, have attained. This is
the disposition to meet financial emergencies, deficits,
or pressing and accidental claims, by creating national
debts, involving indefinite charges on the remotest
posterity.
The general principle is, indeed, publicly avowed,
that a moral rule does apply to determine the cases in
which it is, and which~it is ^t, legitimate to burden
posterity. But the facility of obtaining money in this
way often presents a seductive temptation to states-
men and to political parties desirous of carrying out
a policy of their own, and for a ready and persistent
adherence to which they cannot steadily rely on the
478 THE SCIENCE OE POLITICS.
bulk of the population, nor expect to meet with all the
sacrifices which the policy — if paid for at once, as is
said * within the year,' that is, by simple taxation —
would involve.
Yet not more in political circles than elsewhere
is the facility for obtaining money always a moral
justification of the means resorted to for obtaining
it. That State is most truly a State which carries
to the highest pitch the notions, so tardily and hardly
acquired, of its own integrity, continuity, and immor-
tality. Where the State shows itself reckless in regard
to its future constituents, it not only demolishes its
own public credit at home and abroad, sets a pernicious
example of reckless prodigality in the sight of its own
subjects, but, to the extent that the financial operations
go, impairs its own existence by a sort of constitutional
suicide.
A more perplexed topic is presented by a very uni-
versal practice among modern Christian States, as well
h^ as among the States of antiquity, of organising sexual
-^ vice by providing a special police machinery in the
greater towns of a country, and not merely for con-
trolling the excesses or marking out the local boun-
daries of vicious indulgence, but for the purpose, or
certainly with the obvious result, of encouraging and
facilitating it, at all events, within those boundaries.
The fact that the whole topic does, from its nature,
escape the sifting discussion and public criticism to
which every other class of questionable policy is in free
States exposed, has had the effect of withdrawing it in
a considerable degree from the unfettered and direct
action of the public conscience. It is difficult to draw
the line between the legitimate province of the State
MORALITY OY CRDIINAL PUNISHMENTS. 479
as occupied in curtailing the outward exhibition of
vice, and even in restricting the far-radiating physical
inconveniences brought upon the innocent by the
guilty, and the undoubted trespass beyond the limits of
that province committed in giving any, even the
minutest, impetus to vice itself, in degrading one sex
for the presumed gain of the other, and in lowering
everywhere the standard of moral perfection which the
laws of the State, though incompetent directly to pro-
duce, must invariably confess and undeviatingly tend
to bring about. \
LWhen the history of these laws is thoroughly ex-
ined, it will be found that, the defences of them
are wholly ex post facto, that they rest on imagined
benefits, which either do not follow at all, or are due
to some casual operation of the police system which
has nothing intrinsically to do with the licensing and
medical inspection which is the essence of it; and
that, lastly, the whole method owes its origin to coun-
tries and states of society so far already sunk in uni-
versal profligacy as to make for them the thought of
even average purity and self-restraint seem a mere
Utopian vision. But it cannot be admitted that the
morality of the future should be ' cabined, cribbed,
confined ' b}^ the dwarfing shrouds in which the dead
past has buried its dead.
There is yet one topic which must be noticed as
affecting the State's conscience of right and wrong —
that is, the legitimacy of the use of certain punish-
ments for crimes. It is now generally recognised that
there are certain kinds of punishments, such, for
example, as those which involve torture, mutilation.
480 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
aud certain forms of infamy, which no circumstances
whatever can justify as available. There are others,
such as capital punishment, on which opinion may be
said to be sharply and decisively divided. There are
others, such as flogging, on which public opinion may
be said to be wavering and unsettled.
Two principles of moral criticism have, however,
clearly emerged of late years. One is, that there are
certain moral and personal attributes which constitute
the human nature of every one, and that there are
kinds of outrage on this nature which no end whatever
can justify the State in resorting to. Again, it is
getting recognised that, in all criminal punishments,
the moral improvement of the individual offender
must be always maintained as one of the ends in
view, so far as it is compatible with the protection of
society.
