ID
00
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POLITICAL PROGRESS
NOT NECESSARILY DEMOCRATIC:
OB
RELATIVE EQUALITY
THE TRUE FOUNDATION
OF
LIBERTY.
JAMES LORIMER Esq.
ADVOCATE.
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,
14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON;
AND
20 SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH.
1857.
LEIPZIG: PRINTED BY B. G. TEUBNER.
EGTL ds TIKOK nohs x TOV noiov KKI
nocov' Af'yco dz noibv /if v 8 tev&tQiav, Ttkov-
tov , Ttaidfiav, fvyivsiuv noGov de rj\v xov
Aristot. Politic. Lib. IV. cap. 10.
Movov yug fiovifjiov TO "Actr K&ICCV i'oov,
Y.O.I TO f%lV TK KVT&V.
Ibid. V. 6.
PREFACE.
No less bold an innovator than Lord Bacon,
made it reproach against no less justly self
reliant a speculator than Aristotle, that "he
did proceed in a spirit of difference and con-
tradiction to all antiquity." Mindful of a fact so
significant of the consequences of similar trans-
gressions in smaller men, I have been careful,
wherever I suggested anything new, to shew that
it was, at the least, a legitimate consequence
of something old.
But for the feeling that for the most part
I had humbly followed in the foot-prints of those
whom the wisest of my readers would most re-
vere, I should not have ventured to run counter
to prevailing opinions so confidently as I have
done; and in instances where I felt most hesi-
VI
tation, it has been an unspeakable comfort to
me to know that those who called my views
in question would not have to do with me alone.
If out of the history of former times or of
formerly received opinions, I have succeeded in
gathering anything which shall be capable of
present application, such a result will furnish
no insignificant incentive to me to prosecute,
and to others to pursue those studies in which
I have most delighted, and in the dignity and
fruitfulness of which, beyond all other human
studies, I have been wont to believe.
It is impossible not to feel that in a work
which deals with so weighty a subject as the
constitution of his country, the author acts un-
der the heaviest responsibility. The effect pro-
duced may be JVt7, but it is not his intention
that such should be the case, and therefore
the moral responsibility is not lessened by the
insignificance of what is accomplished. On the
other hand, the more important the subject
the more imperative is the duty which lies
VII
at the door of every good citizen to bring to
its elucidation whatever portion of light may
have been imparted to him. It is the fearless-
ness with which Englishmen have spoken their
thoughts on subjects of public interest, which
has given to England the place which she
occupies in the civilised world, and the mo-
ment that Englishmen cease by appealing from
present usage to permanent principle, courage-
ously to pursue truth their preeminence will be
gone, even although the race (which is scarcely
likely) should retain the physical intrepidity
which has hitherto characterised it. If on the
present occasion I have suceeded in removing
the sources of theoretical conflict between po-
litical doctrines which have hitherto been sup-
posed to be irreconcilable, and thus by shew-
ing the possibility of their simultaneous re-
cognition, have paved the way for a safer pro-
gress on a road which not Englishmen only, but
every civilized people must inevitably tread, a
good work will have been accomplished. If, on
VIII
the contrary, my reading of the past has been er-
roneous ; or my application of its lessons to the
future inconsiderate or inept, I shall find perso-
nal consolation in the reflection that I have not
been wholly devoid of that singleness of pur-
pose, for the possession of which alone man is
responsible. The results of our labours are in
other hands, and all that either modesty suggests
or piety demands in handing them over to our
fellow men, I find to have been said on a similar
occasion by a great man , in words which merit
to be used as a perpetual formulary. "Et jam
adeo, si quid hie pietati , si quid bonis moribus,
si quid sacris literis, si quidEcclesiae Christianae
consensui, si quid ulli veritati dissentaneum a
me dictum est, id ne dictum esto." *
* Grotius. De jure belli et pacis. Proleg.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
Of the degree of certainty which may be attained
in political speculation 1
CHAPTER II.
Of the relation between legislation and the spirit
of the people 8
CHAPTER III.
Of the relation between legislation and political
speculation 23
CHAPTER IV.
The Problem of Politics. ......... 31
CHAPTER V.
The method of solution. 42
CHAPTER VI.
Of the principle according to which our choice of
historical precedents must be regulated. . . 53
CHAPTER VII.
What historical precedents bear most closely on
the present condition of England? .... 59
CHAPTER VIII.
Of the danger of adopting the Experience of Anti-
quity. . . . . ' 73
CHAPTER IX.
The Publicists the interpreters of Antiquity. . . 88
CHAPTER X. PAGE
The Dicta of the ancient Publicists 104
CHAPTER XI.
How did the ancients propose to escape from the
Cycle? .... 133
CHAPTER XII.
How do the moderns propose to escape from the
Cycle? .... 155
CHAPTER XIII.
)( Do any public rights belong to man as man? . . . 199
CHAPTER XIV.
The Suffrage. 221
CHAPTER XV.
Farther Characteristics of the ultimate suffrage. . 231
CHAPTER XVI.
A graduated property suffrage considered. . . . 237
CHAPTER XVII.
)\Other methods of giving political recognition to so-
cial inequality. 245
CHAPTER XVIII.
\ By what means may the public spirit be influen-
ced and directed? 254
^ CHAPTER XIX.
)\Of the leaders of thought scientific and popular. 261
CHAPTER XX.
Of the universal duty of active - mindedness. . . 276
CHAPTER XXI.
X Of political Education 286
CHAPTER XXII.
X^Of the Church in its political relations. ... . 295
EEEATA.
Page 14, line 9,/<? ! " advantageous," read " advantageous."
Page 17, note, line 6, for " once," read " over."
Page 20, line 22,/or " form." read " favour."
Page 22, line 10, read " may he, in common honesty he must,
' seek," etc.
Page 50, line 12, for " independant," read " independent"
Page 55, line 15, for " Statesmen," read " Statesman."
Page 65, line 14, for " poltical," read " political."
Page 67, line 21, for " reacted," m/// " reached."
Page 115, 0te, line 8, lor ' mention,'' /-mrf " mentions."
Page 140, line 19,/w " faught," // <l fraught."
Page 141, line 3, for " prepounded," re<7fi? "propounded."
Page 177, last line,/*?/* " no," read " on."
Page 275, line 6, for " high," read " nigh."
Page 283, line 8, for " entriprising," read " entcrpiiding."
CHAP. I. ''-.
OF THE DEGREE OP CERTAINTY WHICH MAY BE AT-
TAINED IN POLITICAL SPECULATION.
Aristotle has warned us, more than once,*
against the error of supposing that all subjects
of enquiry admit of being treated with the same
exactitude, or of yielding results equally certain.
It is with special reference to Ethics and Po-
litics that he has endeavoured, by thus mode-
rating our expectations, to guard us against
discouragement; and very little consideration
will suffice to convince us that Speculative Po-
litics, in particular, must be liable to many
sources of error, from which the mathematical
and physical sciences are free.
Dealing with human motives and actions, the
Science of Politics does not admit of demon-
stration, and scarcely of experiment. It is thus
founded almost exclusively on observation, di-
* Ethic, Nic. Lib. I. c. Ill and VII. Politic. Lib. IV.
c. I.
A
reeled now to the external actions of men , and
their consequences, now to the physiological
phenomena of human life, and the dicta of hu-
man consciousness.*
la so far a& the discovery and verification
of data are concerned, no very serious difficulty
will in general beset the politician. In his histo-
rical investigations he does not require to tra-
vel beyond the range of organised society, and
his chief concern is with communities in their
most cultivated state. In such circumstances
men have seldom failed to transmit a record of
their actions, and thus the political speculator,
through the whole course of his labours, can
reckon on the guidance of authentic history.
Again as to the physiological and psychological
data of which he stands in need ; these , for
the most part, are the most patent and incon-
trovertible results of their respective sciences,
and hence the facts with which he is furnished
* II est bien vrai que c'est 1'observation seule qui
doit toujours guider une philosophie prudente. Mais
les faits sont de deux especes. L'ame de 1'homme en
contient d'aussi re'els que le monde du dehors ; et si quel-
que part les faits psychologiques doivent tenir une grande
place, c'est surtout dans la science politique ou il n'est
question que de rhuraanite'. Barthe'lemy St. Hilaire.
La politique d'Aristote. Pre'face LII.
from these quarters, far from embarrassing him
in his progress, or casting doubt on his con-
clusions, are his surest stepping stones over the
shifting current of human affairs.
But such data are valuable only as means to
an end, and if the prevalent error in preceding
times has consisted in rashly building science on
insufficient foundations, it is not impossible that
our own generation may be reproached with
occasionally mistaking the foundations for the
edifice which it is their object to support.
But here it is precisely, when we quit the
region of observation, and attempt to derive
from the facts with which it has furnished us
rules for the guidance of future conduct ,* that
we meet with difficulties of an altogether novel
description. The physical and psychical man,
we know, will remain substantially unchanged,
but the atmosphere of circumstances in which he
is called upon to act will be entirely different.
Every past event with which we are acquainted
was brought about by, or occurred in conjunction
* Political science is essentially the prudentia futu-
rorum. The terra "Prudence," in the sense of foresight,
(providentia humana,) is constantly used as synonymous
with Politics by the older writers in our own language ;
particularly by Harrington.