The application of these principles in detail is
indeed not easy, and will long continue to promote
debate among philanthropists and reformers. But it
is no small gain to the cause of morality to have for
ever altered the aspect of criminal punishments from
being violent, vengeful, and retaliatory conflicts with
the defenceless wretch for whose crimes society is at
least as much responsible as himself, to a deliberative
and cautious essay how far the minimum of pain to
one maybe combined with tWe maximum of profit to
all the parties involved. The' majesty and authority of
the State is far better ma;nfested in using its giant
strength with precision, with gentleness, and with
caution, than (as was once supposed) in surrendering
itself to the promptings of angry passion and of a
capricious vindictiveness better befitting children or
MORALITY BETWEEN STATES. 481
madmen than rational human beings called to share in
the divine task of government.
The aspects towards right and wrong of the indi-
vidual citizen and of the State, in its domestic relations,
have hitherto attracted less attention than the more
obvious moral constitution and responsibilities of the
State when brought into contact with other political or
imperfectly civilised communities.
In this last case the unity and integrity of the
State is pre-eminently conspicuous, and the complexity
of its action, as well as the counter-movements of
opposed parties, from the ultimate reconciliation of
which every determinate course of proceeding springs,
is cloaked under the form of decisive administration
and simple diplomatic utterances.
Indeed, in very ancient times, the good or bad
faith of States towards each other in respect of the
strict observance of treaties, of engagements towards
commanders in the field, of promises to ambassadors,
and of capitulations of all sorts, were held to stamp
the community with a permanent reputation of the
highest or the lowest kind. It cannot be said that in
modern times the stringent exactions of moralists in
respect of ordinary good faith between State and State,
as between other moral beings, is in any degree re-
laxed. A wholesome difference and improvement, how-
ever, is observable in the greater extension to which
the moral scrutiny is carried out, and the more precise
details to which it is held practically to apply.
It is especially in the transactions of a stronger
with a weaker State, — or with a State which, through
the momentary event of an unsuccessful war, finds
itself in the condition of a weaker State, — that the
II
iS2 THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
force of a purely ethical canon of action is most de-
cisively pat to the test.
Not to dwell on the more perplexed and ambiguous
history of British policy in the East Indies during the
last century and a half, and the current treatment of
hopeful aboriginal communities by British colonists, —
only too often aided by a mass of unscrupulous pre-
judice and guilty ignorance at home, — the treatment
of the great, though unhappily, for too many purposes,
impotent, Chinese Empire, is a deplorable illustration
of the quantity of iniquity which, even at the present
day, one State may wreak on another without exciting
animadversion or odium either at home or abroad.
From the numerous examples which have been
above adduced of the application of a strictly moral
standard to 'the political acts of citizens, and to the
executive, legislative, and international acts of States,
' it will have been sufficiently seen where the main diffi-
culty lies in applying in detail the best acknowledged
general principles. In all policy there must be a cer-
tain element of conjecture, of calculation, of compari-
son of ends, of the adjustment of means to ends, and,
in a word, of quantitative measurement, which, in the
more simple and spontaneous domain of individual life
and action, would be irrelevant, and might seem even
base. But at the best, and when the State is idealised
to the utmost as an independent and responsible moral
being, it still retains certain of the qualities and condi-
tions of an artificially constructed machine.
The State can only be called into dynamical action
by a concert of forces producible by a more or less
complex series of casually co-operating, but more fre-
quently conflicting, agencies. Much of the healthiest
STATE MOEALITY IN THE FUTUKE. 483
part of political life is concerned with bringing the
latent opposition of persons and parties face to face,
and with reducing the points of final divergence to
such an extent that a clear line of common and united
action may be discovered. But all this process implies
delay, hesitation, uncertainty, and, even in some way,
concession and compromise. In State life there are
mental conditions which, on the face of them, are
alien to those prompt and, as it were, intrusive as well
as decisive suggestions, which in the individual person
of healthy moral organisation are never lacking, and
are deferred to with unquestioning obedience.
But the fact that prudence and calculation, as well
as a peculiar complexity of action, distinguish the con-
duct of a State from that of any one of its citizens
when dealing with his own private affairs, is only an
aggravation of the difficulty of the moral problem so
soon as it is presented, and is no reason for ignoring
its existence, and still less for a precipitate and nuga-
tory attempt to solve it.
In the region of individual life and existence the
triumphs of Christian morality have, after centuries of
ecclesiastical vagaries, been finally vindicated. It is
now pretty universally confessed that no distinguishing
line can be drawn between the consummated perfection
of nature, for which the Pagan moralist longed and
longs, and the spotless holiness of the Christian who
deems himself bound to be perfect as his Father in
Heaven is perfect. The last triumphs of the same
morality wiU manifest themselves in the building up
for each temporal State of a finely and exactly adjusted
polity, or, in other words, of a city which ' lieth four
square,' of which ' the length is as large as the breadth,'
I I 2
48-i THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.
and the slow and struggling formation of which will
be then, and not till then, fully vindicated when, in the
spiritual region, the kingdoms of this world are trans-
formed into a new and larger citj-State, having ever-
lasting foundations, and whose builder and maker is
God,
INDEX.
ADM
A BMINI STRATI VE, the term,
-^^ history and explanation of,
100
Agrarian problems, account of
Roman, 401
America, history of Party in, in
reference to political organisa-
tion, 189-191
American Colonies, problems sug-
gested by history of the, 316-
318
— Revolution, its place in the
history of political science, 46
— Secession War, criticism of
grounds of, 442-445
— : War of Independence, com-
parison of, with the French
Revolution, 441, 442
Aristotle, place of his works in
the history of political science,
23, 24, 181
Army, problems relating to the
management of the, 257
Austin, his views on centralisa-
tion, 289
— his Utilitarian theory, 453
Australian Colonies, connexion of
England with her, 332-834
their disposition to extend
the province of Government, 386
history of Party in, 191, 192
BALLOT, use and moral justifi-
cation of the, 464
Bank Chnrter Act, the, its politi-
cnX bearineis, 267, 268
CHU
Bank of England, the, its political
position, 267
— of France, the, its political po-
sition, 267
— functions of the State in rela-
tion to a national, 421
Bribery, grounds of immorality
of, 462
British India, land policy in, 397
recent changes in adminis-
tration of, 340
Burke, his ' Reflections,' place of,
in political science, 49, 124
CABINET, constitutional char-
acter of the English, 249, 250
Calhoun, Mr,, his ' States Rights '
doctrine, 443
Capital punishment, arguments on,
as illustrating logical methods,
121
Ce7itraUsation, analysis and his-
tory of term, 289, 290
Chamber, problems relating to a
Second, 202, 236 sq.
China, causes of its commercial
exclusiveness, 368
— its place in the modern po-
litical world, 135
Christian Church, the, its relation
to political organisation, 174,
185 sq.
Church Councils, their relation to
political organisation, 187
— of England, the, its constitu-
tional position, 415
486
INDEX.
C'HU
Church and State, the relation of,
considered, 413 sq.
Codification, place of, in the history
of law, 81-84
Colonies, American, place of, in
the history of political science, 47
— — problems suggested by
history of the, 316-318
— Australian, connexion of Eng-
land with her, 332-334
— the British, in America, as
illustrating the history of con-
stitutions, 175
— land policy in British, 400
— possibility of representation of,
334 sq.
Colonisation, political aspects of,
324 sq.
Colony, Crown, what is a, 176, 177
Commercial Companies, relation
of the State to, 410-412
'Commune,' bearings of the history
of the French, 256
Communism, account of modern,
379
Companies, commercial, relation
of the State to, 410-412
COMTE, M. AuGUSTE, place of his
treatises in political science,
52,53
his views on the relation
of women to men, 141
Congtitutio?ial, the term, history
and explanation of, 60, 176
Constitutions, general account of,
174 sq.
Contract law, an occasion of
Government intervention, 389
Contract, the Social, place of the
idea of, in the history of poli-
tical science, 45, 124, 182
Crimes, moral questions ajffecting
punishment of, 479
DEBTS, moral questions respect-
ing national, 477, 478
— , public, functions of the Exe-
cutive relating to, 264 sq.
Dependencies, Government of,
'illsq.
GOV
EAST INDIA COMPANY, poli-
tical development of the, 319,
320
its policy, 369
Education, national, functions of
the State in respect to, 424
Electoral franchise, examination
of principles relating to the,
198 sq.
Emigration, political aspects of,
323 sq.
Executive, the term, history and
account of, 87 sq.