A2
with, an infinite complication of other events ; or
if it had its proximate cause in one known hu-
man volition , that volition was actuated by
many motives, all forming causes more or less
remote. Of these latter events and motives all
that is certain is that they never, in all proba-
bility, will recur, or if so, that they will not
recur in the same combinations; and the ques-
tion with reference to future events thus comes
to be, is the recurrence of some of them,
either alone or in other combinations, a guarantee
for the recurrence of the consequences which
followed their former presence? The only hope
of success in the solution of such a question
manifestly consists in our being able to distin-
guish between circumstances which were acci-
dentally present, and those which to a certain
extent were necessary to the event ; between
those motives which at most were subsidiary,
and those without which the resolution would
not have been taken.
The first step in our progress towards this dis-
tinction, in the general case, will consist in a
criticism of the attendant circumstances of the
given event, and the presumption of necessity
and consequently of causation, will be strongest in
favor of those circumstances, the action of which
U\j
sc
has been most continuous, and which seem in
themselves most important.
Having such a finger-post to guide us to the
possible cause, the fact of whether it does so
act or not, may be investigated either by a con-
ious and formal , or by an unconscious and
informal, but not therefore inaccurate, applica-
tion of those rules which have been laid down
by writers on inductive logic. *
It is not our object to write a treatise on po-
litical methodology ; and we are happy to be able
to refer, for an almost exhaustive treatment of
that subject, to the work of Sir G. Cornwall
Lewis, the best in our own language, or in any
other with which we are acquainted. But in
order that we may induce our readers to follow
us in the attempt which we are about to make
to apply the principles of reasoning which Sir
Of these the most useful are the methods of agree-
ment and* difference , which Sir G. Cornwall Lewis has
adopted from Mr. Mill. "The former infers that if, while
the accompanying phenomena vary, two phenomena oc-
cur together, they are related as cause and effect:
the latter infers that , if two phenomena occur in com-
pany with certain sets of phenomena, but are awanting
where the same sets of phenomena occur elsewhere, they
are related in the same manner." Vol. I. p. 342.
6
George Lewis and others have evolved, to the
solution of a political problem of abiding in-
terest , and which certainly before very long
must become one of vast national importance
to ourselves, it may be necessary at the outset
that we should state the extent to which we
hope, amongst so much that is shifting, to find
anything that is stable.
We have already said that the most trust-
worthy guides which the politician can follow,
either in interpreting the past or predicting
the future operation of a political cause, are the
physical and moral laws of our nature. Whilst
men continue to be constituted as they have
hitherto been, these we know, will continue to
direct rather than to be directed by the circum-
stances with which they are brought in contact ;
and our first effort must therefore be to determine
the extent to which they are fulfilled or violated
by any institution, actual or prospective, which
we are about to pass under review.
This preliminary investigation being made,
we believe the two following may be laid down
as perpetual canons.
1 st If a political institution is in accordance
with such a law, or with such laws, its
success may be attributed to a necessary and
permanent, or its failure to an accidental
and transitory cause; and
2 ni1 Conversely. If a political institution vio-
lates such a law or such laws, its success
may be attributed to an accidental and
transitory, or its failure to a necessary and
permanent cause.
Neither rule, it is obvious, can be applied to
a special case without much 'caution, for the ac-
cidental causes of success or failure may recur,
or others equally efficacious may supervene,
whilst necessary causes may be so impeded in
their action as to become for a time altogether
inoperative. Still it cannot, we think, be ques-
tioned that these rules indicate correctly the
principle according to which success or failure
may, usually in the first instance, and always
ultimately be anticipated.
CHAP. II.
OF THE RELATION BETWEEN LEGISLATION AND THE
SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE.
Before we proceed to consider the political
problem with the solution of which we shall
be mainly occupied, it is necessary that we
should determine the relation which subsists
between legislation in general, and the spirit
of the age in which it occurs. A clear insight
into this relation is indispensable to protect us,
on the one hand against fruitless and possibly
hurtful attempts at independent action, and on
the other against a spiritless, unmanly, and
unchristian acquiescence in existing tendencies
even where these are condemned alike by rea-
son and experience.
In every independent state , be the forms
of its executive what they may all sovereignty
which is either stable or efficacious, has its root,
not by arrangement, but of necessity, in the ge-
neral will of those over whom it is exercised,
9
and consequently all legislation , * properly so
called, is the expression of this will.
It is true that human volition no more cre-
ates the moral law which governs the legitimate
state, than it does the physical law which go-
verns the material universe. Both are divine, and
in their essence independent of the will alike
of the many and the few. But there is this
difference between them that the physical law
secures its own fulfilment, whereas the moral
law must not only be fulfilled, but, where re-
velation is silent, must also be interpreted by
human agency. Now the only valid interpre-
tation of this law i. e. the only interpreta-
tion according to which it does or can become
operative in the state, is that which is put upon
it by that general will, which must be supposed
to correspond to the dicta of the general con-
science, the prevalent sense of right and
wrong within the state, for the time being. To
this fundamental principle of politics, which
renders sovereignty not only coincident but iden-
tical with the general will, our own political prac-
tice, following more immediately that of Hol-
* "Laws they are not, which public approbation hath
not made so." Hooker's ecclesiastical Polity.
10
land ; has now for nearly two centuries unre-
sistingly conformed itself.
But even in countries where the practical
supremacy of this principle has not been ac-
knowledged,* so strong has been the feeling that
by means of it alone can the phenomena which
have arisen be theoretically explained, that it
nowhere finds a fuller or clearer expression
than in the pages of some of the greatest of
German thinkers.
We shall select two, not in consequence
of their acknowledged preeminence alone,**
but also from the importance which belongs
to the fact of their having arrived at the same
result, by methods directly the opposite of
each other.
1. Guided by a method entirely independent
of experience, the following are Kant's dicta as
* Bundesbeschliisse vom 28. Juni 1832, und 23. August
1851. Zachariii Verfassungsgesetze der Gegenwart. B. I.
pp. 31 und 48. Vide infra, Cap. XII.
** Lieber, in his ingenious and interesting work on
Political Ethics , has given a curious collection of writers,
of every shade of creed and position, from Father Persons
to Frederick the Great, who have distinctly recognised the
sovereignty of the general will. We believe he has not
mentioned either of the two we have given here, and he cer-
tainly has mentioned none more weighty, or less prejudiced.
11
the necessary centre of sovereignty. "The le-
gislative power can belong only to the united
will of the people. Thus it is that, as all justice
proceeds from this will, it is impossible that
it can do injustice to any one by the laws which
it may establish. So long as one enacts for an
other , it is always possible that he may do
him an injustice, never so where he enacts
only for himself, (for, volenti non fit injuria)."*
and again: "The sovereign (legislator) cannot
be at the same time the governor (regent),
because the latter is subject to the law, and
consequently lies under obligations to another,
i. e. the sovereign. The sovereign can take
from the governor his power, can depose him,
and reform his administration, but cannot pu-
nish him.** The same doctrine pervades the
whole of that portion of his work in which
he treats of public Law.
2. Nor is it less clearly or unreservedly acknow-
* Rechtslehre .46.
** i. e. in his character of governor. *Kant has a cu-
rious note on the executions of Charles I and Louis XVI.
in which he holds that the act of putting them to death was
not so great a violation of justice as the formal judg-
ments which were pronounced on them, which were a re-
versal of justice altogether. See also . 56.
12
ledged by Savigny, as the result of the historical
method, of which he may be regarded as the
most eminent representative.
"In the common consciousness of the people"
he says* "lives the law" ***** "it is the
spirit of the people, living and working in
each individual, which generates positive law,
and which consequently for the consciousness
of each, is one and the same law, not acci-
dentally but necessarily". In enunciating this
doctrine, Savigny must by no means be regarded
as simply expressing his adherence to those
speculations by which the origin of law is
traced to a preexistent sense of justice in man-
kind, as opposed to those by which it is at-
tributed to an original contract, arising out of
a desire for mutual protection, or a sense of
mutual convenience.** In the spirit of the
people he has sought the origin of legal sys-
tems, not in their great leading Ethical char-
acteristics, but in the minutest, the most spe-
cial and apparently most accidental of their
regulations, nay even in those in which they
seem to contradict the general sense of mankind.
* System des heutigen Komischen Rechts. V. I , p. 14.
** Warnkonig, Doctrina juris philosophica. p. 19.
::
13
Nor is it his meaning that the operation of
this spirit is confined to the production of those
laws by which the mutual relations of indi-
viduals are governed, and which come more
directly within the scope of his general labours.
He tells us on the contrary that the source of
private and of public law, of law in the
sense in which it deals with the relations which
ubsist between the individual members of the
mmunity, and that which assigns to the
citizen the position which he is to hold with
reference to the state, is the same. "Do
we inquire into the origin of the state, we
must seek it in a higher necessity, in a power
which acts from within, just as in the case of
law in general, and this holds true, not as
regards the existence of the state in the ab-
stract, but with reference to the particular
form * which the state assumes amongst each
particular people; for the generation of the
* The present government of France is an instance of
despotism resulting, manifestly and immediately, from
the spirit of the people. That of Russia, though less
manifestly and immediately, has not less truly the same
ultimate source. Perhaps even a more remarkable instance
of a despotism being inaugurated by a popular movement
is that which occurred in Denmark in 1660, when a lira-
14
state is, in a sense, the generation of the law,
indeed the highest form of the generation of
the law."