Executive Authority, the, its re-
lation to the Legislature, 246
FAMILY, the, its relations to the
State, 166
* Federalist,' place of the, in the
history of political science, 48
Federation, ancient and modern
attempts at, 279
Feudal system, bearing of the, on
land tenures, 156
Feudalism, its place in the history
of politics, 37
Foreign relations, political pro-
blems involved in, 342 sq.
FORTESCUB, place of his works in
the history of political science,
41
France, history of Party in, 193-
195
Franchise, electoral, examination
of principles relating to the,
198 sq.
French Eevolution, influence of
the, on political theory, 375
its place in the history of
political science, 49-52
— Senate, organisation of the, 309
GAMBLING, policy of laws for
the prevention of, 475, 476
Geographical area, the, of modern
politics, 126 sq.
Gavernntcnt, the term, history and
explanation of, 67-69
INDEX.
487
GOV
Government of Dependencies, pro-
blems relating to the, 311 sq.
— investigation into the province
of, 371
— local, problems relating to,
277 sq.
Greece, history of the States of,
its scientific bearings, 25-29
Grote, Mr., his views on Athenian
character, 233
— Professor, his treatise on Utili-
tarianism, 453
HARE, Mr., scheme of, for the
representation of minorities,
224
as a corrective of corrup-
tion, 465
Health, the public, functions of
Government respecting, 406
sq.
History, Sir G. C. Lewis's remarks
on the VI? e of, in politics, 114
HOBBES, his place in the history
of political science, 42
Hooker, his Ecclesiastical Polity,
place of, in the history of politi-
cal science, 38
Humboldt, Wilhelm von, his
treatise on the province of
Government, 372
TNDEPENDENCE of a State,
X what it means, 351 sq.
India, British, duties of English
Government to, 333
recent changes in adminis-
tration of, 340
land policy in, 397
Intervention, its connexion with
the independence of States, 353,
354
Ireland, the land problem in, 398
JAPAN, its place in the modern
political world, 135
Jewish State, the, its relations to
family life, 161
MAZ
Judges, their constitutional func-
tions, 275
Judicial authority, the, its relation
to the Legislative and Executive
Authoritv, 246, 248
LAND, State intervention in re-
spect of, 395 sq.
— tenure of, as an element of
political life, 147 sq.
Law, the term, history and analy-
sis of, 69 sq.
Legislative, the term, history and
account of, 87 sq.
Legislative authority, its relation
to the Executive, 246 sq.
Lewls, Sir G. C, estimate of his
< Methods of Reasoning in Poli-
tics,' 109, 114
— his remarks on politi-
cal Utopias, 22, 23
Liquor traffic, problems relating to
regulation of, 300, 301
Local Boards, problems relating to
the organisation of, 307
— Government, problems relating
to, 277 sq.
of towns, 304
Locomotion, functions of Govern-
ment respecting, 405
Lords, House of, problems relating
to, 236 sq.
Lotteries, immorality of State,
476. 476
MACHIAVELLI, his place in
the history of political sci-
ence, 36
Maine, Sir H. S., his views on the
introduction of English tenures
into India, 151
Malthus, illustration from his
population theory, 376
Marriage, history of, as a political
factor, 159
— monogamic, political grounds
of, 473, 474
Mazzini, place of, in the history
of political science, 54
488
INDEX.
MED
Medical profession, political dis-
qualifications of the, 408
Mill, Mr. J. S., on the adminis-
tration of British India, 340
on relations of wo-
men to men, 139, 140
his remarks on ex-
periments in politics, 113
his views on the pro-
vince of Government, 372
Minorities, problems relating to
representation of, 219 sq.
Mohammedanism, its polygamic
aspect, 160 sq.
Monogamic marriage, political
grounds of, 473, 474
Mormonism, its polygamic as-
pects, 163, 164, 474
Municipal Corporation Act, po-
litical aspects of the, 308
NATIONALITY, influence of
doctrine of, 345, 358
Navigation, functions of the State
in relation to, 422, 423
• — Laws, political aspects of the,
317
Navy, problems relating to the
management of the, 257
New South Wales, how its con-
stitution was founded, 387
Nihilism, its influence on political
theory, 379
OTTOMAN Empire, the, ques-
tion of its political vitality,
132, 133, 136, 137
PARIS, Treaty of, 1814, political
consequences of, 343, 344
Parliaments, problems relating to
duration of, 217
Party, his'oric bearings of, on
political organisation, 188 sq.