According to this view the rules by which
public relations are regulated, and the institu-
tions in which they find expression, and by
which they are upheld, are as much the re-
sult of a preexistent common feeling of what is
just in the abstract, and advantagious in the par-
ticular instance, as are the laws by which it
is sought to maintain for each individual what
common consent, or judicial sentence, has pro-
nounced to be his private rights, and thus it is
that, alike in politics and in law, this doctrine
directs us to the quarter to which we must
ited and elective, was in the space of four days converted
into an absolute and hereditary monarchy.
The numberless instances which Grotius (L. I. , c. II)
gives of states in which the people were not supreme,
are only so many additional proofs that the common spirit
sometimes finds expression in a despotism. The only true
instance of a despotism which has not this source is that
of one which is founded by foreign conquest, and there
the duty of obedience which he justly dwells upon in the
former case falls to the ground. Grotius and those of his
school make no distinction between insubordination, and a
change of the form of government by the legitimate action
of the same power by Avhich it was founded.
15
look, not only for the origin of past, but for
the signs of future events , and the means of
influencing their character. Law then, and
the institutions of the state being the result of
the national spirit, to endeavour to regulate
this spirit by legislation is to mistake an effect
for a cause. *
In saying this it is far from our intention
to deny a fact, so frequently and so unequivo-
cally established by experience, as that the
character of a nation may be modified by in-
fluences from without, whether acting directly,
or through the intervention of a section of the
community itself. If any one had so far forgot
the history of former times as to make such
an assertion, the most recent history of the
Germanic nations of the continent would have
served to remind him. There can be little
question that the despotic tendencies which
gained the ascendancy in 1848 were not the
* On a beaucoup clit que 1'e'tat moral depend de 1'etat
social , que les relations cles homines entre eux , les prin-
cipes on les coutumes qui y president, de'cident de leurs
ide'es, de leurs sentiments, de leur vie inte'rieure ; que
les gouvernements , les institutions font les peuples. C'est
une ide'e dominante dans le dernier siecle , etc. Guizot.
Civilisation en France. Le^on 4, p. 110.
genuine expression of the public spirit, That
the effects of such influences moreover may be
in some degree permanent,, requires to be es-
tablished by no more recondite fact, than that
no small portion of Europe , after having been
Protestant, was during the course of the 17 th
century dragged back by external influences
into the Catholicism in which it has since con-
tentedly remained. What we assert however is,
that for the spirit of a people to follow their
institutions is at no time the natural course of
events, and that in independent states such
an occurrence is next to an impossibility. In
these the laws and institutions, both judicial
and political, must, as a condition of the very
existence of society, be an approximation to
an expression of the social influences which
lie within the community, of the moral forces
which are at work at the time.
But here at the very outset it is necessary
that we should guard ourselves against a mis-
conception, the disastrous consequences of
which it will be our business to elucidate in
the sequel. By the expressions "united will,"
"spirit of the people," "common consciousness,"
and the like', the writers whose opinions we
have adopted are very far from meaning the
17
will, the opinion, or even the feeling of right
and wrong, of the numerical majority of inha-
bitants, or even of citizens of the state. On
the contrary it is quite consistent with their
views, and is indeed contemplated by both, that
the sum of influences,* instead of coinciding
with, should stand over against the sum of
in dividual sentiments, and still that the institu-
tions of the state should be the expression of
the former, not of the latter. As regards the
individual, we shall afterwards see that what-
ever may be the amount of influence which be-
longs to his character in society generally,
whether it be greater or less than that of a
* The national will, that is the sum of all the
wills, of all the intelligence, of all the virtue of the
nation, a sum in which each quantity counts for what
it is , and negations count for nothing , is almost always
absolutely opposed to the doctrine of universal suffrage,
which makes those who have no will prevail e*ee
those who have, those who know nothing of what they
are deciding upon , over those who know it. Sismondi's
Essays. English trans, p. 291. Hallam says (Constit.
History I, p. 103) that at the accession of Mary, the
reestablishment of popery was perhaps acceptable to the
majority of the nation. If so , it is perhaps as striking
an instance as could be found of the will of the majority
being opposed to the general will, and of the sovereignty
turning out to be in the latter, not in the former.
' B
18
simple human unit, to the benefit of that in-
fluence in regulating the public and private laws
of the country, and to nothing more is he
entitled. If the voice of one man be ten times
as powerful as that oi another, then he contri-
butes ten times as much to swell that general
voice, of which voice the laws are the articu-
late utterance.
But as the state can never take cognisance
of individual importance directly, the principle
of classification becomes indispensable, and
Savigny recognises it expressly "Above all,
individuals must be understood to constitute the
state, not as such, but in their constitutional
divisions". We are quite aware that the
recognition of this principle forms the great
difficulty in practical politics, and it is the hope
of contributing towards its removal which has
induced us to enter on the present work. So
soon as it is introduced, we part company with
the republican, and bid adieu to the simplicity
of action which the hypothesis on which he
founds would seem to warrant. But the com-
plex system of classification, not the simple one
of universal and equal recognition, is consistent
with nature, since it is by its aid alone, as we
shall see hereafter, that political institutions can
19
recognise some of the most permanent laws of
our being. At the same time however it is ob-
vious, from what we have already said, that
should the aggregate of social influences at any
time fall together with the sum of individual
opinions, then, for good or for evil, these must
prevail. He who in such circumstances should
hinder the legislative recognition of these opi-
nions in obedience to a political theory, by
whatever name it might be called, would but
treasure up the bitter waters of disorganization.
The bravest and the wisest must sometimes be
cast upon times in which it will become their
duty not simply to submit to, but to countenance
the adoption of the most faulty forms of poli-
tical life. If Tacitus had been more than a
grumbler he would have been a madman.
By thus recognising the identity of the so-
vereignty and the general will, we get rid of
all those troublesome questions regarding the
limits of state interference, which have so much
divided political enquirers. Where there are
neither separate interests nor separate powers,
such questions manifestly resolve themselves
into considerations of simple expediency. The
conclusion at which the general intelligence ar-
rives may be erroneous, and the course of con-
B2
20
duct which is prescribed by the general will
may consequently be suicidal ; but it. cannot be
tyrannical. The right of the public conscience to
determine the question of interference or non-in-
terference, in any particular instance, is as clear,
and is as absolute, as its right to establish a go-
vernment, or to frame laws in general. So long as
the regulations attributed to Lycurgus for the
training of Spartan citizens were an expression of
the will of the Spartan people, they stood on as
sound a basis, politically speaking, as does our
own policy of leaving such matters in the hands
of individuals. They might be less wise, and it
might be the duty of the philosopher or the
moralist to open the eyes of his countrymen
to the errors which they involved, to their de-
viations from the great universal human law, if
they did so deviate, but, till he succeeded in
doing this, they were not only legitimate but ne-
cessary institutions of the state. The fact
that experier^emay finally have decided the
question in efi*of non-interference, in many di-
rections in which interference has been common,
has nothing more to do with the question of
the rights of the public spirit to unlimited re-
cognijion, than has the fact, that the general
spirit of Englishmen has differed from that of
21
Dorians. The ringing of the curfew-bell , for
the extinction of lights and fires at eight o'clock
in the evening, was considered even in the time
of Henry II. to have exceeded the legitimate li-
mits of state interference. Had the general feel-
ing been the reverse, its abolition might, with
equal justice, have been stigmatised as an act
of petty tyranny.*
It may seem that this view sacrifices the in-
dividual conscience to the general conscience,
by placing in the latter a power so unlimited
as to enable it, on all occasions, to controul
and overrule the former. That such a result
may occasionally form a rock of offence to the
individual citizen is unquestionable, because it
is quite conceivable that the dicta of his con-
sciousness, and not those of the general conscious-
ness of the time, may be consistent with the
divinely implanted law. It is not less clear,
however, that it is an inevitable condition of hu-
* How far the idea of the inevitable relation between
the spirit of the people and the state, both as regards the
form in which it exists , and the activity which it mani-
fests, was from being familiar even to the most advanced
minds at the end of last century is manifest from the
very title of such a work as the posthumous essay of
Wilhelm v. Humboldt. "Ideen zu einem Versuch die
Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staates zu bestimmen."
22
man society; and where the objection arises, it
forms a ground of complaint, not against the
existing political system, but against the pub-
lic spirit which is its basis. The outraged
individual conscience must reclaim from the
political system which is, to that which ought
to be. Within the state, as it is, the individual
has, and can have , no redress. But, not only
without incurring the charge of insubordina-
tion, may he in common honesty he mustj seek
to change a condition of affairs which thus
conflicts with his sense of right and wrong*,
and if this be impossible, he may blamelessly
quit a community to which he cannot blame-
lessly adhere.
CHAP. III.
THE RELATION BETWEEN LEGISLATION AND POLITI-
CAL SPECULATION.
It is not our present object to discuss the
value of the different results which the general
intelligence has yielded, or of the lines of
conduct which the general will has prescribed,
to different states at different epochs ; and con-
sequently it is not our business to enquire whe-
ther such a coincidence as would render the
opinions of the numerical majority the ruling
principle in the state, is, or is not, consistent
with the permanent wellbeing of society. The
question which stands immediately before us
is the preliminary one, whether, supposing the
approach of such a coincidence, or of any
other political event, to admit of being predict-
ed, it is, notwithstanding the dependence of le-
gislation on the existing public spirit, still subject,
when foreseen, to the controul of a line of po-
licy consciously predetermined.
"He who does not live in society," says
24
Aristotle,* "must be either a beast or a god-,"
and, according to the view which we have pro-
pounded, it would seem that the particular
forms which society assumes are scarcely less
necessarily the result of the peculiar conditions
of human nature in which they arise, than is
society itself of human nature in general. At
first sight it may seem almost as if this view
favored the doctrine of the inevitability of po-
litical events, and as we are convinced that it
is to a species of, perhaps unconscious, fata-
lism,** more than to any other cause, that we
have to attribute the hopelessness with which
most men approach systematic *** political spe-
culation, we are particularly anxious to guard in
our own case against any misconception which
might lead to such a conclusion.
* Politic. Lib. I. Cap. II.
"In proportion as the course of civil society tends
farther towards democracy" ; etc. Hallara Lit. of Europe,
V. 1. p. 407.
*** So glaubt noch heute die Mehrzahl, alles andere
lernen zu miissen, nur nicht diePolitik; jeden Fall der
Politik aber nach dem Lichte der Natur entscheiden zu
kb'nnen. Dahlmann. Politik. p. 325. nut poi tiys, no-
T8QOV rear lniGxr\^6vKtv nv r^iCv v.a.1 rovxov &sxov , 7]
Ticag; the answer of the younger Socrates is ovrcog.
Plato's statesman I.
25
In tixing an inevitable relation between
legislation and the spirit of the people, a mo-
ment's consideration will show, that though we
bind the former irrevocably to the latter, this
latter is left open to every possible influence
both of accident and design. The particular
phase of human developement, which calls for
the particular form of social existence, is very
far from possessing the unchangeable character
which belongs to mankind when considered
simply as an aggregate of social beings. A man
can neither make himself a beast nor a god,
and consequently he can have no controul over
the general law; but it is by conscious efforts
that he raises himself from a semi - barbarian,
to whose condition the patriarchal or early
monarchical government is suitable, to be a par-
taker of that social culture of which free in-
stitutions seem, sooner or later, to be a neces-
sary consequence. By a direct effort of the
will, even if unanimous, a state can, for the
most part, as little adopt, or abolish, perma-
nently, particular forms of social life, as it can
banish society altogether 5 but over the conditions
of which these forms are the consequences, over
the spirit, the common consciousness of the
people, every progressive state by its constituted
26
authorities, and even every progressive individual
by his private endeavours, may exercise an al-
most unlimited controul.
It is an error then , and one which has been
fruitful of mischief, to suppose that the imme-
diate object of political speculation is to dis-
cover a rule for future legislation. The action
of the political philosopher on legislation is not only
usually, but it is necessarily, and propwly, indirect.
His function is to mould the general will,
through the medium of the general intelli-
gence ; and though his task may be performed,
and his claims to the gratitude of mankind be
complete, when the truths which he evolves
have been demonstrated to the apprehension of
the thinking, it is not till they have met with
a far wider recognition that they become the
legitimate basis of legislation. When the prac-
tical politician acquaints himself with his views,
it must be with the object, not of embodying
his results in immediate legislation, but of de-
termining in what direction it is desirable that
he should, by the influence which he possesses
as a member of the community, contribute to-
ward ssetting the current of public opinion. If,
in the ideal of the philosopher, either as regards
a particular institution, or society at large, he
27
recognises the true end of his labours, he may
long with all the ardour of the most burning
patriotism for the opportunity of realizing it,
but, as a practical man, he must submit to the
circuitous route of first bringing it home to the
general consciousness. Till this be accom-
plished its realization will be generally impos-
sible always unsafe.
It is no doubt difficult to ascertain the pre-
cise point at which a recognition takes place,
which is coincident neither with the opinion
of the most advanced intelligence, nor of the
numerical majority of the state, but which is
the result of all the forces which act both to ad-
vance and retard the march of opinion. For the
solution of this difficulty, however, every state
which is professedly governed by public opinion
has furnished itself with a machinery, the worth,
or worthlessness of which, will be in proportion
to the accuracy with which it attains this ob-
ject. The creation of this machinery is itself
an act of the same general will directed by the
same general intelligence, and the detection of
its imperfections by the philosophical politician
is, as regards practice, subject to the same con-
ditions as his other discoveries. With reference
to the science which he professes, and man-
28
kind in the abstract, which is the object of that
science, his discoveries alike in the narrower
and the wider field ; if they are discoveries at all,
are a possession for ever; with reference to the
particular state again they are valuable only to
the extent to which that state is able to receive
them. With that matter he is not specially
concerned.
But even when we have thus become acquaint-
ed with the channel through which political
speculation acts, and, putting aside all delu-
sions as to the immediate realization of its
results , have recognised the possibility of
its indirectly leavening the whole mass of
legislation, and, as far as human agency can
reach, controuling the future current of events,*
there still remains, one very important ques-
tion. Viz: is such controul necessary or desi-
* In speaking of Montesquieu's views Mr. Stewart
says: "In enlightened ages there cannot be a doubt that
political wisdom comes in for its share in the adminis-
tration of human affairs, and there is reasonable ground
for hoping that its influence will continue to increase
in proportion as the principles of legislation are more
generally studied and understood. To suppose the con-
trary would be to reduce us to mere spectators of the
progress and decline of society, and put an end to every
species of patriotic action. Dissertation p. 95.
\
29
rable, or is its place adequately supplied by the
spontaneous action of the common conscious-
ness.
The a priori answer to this question is in-
volved in the assumption of the possibility of
conscious political action; for there is no case
in which God has left the course which we are
to follow to any extent dependent on our voli-
tion , and has farther furnished us with the
means of judging of its consequences, in which
he will hold us blameless for inactivity.
Political speculation, which, by tracing the
laws by which social development is governed,
places in .our hands the means of determining
the line of conduct which as rational beings it
behoves us to pursue, thus assumes the impo-
sing attitude of a duty; and those who endea-
vour to cultivate it, however humbly, are, we
trust, furnished with a sufficient apology.
But the question, both as regards states in
general, and the individual state, admits of an
a posteriori, as well as an a priori solution.
1. With reference to states in general we
may determine, whether in times past the "spi-
rit of the people", the "common consciousness",
"the united will", did of itself engender healthy
institutions , or the reverse ; whether in short
30
the vox populi did practically coincide with the
vox del.
2. Should the answer to this question be
affirmative, the laisser faire policy will be estab-
lished on an immovable basis, and, freed
from all concern as to ultimate consequences,
mankind, individually and collectively, will, in
so far as this world is concerned, be furnished
with a sufficient warrant for following the gui-
dance of their immediate impulses.
But should the answer be negative to the
effect namely, that the public spirit, far from
possessing such infallibility, has in every
known instance ultimately raised up institu-
tions which proved incompatible either with sta-
bility or progress, then the necessity for all
the guidance with which reastm can furnish it
from within, or experience from without, will
no longer be doubtful.
CHAP. IV.
THE PROBLEM OF POLITICS.
By the vast majority of political speculators,
both ancient and modern, the ultimate problem
of politics has been supposed to consist in find-
ing the one form* of government under which
mankind should best fulfil the ends of their
earthly existence. One form being admittedly
better than some other form which experience
had unequivocally condemned, and a third again
being, for good reasons, pronounced to be better
than the second, it was taken for granted that
the process of amelioration might go on, till hu-
man experience and invention were ultimately
rewarded by the discovery of a form which
was absolutely perfect. Both the psychological
* It may be said without exaggeration, that the search
after the ideal model of the perfect state, which has oc-
cupied the thoughts of so many illustrious speculators
intent upon the amelioration of mankind , is necessarily,
by the very conditions of the problem a search, not less
irrational and vain, than that for the philosopher's stone,
or the elixir of life. Lewis II. p. 299.
32
and the historical methods were brought to
bear on this enquiry , both separately and in
conjunction; and as the results of the search we
have had historical forms idealized, and ideal
forms imagined without end, the latter however,
by a strange but instructive fatality, being in-
variably modified by the circumstances of the
time and country in which they arose.
That these searches should have failed to
evolve the universal truth, which was their ob-
ject, and instead of indicating the royal road to
social perfection, should have exercised only
a collateral, and so to speak, accidental influence
on human affairs, will we trust be sufficiently
accounted for by a little attention to principles
with which our readers are already familiar.
1. It is involved in the very idea of a go-
vernment, be its form what it may, that its insti-
tutions should correspond to the requirements
of the society which is its object. Without
this it is not a government at all, much less a
perfect government.
2. Society precedes government, and the
characteristics of the latter, as we have already
seen, (Chap. II.) are necessarily the effects, not
the causes of the 'former.
These principles being kept in view, it is
33
obvious that the assumption of the possibility of
one universal form of government involves the
prior assumption of the possibility of one uni-
versal form of society. But history and psy-
chology are alike silent as to the means by
which such a society shall be brought about,
and the theories in question manifestly do not,
and cannot, supply the deficiency.