Party, various uses of the term,
6?, 62
Peel, Sir Robert, his railway
policy, 406
REV
Plato, his place in the history of
political science, 22
Plebiscitey the, its constitutional
aspects, 201, 202, 226
Police, problems relating to the
management of, 254, 298, 478
Political economy, its influence on
political theory, 375, 376, 392
— reasoning, inquiry into, 107 sq,
— terms, account of, 56 sq.
Politics, science of, its nature and
limits, 1 sq.
Poor law administration, as a
topic of local government, 296,
297
— laws, their indirect political
influence, 377, 382, 389, 392
Prerogative, explanation of the
terms, 105
President of the United States,
constitutional position of the,
201, 248
Press, the, as a political influence,
234
Prime Minister, constituti'onal po-
sition of the English, 251
Privy Council, its constitutional
character, 251
Province of Government, investi-
gation of the, 371 sq.
Provincial Government, Roman,
problems suggested by history
of, 314, 315
Punishments, moral questions af-
fecting criminal, 479, 480
RAILWAYS, Government policy
relating to, 405, 406
Religion, functions of the State
in relation to, 412
Renan, M., his historical views,
450
Representation of colonies, pos-
sibility of, 334 sq.
minorities, problems relating
to, 219 sq.
Revolution, the American, its place
in the history of political sci-
ence, 46
INDEX,
489
REV
Revolution, the English, compared
with the French, 439-411
French, its influence on po-
litical theory, 375
its place in the history
of political science, 49-52
— moral duties in respect of,
465 iq^.
— period in England, account of
the, 435-439
Revolutions in States, inquiry
into causes of, 427 sq.
Uighti the term, history and ana-
lysis of, 100 sq.
Roman Provincial Government,
problems suggested by the his-
tory of, 314, 315
— Republic and Empire, place of,
in history of political science,
31-34, 131
Rome, account of the agrarian
problems of, 401
— as an exhibition of senile
failure, 131
liOUSSEATJ, his views on a state
of nature, 117
Russia, effects of its extent of
territory, 323
OCHOOL BOARDS, their poli-
O tical aspects, 295
method of election of Eng-
lish, 227
Science of Politics, its nature and
limits, 1 sq.
Secession, American War of, cri-
ticism of the grounds of, 442-445
Senate, French, organisation of
the, 309
— of United States, its functions
in foreign policy, 355
Slavery, its immorality, 471
— its place in the history of po-
litical science, 25
Social Contract, place of the
notion of, in the history of po-
litical science, 45, 124, 182
Socialism, account of modem, 379,
380
Spencee, Herbert, Mr., his views
UTO
on the province of Government,
372, 381, 382
State, the tenn, history and
analysis of, 63 sq.
— Church and, relations of, con-
sidered, 413 sq.
— elements and growth of a,
138 sq.
— independence of a, what it
means, 351 sq.
Statistics, their modem use in
political inquiries, 18
Suez Canal, policy of English
purchase of shares in the, 270 sq.
Suffrage, extension of the, as a
moral question, 472
TAXATIOiST, immorality of
fraudulent evasions of, 459
— principles of pohcy affecting,
403
Towns as areas of local govern-
ment, 302 sq.
— problems relating to the repre-
sentation of , 2 1 2 sq.
Trades Unions, their bearing on
State organisation, 171
Treaty of Paris, 1814, political
consequences of, 343, 344
TTNCONSTITUTIONAL, his-
^ tory and explanation of the
term, 60
United States, constitutional
position of the President of the,
201, 248
constitutional problems re-
lating to the, 179, 180
growth of the, its place in
the history of political science,
46
Senate of the, its functions
in foreign policy, 355
Utilitarianism, its place in poli-
tical theory, 451 sq.
Utilitarians, place of English, in
the history of political science,
54, 55
Utopia, Sir T. More's, place of, in
490
INDEX.
UTO
the history of political science,
38
Utopias, Sir G. C. Lewis's remarks
on, 22, 23
VICE, legislative policy respect-
ing. 478, 479
WOM
Victoria, colony of, how its con-
stitution was founded, 387
WAB, prospects of its continu-
ance, 361
Ward, Mr., his account of the in-
fluence of the Papacy, 450
Women, their political relation to
men, 139, 182
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