But again ; error and imperfection are multi-
form, truth and perfection alone are uniform;
and therefore, supposing it possible that, by
some mysterious agency hitherto unknown toman-
kind, the forms of social existence were so harmo-
nised as spontaneously to call for one form of go-
vernment, this harmony obviously could coexist
only with perfection. But were social perfection*
realized all government would be superfluous, and
consequently all that is gained for the theory of one
* Human perfection , either individual or social , is un-
thinkable. Even in a future state, the utmost that we
can imagine, without merging the human in the divine na-
ture , is an indefinite progress towards perfection. The
Christian revelation distinctly shuts out the idea that
equality, in the sense in which fools have contended for
it on earth, shall exist even in Heaven. "The least in the
kingdom of Heaven." Matt.V.19. XI. 11. Luk.VII.23.
Ephes. I. 21. III. 10. &c. &c.
34
absolute form of government by this impossible
hypothesis is to render it possible in circumstanc-
es in which it would be needless.
A problem, therefore, the very conditions of
which involve assumptions inconsistent with
human society, either actual or possible, cannot
be the true problem of Politics.
But though there cannot be one perfect and
unchanging form of government for human so-
ciety, which in so many respects is imperfect and
changing, are there not certain tendencies in
this society which are permanent in their action,
and which consequently necessitate in every go-
vernment, whatever form temporary circumstan-
ces may have imposed upon it, certain corres-
ponding characteristics ? In this respect the po-
sition of mankind in the mass, closely corres-
ponds to that of the individual man. With re-
ference to him also there is no stable condition,
and it is consequently impossible to prescribe,
from our experience of what has arisen, rules
of conduct which shall be applicable in unknown
circumstances. Till he is purified from error
altogether, the forms in which he may err, in-
dividually as well as socially, are infinite; and
to attempt to furnish him with a rule of con-
duct, or a norm of individual life, which, by
35
exhausting them all, shall be of universal appli-
cation, is to attempt an impossibility.
But in the individual man there are tendenc-
ies, both good and evil, on the permanent
action of which we calculate with security, and
it belongs to the moralist and the divine to pro-
vide rules which shall take cognisance of these
tendencies. Now a man, by passing from his
chamber into the marketplace, does not cease
to be a man, and, as a thousand men in the mar-
ketplace are not less human than was each in-
dividual before he quitted his chamber, both
the existence and the permanence of human
tendencies may be predicated of the whole, with
as much certainty as of any one individual of
the group. Here then the politician has, as re-
gards man in his social capacity, the same task
to perform , and the same means of performing
it, which belong to the moralist and the divine
when dealing with him as an individual.
In both cases, there are two great lead-
ing tendencies of our nature, which, as being
wider in their range and more constant in their
action than any others, may be regarded as the
generic human tendencies.*
* Macchiavelli , Discourses on Livy. Vol. I. p. 35.
French translation Paris: an VII.
C2
36
1. The tendency to hope, and consequently
to strive for the perfection of our earthly con-
dition , moral intellectual and physical.
2. The tendency, to enjoy, and consequent-
ly to prefer the advantages of a known pre-
sent to the hopes of an unknown future, the
certa pro incertis.
At different stages of individual and national
life these tendencies respectively preponderate,
and it is possible that occasionally they hold each
other almost in equilibrio. But whatever may be
the proportions in which they operate in particu-
lar circumstances, there never was a man whose
actions , at every stage of his life were not in-
fluenced by them, and there certainly never
was a society in which they were not both active-
ly at work.
It is as an expression of these two tendenc-
ies that the two leading political doctrines, the
doctrine of progress and the doctrine of perma-
nence, have arisen. The history of their
struggles has been the history of practical poli-
tics , and the fact that they have kept the field,
and asserted their claims on human interest, un-
der every variety of external circumstances, fur-
nishes, apart from the considerations which we
have just offered, the strongest a posteriori proof
37
of their being the genuine offspring of humanity
in its normal, and consequently in its perma-
nent condition.
Let us accept these doctrines then, which
psychology and history thus agree in present-
ing to us * ; and, recognising the central ideas,
and consequently the leading dogmas of each,
as permanent truths , let us try whether from
this solid vantage ground we can obtain a far-
ther insight into the abiding requirements of
human society, and consequently into the uni-
versal characteristics of government.
Now if we attempt to discover these require-
ments, and the characteristics which correspond
to them, by tracing on the field of practical
politics, the action of these two doctrines a
* Die verschiedenen Systeme lassen sich nun durch-
aus nicht vereinigen; well Wahres und Falsches nicht zu
vereinen , und bei entgegengesetzten Grundannahmen
keine Gemeinschaft 1st. Von dem Interesse aber, wel-
ches zu einer jeden Philosophic bestimmte, lasst es sich
nicht im Voraus sagen, dass es seiner Natur nach jedes
ausschliessen musse. Im Gegentheil steht es zu vermu-
then, dass jedes an sich selbst ein wahres sey; weil es
ein Menschliches ist, und die Geschichte seine Befriedi-
gung wolle; dass es unwahr nur in seinem Product sey,
welches es getrennt von den iibrigen hervorbrachte.
Stahl, Philosophic des Eechts. Vol. I. p. 6.
38
difficulty seems to encounter us at the very outset.
If the history of theoretical politics has been the
history of a search for an impossible object, it un-
fortunately happens that their practical history has
also been the history of efforts to achieve the impos-
sible, and these doctrines, neither of which if
true could hope for realization except by mutual
recognition , have each contended for an exclu-
sive ascendency. Absolute victory on either side,
of course, was in the nature of things, unattain-
able, but even where the victory has been
partial, the result for the time has too frequent-
ly been fatal, alike to "progress", which was
the watchword of the one, and to "organized
society" which was that of the other. Still around
these doctrines, and the concomitant doctrines
to which they have given rise, and the insti-
tutions, in which they have sought their reali-
zation , there probably cluster most of the poli-
tical truths which can be said yet to have been
ascertained by human experience. On every
occasion on which either doctrine gained [the
ascendency, the extent to which it was or was
not applicable to human affairs was brought to
a practical test, and some portion of the gold
of truth was separated from the alloy of error.
The great evil however, and that which in all
39
time seems to have doomed the practical po-
litician to the purgatory of half-truths, has been
that to which we have just referred, namely that
these opposing doctrines have been regarded
as mutually exclusive, and consequently irre-
concilable, and thus the miscarriage of the one
has constantly given occasion to the reinstate-
ment of the other, slightly modified for practi-
cal purposes, it might be, but, in principle,
entirely unaffected by the ascendency of its ri-
val. Each doctrine has thus been appealed to
by its votaries, not as embodying a truth, but
as embodying the one exclusive truth, upon which
all sound human government must be based.
If the progressionist failed in realising his
views by the particular means ; and in the par-
ticular circumstances in which he sought their
fulfilment, the advocate of permanence and sta-
bility accused him, not of narrow zeal for a
theory partially mingled with error, but of being
led astray by a theory absolutely false, and
his actions, as the exponent of the opposite
doctrine, were even more sweepingly condemna-
tory than his expressed opinions. On the other
hand, if the advocate of established order failed
to allay the craving for progress which he re-
fused to recognise, the progressionist forgot in
40
his turn that the practical recognition of a ten-
dency which he felt so strongly in himself, and
saw so clearly in society around him, was to
be brought about, not by ignoring, but by giv-
ing the fullest effect to the element of truth
which his rival's theory contained. In argument
perhaps neither would have denied .that there
was some portion of truth in the views of his
adversary, but both forgot that this truth was
so intimately allied to his own, that no form
of government and no institutions could per-
manently suit the purposes of the one, which
did not equally suit those of the other.
Now the true problem of politics, as it seems
to us , consists in the reconciliation of these two
generic political doctrines, and of the attendant
specific doctrines which they' have respectively
assembled round them wherever these are le-
gitimately deduced. If this can be accomplished,
or even demonstrated to be theoretically pos-
sible, the applicability of both these doctrines
in their fullest acceptation will be vindicated
and the way will be paved for building up , out
of the scattered results of human experience,
a system of harmonious political doctrine.
In using the word reconciliation however we
must at once distinguish between the sense we
41
mean it to convey, and that mechanical mode of
disposing of a difference which consists in mutual
concessions. Such concessions , for the most
part, imply a giving up, on bot^i sides, indiscri-
minately of truth and error, the single object
being to produce a point of meeting. By this
means it is obvious that though a course of
conduct, generally moderate, and frequently
prudent may be determined on, no higher or
more complete truth, and consequently no more
consistent principle of action, can possibly be
attained. By a reconciliation between conflict-
ing doctrines, on the contrary, we understand
an elimination from each of the elements of
falsehood by which the conflict is occasioned,
leaving as a residuum the essential truths
between which conflict is, of course, impos-
sible.
CHAP. V.
THE METHOD OF SOLUTION.
We have denned the problem of scientific
politics as consisting in a reconciliation of the
two leading doctrines which practical politics
have worked out, and a consequent discovery
of the means by which an unlimited recognition
may be given to the truths of which these doc-
trines are respectively the expressions. In at-
tempting the solution of this problem, it is ne-
cessary that we should keep in view the fact
to which we have already so often referred,
namely that society is the source of political insti-
tutions, not political institutions of society ;* and
that as we found the doctrines to be reconciled,
spontaneously evolving themselves as the ex-
pressions of human aspirations on the one hand,
and human necessities on the other, so must
* Plato. Republic. Lib. VIII. Cap. II. ol'si h
77 in 7tTQK<$ TKS nofasi<x$ yiyvsa&cci, a/U' ov%i
raiv ri&aiv tool' sv TCCLS nohsaiv ;
43
we also find the means of their reconciliation,
if at all, in principles already present and ope-
rative among mankind. If there is such a prin-
ciple as we seek, we may rest assured that we
shall find it, not in its completed form certainly,
but in its true essence, in the ordinary arrange-
ments of society, for society, in the narrower
sense of the family and the social circle, holds
to the state the relation not of an imaginary
microcosm to the vast cosmos, but of a bud
to a tree ; or of an embryo to a perfect animal.
Let us look at society then as it exhibits it-
self in the simplest of all its forms that of the
family. * In the family it' is very obvious that
we have the two leading principles of human
action, those namely of permanence and of pro-
gress, exhibiting themselves in a manner very
closely analogous to that which we found in
the state. The parents are the representatives
of permanence, the embodiments of order. The
* "Aristotle noteth well, 'that the nature of every
thing is best seen in its smallest portions.' And for
that cause he inquireth the nature of a commonwealth,
first in a family, and the simple conjunctions of man
and wife, parent and child , master and servant , which
are in every cottage." Bacon, Advancement of learning
p. 111. Montagu's Edition.
44
original founders of the society, on them its pre-
servation depends ; and their influences through-
out are almost exclusively conservative. The
children of the family, again, from the very
first, supply a progressive, we had almost said
an aggressive, element. The will of the infant,
it is true, has scarcely an existence apart from
that of its parents, and the individual, like the
citizen, thus commences his career under the
protecting influences of a paternal despotism.
With the first dawnings of reason however, the
process of emancipation begins, and the very
first attitude which the "conscious ego" assumes
is that of a claimant for liberty. From the
earliest assertion of the right of separate loco-
motion, till the final claim for the freedom of
completed manhood or womanhood, the ad-
vance in the healthy human being is continuous
from day to day.
Now do we find that in the family these
principles conflict to the effect of rendering it
indispensable that wherever the one is to re-
ceive an unqualified recognition, the other should
either be abandoned or crippled in its action?
Let us again consider what actually occurs.
So far from withholding from his children the
amount of freedom which is commensurate with
45
their powers, the chief object which a wise fa-
ther proposes to himself is so to develope them
as that they may be freed more and more, not
from the guidance of others only , but from the
restraints which their own weakness imposes.
In place of being the opponent, he thus be-
comes the leader, of progress, the champion of
a liberty to which he sees no necessary or ul-
timate limits , except the limits assigned by in-
dividual incapacity. But is it by a gradual
dissolution of domestic order, and by placing
all the members of the family on a footing of
absolute * equality that he seeks to bring about
this result? He knows, on the contrary, or, if
he does not know, experience speedily teaches
him, that amongst beings not absolutely per-
fect a sacrifice of order is a sacrifice of liberty.
Nay farther, he finds that in place of being
diminished, the necessity for order has been
vastly increased by the rise of separate wills,
and separate interests. In the earlier stages
of his governement if the will of the parent
was made to prevail over that of the child,
there was no risk of the exercise of any ra-
* As to the distinction between absolute and relative
equality vide infra.
46
tional volition being interfered with. He has
now to settle the order of precedence between
the wills of the elder and of the younger , of the
wiser and the foolisher, of those who are in the
right and those who are in the wrong. If he does
not see to it, the tyranny of some evil passion
may take possession of his household, so that
no one shall be free, least of all the indivi-
dual who is its embodiment. But how is he
to proceed for the problem of reconciling li-
berty with order has assumed a vastly more
complicated form, and that the simple rules
which formerly sufficed for its solution can no
longer be administered, and if administered
would be impotent for the preservation of li-
berty, is obvious enough. To a plain man the
matter, in point of practice , presents no in-
superable difficulty, and probably there is not
one father of a family in a thousand who does
not solve it correctly. The subject with which
his rules of government, his system of admi-
nistration has to deal, has increased in magni-
tude and complexity, and the system must be
developed in proportion. In behalf of that very
liberty, to which some men regard order as the
natural antagonist, he sees at once that he
must have not less order but more order, and
47
more continually , in proportion as claims upon him
for the recognition of individual freedom of action
are multiplied.
In so far as the family is concerned, then,
it is obvious that the means which experience
has spontaneously evolved for the reconciliation
of freedom and order is not a more complete
vindication of equality, but a more accurate
and detailed recognition of difference, a fuller
developement of order itself.
When we pass from the single family to the
community composed of several families, like
the village communities of Hindostan , we again
find a progress very closely analogous to that
which we have just seen. Whilst the number
of families is small, the freedom of action of
their members, both as individuals and as re-
presentatives of their respective hearths , can be
preserved by means of a few very simple ar-
rangements. There is no great occasion for a
recognition of differences beyond those of sex
and age, and if, in ascertaining the general will,
these are attended to, no substantial injustice
will be done though equality should be assumed
in every other respect. But the division of
labour, and the exclusive possession of pro-
perty, here produce effects analogous to the
48
birth of children in the family ; and diversities
of individual importance arise , and new claims
to freedom of action are engendered, for the
recognition of which a more refined and deve-
loped communal organisation is indispensable.
^In the community as in the family, the pro-
gressive party are in reality the authors not of
\ equality but of difference , and, though their claim
in the first instance may ostensibly be for the
former, it is by the recognition of the latter
alone that they can ultimately be secured in the
exercise of unlimited freedom.
But, as it is in the single family, and in
the community of families , so it is in the state,
which is only a larger community of families.
Here also, as social life advances, every step,
onwards or upwards, removes us farther from
the unfruitful level of individual equality.
Every distinction which emerges becomes a
ground of claim in the state, just as it did in
the family or the community, for an equivalent
recognition, the only difference being that in
the state, classes take the place of individual
men in the first case, or separate families in
the second. But, as we found in these nar-
rower circles that freedom of action could be
given to the newborn wills which were con-
49
tinually springing up, only by a more deve-
loped organisation, even so we find that the sys-
tem by which independent action was suffi-
ciently preserved within the state in its earlier
stages will by no means serve the same pur-
pose when it has arrived at maturity*.
It thus appears that the perfection of social
organisation in all its forms, from the simplest
to the most complex, will be in direct propor-
tion to the completeness with which it recog-
nises the inequalities which exist among the
members of the society with which it deals;
and that the problem of reconciling liberty
with order, without infringing on either, will
be solved by such a development of the latter,
as to enable it , in each particular case , to take
complete and accurate cognisance of the claims!
of the former.
When stated thus generally, what we have
just said seems little more than an application
to the state of a principle which governs not
the state only but every other organised exis-
* The most complex governments that the world has
ever seen are those of ancient Rome and modern Eng-
land. Have they not also been the most perfect? The
next most complex perhaps was that of Venice, so
greatly admired by Macchiavelli, Harrington, and others.
50
tence, viz., that the higher the organism the
more complex its laws. Obvious as it is how-
ever , and trite as it would be in every other
application, it can scarcely be called trite
when applied to politics; seeing that, with few
exceptions, it has been forgotten in every at-
tempt that has been made, in modern times,
to give recognition to individual liberty in the
developed state. Even amongst ourselves, the
moment that liberty is mentioned the idea
which suggests itself is not liberty by means
of order, but liberty independant of order, and
a cry is raised, not for a just and impartial re-
cognition of actually existing social distinctions,
but for the annihilation of all distinctions
whatsoever. * Even where the conservative in-
stinct comes to our aid, and we shrink from
so sweeping a conclusion, we believe that in
so doing we are sacrificing, for the sake of
escaping a greater evil, some portion at least of
* The remarkable coincidence which M. de Tocqueville
found on this point, between the Economists before the
Revolution and his countrymen at present is confined
we fear neither to Frenchmen, nor to the 18 th and 19 th
Centuries, v. L'Ancien Regime p. 273. also pp. 12. 203.
270. 271. of the French edition. Nothing so instructive
has appeared in modern times.
51
a precious good ; whereas it is there precisely
that we are on the only path which can by
possibility lead to its complete attainment.
Whatever may be the inconveniences attend-
ing a complex system of representation or of
government , they are inconveniences with
which, if our progress be real, we shall be
more and more in a condition to cope ; but the
most fatal blow that we can give to liberty
will be by turning our backs on a task which
our very advantages have imposed on us ; and
attempting to respond to the complex require-
ments of a developed state by the simple ar-
rangements of a primitive community.
But when we have thus made up our minds
to the fact that it is impossible to give political
recognition to the infinitely complex influences
of a highly organised society by means of the
same machinery which in a simple and primitive
community served as a mouthpiece to the com-
mon will, we are still only on the threshold of
our enquiry. We have discovered the method
of reconciling liberty with order to consist in a
development of order, in a recognition of in-
equality; but of the special means, of the social
or political arrangements by which this deve-
lopment is to be effected at any particular
D2
52
stage of the progress of any particular state,
we as yet know nothing. That these means must
be infinitely various, even where the tendency of
events continues in the same direction, is ob-
vious from the fact that each step in advance
brings into play new influences often wholly
dissimilar in character from those with which
we have had to deal in the preceding stages.
What, for example, can be more unlike than
the social influences of parents and children,
or the political influences of the ruling few or
the ruling many? If we are to derive any
light from experience, then, it is clear that it
cannot be from an indiscriminate experience,
but from the experience of communities in cir-
cumstances as nearly as possible analogous to
those with which we have practically to deal.
The fact thus briefly stated introduces us to
considerations so important as to merit that
they should be treated in a separate chapter.
CHAP. VI.
OF THE PRINCIPLE ACCORDING TO WHICH OUR
CHOICE OF HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS MUST BE
REGULATED.
Not only does the character of one state
differ from that of another, but in the same
state a change of character occurs when we
pass, or, to speak more correctly ; before we
pass from one stage of social and political life
to another, and thus it is that two nations of
different blood ; and in external circumstances
dissimilar, if the point of progress which they
have reached be the same, often resemble each
other politically more than do kindred states,
or even the same state in its earlier and later
stages of development. But as the form of
political life, so soon as the influences of which
it is the legitimate expression present them-
selves, is not accidental but necessary, it is
obvious that every politician whose aim is to
influence and guide not simply to follow so-
54
cial tendencies, must be prepared at the ap-
proach of each period of transition to. adopt a
new line of march.* To convince ourselves that
a course of political conduct, which has long
been pursued with safety and advantage, may,
in the progress of a perfectly normal and
healthy development, become in the highest
degree dangerous and hurtful ; we have only
to cast a glance by anticipation at what we
shall hereafter see to be the general cr.se of
the progressive state.
Whilst the tide of political life is flowing,
however irregularly,, and the goal of liberty
far distant ; the leading principles of the poli-
tician are comparatively simple. He has only
to steer perseveringly in the direction in which
freedom stands, and any deviation which he
makes from his course is not difficult to
be retrieved. By contributing his impetus to
existing tendencies, he may, according to the
views of one section of politicians, shorten
the whole life of the state; but, as a recom-
* Id enim est caput civilis prudentiae, in qua omnis
haec nostra versatur oratio , videre itinera flexusque re-
rum publicarum , ut cum sciatis quo quaeque res incline!,
retinere, aut ante possitis occurrere. Cic., Republ. lib. II.
cap. XXV.
55
pense, he will have the satisfaction of reflecting
that he has brought 'it earlier to maturity.
Precipitancy may produce a temporary reac-
tion, and may even for generations strengthen
the hands of his opponents (the monarchical
or oligarchical party, as the case maybe), but
it will not permanently endanger the cause of
liberty; whereas, on the other hand, there is
scarcely any amount of backwardness which
either want of insight or excess of caution can
engender, for which the current of public opi-
nion will not itself prove a sufficient re-
medy. At such a stage the republican need
be under no fear that the most conservative
statesmen will prove a permanent obstructive
whilst the progressive conservative might adopt
the doctrines of the republican with the most
perfect confidence that, for the present, no great
misfortune would result from the measures to
which they would give rise. But the case is
widely different when we near the position in
which we must deal with the question whether
nature has or has not set limits to political
equality, or, supposing no such limits to be set,
whether our own national circumstances are
such as to admit of the realization of this ab-
stract possibility. So soon as this question
56
begins to press upon us we are in presence of
an entirely new class of difficulties, and are
called upon to deal with a social condition
more dissimilar, in so far at least as public
life is concerned, from that with which we had
hitherto been occupied, than can be the con-
dition of any two states in a corresponding
stage of progress. The wind has changed to
the opposite point, and the dangers which we
hitherto apprehended to free individual action
from one direction immediately assail it from
another. By widening the circle of those who are
directly to participate in political influence , we
can no longer, as formerly, feel assured that we
are thereby giving more ample expression to the
spirit of the people and the time ; on the contrary,
by ignoring altogether every other principle
by which this spirit may be measured except
that of mere enumeration , we are tending to-
wards a state of matters in which there is danger
of a large portion of the whole social influences of
the community being first denied all constitution-
al expression, and then ceasing to exist in any
other form than that in which, by conform-
ing itself to the character, it can find expres-
sion by the mouths, of the numerical majority.
It is still exclusion, it is still disfranchisement,
57
against which we have to struggle; but the
claims which come upon us now are of a very-
different kind from those which arise from the
simple fact of the claimant being a human
being subject to our laws and not having
violated them. Intelligence , industry, wealth,
power, the elements not of similarity but of
dissimilarity amongst men, are those which now
are clamorous for recognition 5 and the task which
is imposed upon us is the reconciliation of these
new claims with that of naked manhood which
we have already admitted. In the solution of
this question it is obvious that we can obtain
little assistance from the history of states in
which it has never arisen; and the importance
of the stage of development as a determining
element in our selection of historical instances
thus comes clearly into view.
But the example which we have purposely
chosen does more than illustrate this general
fact. All transition periods are not equally
important, and from what we have said it is
obvious that the one in which legislation passes
from the hands of the monarch , the aristocracy,
or the limited citizen class, into those of all
the free inhabitants of the state, more than
any other, marks a turning point in the poli-
58
tical current, and thus renders it, in the ge-
neral case, impossible, from the laws which
have governed society previously, to determine
those which will prevail after its occurrence.
But, farther, it is the last of all political epochs:
beyond it history scarcely exhibits any further
phenomenon (except that disorganisation by
which the primitive chaos of barbarism takes the
place of the cosmos of civilization) ; and, though
the imagination may picture an indefinite en-
durance of social organic existence, and unli-
mited perfection of individual virtue, after its
occurrence, there is no other political move in
advance to which we can look forward.
Above all, it is the only epoch of political
development through -which we Englishmen
have not already passed, and consequently if
political speculation is to have any practical
value in the present condition of our domestic
affairs, it must be by preparing us to accoun-
ter this the last and greatest climacteric of
political life.
CHAP. VII.
WHAT HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS BEAR MOST CLOSE-
LY ON THE PRESENT CONDITION OP ENGLAND?
Identity or similarity in the stage of poli-
tical progress rather than in race, time, or
other circumstances being our guiding prin-
ciple in selecting historical analogies, the next
question manifestly is, where shall we find those
which bear rnqst closely in this respect on the
present condition of England.
One of the most hopeful signs of the society
of modern continental Europe is that, notwith-
standing the semblance of premature old age
which the shadows of despotism have in some
directions cast over it, it still possesses many
of the characteristics of youth ; * and it is
* Hume says so of the world in general. "I am apt
to entertain a suspicion that this world is still too young
to fix many general truths in politics which will remain
true to the latest posterity." Essay XI. p. 81. See to the
same effect Burke' s Three letters addressed to a Mem-
ber of the present parliament etc. , 1796. Letter I.
60
a consequence of this fact that the revolutions
which it undergoes are such as to familiarise
us with the irregular manifestations of growth,
rather than with the phenomena which result
from a long enjoyment of liberty.
Though almost every European state at some
period of its history has made an approach
to popular institutions, in no modern European
state but our own, and, in a certain' sense, per-
haps Holland and Switzerland, has the body
politic attained to the maturity which it fre-
quently exhibited in the ancient world; and in
one only, Poland, has it prematurely perished
from the action of constitutional disease.
Even in the most retrograde Italy and Spain
there are frequent manifestations of vitality,
which seem to warrant the hope that their
present condition is the result rather of a
temporary suspension than a permanent ex-
tinction of the principles of development*.
* To say , with Sir George Cornwall Lewis , that,
if not relatively, still absolutely, these countries have
been progressing , is to forget the past and mistake the
present. Where are their literature, their art, their po-
litical institutions of the 15 th and 16 th centuries? For
ourselves , instead of believing in their absolute pro-
gress , when we read Shakespeare, or even Chaucer, we
sometimes doubt of our own , otherwise than relatively.
61
Neither domestic tyranny nor foreign conquest,
has taken recognised and permanent possession
of either of them, nor have they yet made the
last great experiment of states ; the absolute
rule of the numerical majority. The brightest
periods of the political history of these coun-
tries, that of the kingdoms of Castile and Ara-
gon* in the 14 lh century and of the Italian
Republics about the same time, present few of
the characteristics of that freedom which we
regard as the maturity of political life, whilst
the semblance of a constitution which the pre-
sent race of Spaniards possess, and of a Re-
public with which the Italians were recently
tantalised, and still more the municipal insti-
tutions which neither of them have ever re-
linquished, lead us to hope that they may not
have lost the power of yet seizing upon the
substance of liberty in happier days. The great
Teutonic race on tho continent has devoted
little attention to, and has hitherto exhibited
little aptitude for the development of the
higher public relations. We owe to them the
roots of our language, our poetry, and our phi-
* To no meeting of this period did all or half the great
towns send deputies and those which did return them
appear to have preserved little proportion in the numbers.
losophy; we owe to them the most advanced
form in which religion has yet appeared among
men; and, if we go to the origin of our poli-
tical institutions, it is doubtful whether even
there we are not debtors with them to a com-
mon parentage; but, when we come to the
completed state, it is clear that we have more
to teach than to learn from that quarter*.
France, of all states ancient or modern, presents
the hardest problem to the politician. Seen from
the shady side her condition seems scarcely to
differ from that of Spain and Italy, except in
so far as it exhibits both the symptoms of dis-
ease and the powers of convalescence in far
greater intensity. Previous to the great revo-
lution, it is true, French society presented those
phenomena of external refinement without in-
ternal or radical culture, of correct manners
and corrupted morals, which once characterised
the society of Byzantium, and which usually
mark the decay of an old civilisation; and,
since the downfall of the Orleans dynasty, the
levity in action and apathy in repose which
Frenchmen have exhibited are such as to lead
us at times to suspect them either of a pre-
* See some modification of this opinion infra Cap. XVII.
63
mature old age or of a fundamental inaptitude
for selfgovermnent. On the other hand this
is certain, that, in common with the other states
which we have mentioned, France has never
yet at any period of her history arrived at
a confirmed political manhood*; and though
the season of her ill-regulated youth has been
so long as to give serious grounds for ap-
prehending that it may have exhausted her
vital powers, still her position is very different
from that of Rome under the later Emperors,
or of Greece after the time of Alexander, when
the season of manhood was positively past.
Neither she nor any of the other states of Eu-
rope has lived through, and sank down from,
a condition of conscious selfgovernment, and till
such has been the case, we have no authority
for despairing of their future. History, so far
as we know it, furnishes no case of resusci-
tation in the same people and constitution, but
the course of political developement has ever
been tortuous and intermittent.
* It might be argued with some shew of reason that
in the Napoleonides France has found in the mean time
that sovereignty of genius, between which and a free
government Aristotle seems to have had difficulty in
assigning the palm.
64
Of all European states, England is politically
the oldest and most advanced. Plantagenets
and Tudors were made to feel that the centre
of sovereignty was not in them but in the
people*, and since the Revolution Englishmen
have enjoyed a larger measure of freedom than
it had ever hitherto been found possible to
combine with the conservation of that order to
which freedom owes both its origin and its
continuance. "No modern state", says Gervi-
nus,** "has passed through so normal a history
as England 5 the phases of development have
no where been as distinctly and clearly defined.
The old Teutonic constitution under the pa-
triarchal monarchy does not appear anywhere
in such perfection as with the Anglo-Saxons;
no race of people have left so rich a treasury
* There is not a single instance, from the first dawn
of our constitutional history, where a proclamation or
order of council has dictated any change however trif-
ling in the code of private rights , or in the penalties
of criminal offences. Hallam, Const. History Vol. I. p. 4.
For an instance of the boldness with which the sove-
reignty of parliament, as representing the people, was some-
times asserted even in the days of Elisabeth, see Vol. X.
p. 253.
** Introduction to the History of the 19 th Centu-
ry p. 59.
65
of law books and literature in the first stages
of the formation of their state. The feudal
system was not as perfect in its commencement
anywhere else, nor did it continue during so
long a period as in England under the Nor-
mans 5 and there is not another aristocracy which
has shewn as much capacity in political mat-
ters as the English. Royal despotism has also
no where used its power abroad and at home
with so much benevolence , and abused it
so little as here: and, finally, in no other
country have the commons brought so large
an accession of strength to the state, and
won for themselves so great a poltical in-
fluence."
When we speak of the age of a state, we do
not do so with reference to the number of years
that it has endured. There is no analogy be-
tween individual and social life in this respect ;
for, whilst fourscore years, even in the most
favourable circumstances, bring us near to the
limits of the one, the other has no necessary
limits except those which may be set to the
existence of our race, "Quid ergo," asks
Scipio, "haec quadringentorum annorum ae-
tas, ut urbis et civitatis, num valde longa
est?", and Laelius replies: "Ista vero, adulta
66
vix*." It is little to the purpose ; therefore, that,
since an event which we are accustomed to regard
as so recent as the Revolution of 1688, a period
has elapsed very nearly equal to that between
the battles of Marathon and Chaeronea, which
embraced the whole manhood of Greece ; or that,
leaving out of account the Saxon period alto-
gether, we have had, since the Conquest, a
longer existence than that of Rome from the
building of the city to the birth of Christ.
So long as virtue, in the sense not only of
moderation in enjoyment, but of active and
hopeful striving after the good and the beauti-
ful and the true, is preserved in the citizen,
and permitted to rule in public affairs, however
long our national life may have been, we may
securely put away from us all apprehension
from the inroads of political old age. But on
the contrary, if at any period the upward ten-
dencies come to be overwhelmed by the resi-
duum which, so long as our nature is imper-
fect, must lie at the bottom of every society,
the sources from which farther progress was
to be hoped will disappear, and progress and
life, be it remembered, in the state as in the
* Cicero. De republic. L. I. c. 37.
67
individual, are inseparable. Nor will the effect
of such a social inversion be different, though,
in place of a sudden outburst of democratic
passion, it should have been gradually and
constitutionally brought about under colour of
a search after an indefinite extension of poli-
tical rights, or an impossible equalisation of
wealth or wisdom. If the nobler influences of
society are impeded in their action, if the
voices of the prudent and the virtuous are un-
heard, the loss to the community is the same,
whether they be drowned in the shouts of an
infuriated rabble, or silenced by the constitu-
tional action of misdirected, though in the last
instance perhaps, inevitable legislation.
From the mere lapse of years*, then, since we
first existed as a state, or even since we first at-
tained our political manhood, however greatly
these may have exceeded what have usually been
the limits of political existence, we English
have nothing to fear; but if we have yanntad.
the stage of progress which in the case of other
states has immediately preceded decline, it will
become us to consider whether the remedies
* See Burke 1 s , "Three letters addressed to a Member
of the Present Parliament etc." , 1796.
E2
68
which have hitherto sufficed to alleviate our
political maladies, but which in their case
proved ineffectual to ward off ultimate disor-
ganisation may not now be inadequate to the
requirements of our condition.
It is in consequence of this peculiarity in
the stage of our progress that we regard it as
in the last degree important to a just appre-
ciation of our own political position, that we
should clearly distinguish it from that of our
continental neighbours. When we state, as an
abstract proposition, that the whole character
of the political life of a people is changed
when we advance from one stage of develope-
ment to another, and when, applying this
maxim to the consideration of our own society,
and assuming the advance of England beyond
the other states of Europe, we say that there-
fore her political condition differs in essentials
from theirs, the reasoning seems to amount to
little more than the drawing of a common place
conclusion from premises even more trite. But
practically there is reason to fear that we are
far from keeping this very obvious train of
reasoning continually in view. When we listen
to the ceaseless, though sometimes stifled, cries
for what is commonly called constitutional go-
69
vernment, which on the part of our conti-
nental neighbours are anything but groundless,
and perceive that the element of our constitution
of which they are envious, and that to which
we really owe our superiority, is that in which
the rights of democracy are recognised, the
tendency of such a view of matters must ne-
cessarily be to lead to the conclusion that our
own safe and proper course will lie in farther
developing that political element to which we
have hitherto owed so much. But we forget
that a farther recognition of the democratic
element has a very different meaning in the
mouths of a people who have not yet succeeded
in asserting their claim to the ultimate sovereign-
ty at all, from what it has amongst the citizens
of a state where the general will for centuries
has been recognised as the sovereign. In the
former case, it is a protest which the legitimate
sovereign makes against the usurpation of his
rights by one of the instruments which he
himself has employed for their vindication;
in the latter, it is a claim by one of the ele-
ments which go to make up the sovereign will,
to a recognition which, if carried to its ulti-
mate limits, must end in the exclusion of all
the other elements. So long as the powers of the
70
highest executive officer of the sovereign will are
regarded as something external to, and indepen-
dent of the sovereign will , claims for a further
recognition of the democratic element mean, in
the general case, nothing more than a protest
against a doctrine which we have already seen to
be false in theory, and which in practice is daily
found to be subversive of liberty and inconsistent
with progress. Whether, even in that case, it may
be the wisest or most effectual form of protest,
is a very grave question, which we rejoice to
see that the sounder political speculators of
the Continent are anxiously submitting to their
countrymen*. But whilst the false doctrine
holds its ground in so high a quarter as the
protocols of the Germanic confederation, and
whilst its realization in the form of despotic
government presses on the interests of almost
every continental people, we can scarcely blame
those who resort to an undiscriminating advo-
cacy of the claims of democracy , as the read-
iest and perhaps the only available weapon of
offence. We must bear in mind, moreover, that
it is the weapon which we ourselves used,
* Die Reform der Verfassung aus dera Conservativen
Gesichtspunkte. v. Biilow-Cummerow. L'Ancien Re'gime
et la Revolution par M. de Tocqueville.
71
with good effect, till the object for which our
neighbours are still contending was fully at-
tained. In the present day, however, what still
continues to be the object of Continental is no
longer the object of English politics; the hopes
and the fears of Continentals have ceased to be
the hopes and the fears of Englishmen; and it
is this circumstance which has led us to the,
conclusion, that a study of the means which our
neighbours advocate or employ, will in general
serve only to lead our countrymen astray. So
far from an acquaintance with continental poli-
tics enabling us to read the present or to throw
light on the future of our own country, we
believe that the views of most Englishmen
would become clearer in both respects, if they
could be induced either to withdraw their minds
from them entirely, or regard them only as a
living picture of the past. Of reactionary as
well as democratic revolutions, it is true, they
afford abundant examples ; but of that final
revolution of which alone we are in danger,
viz. of a gradual and constitutional inversion
of an ^advanced political organisation, modern
continental Europe does not, and for the rea-
sons which we have assigned, cannot possibly,
furnish an example.
72
Must we then relinquish all hope of historical
aid in our political speculations? must we en-
deavour simply to acquaint ourselves with our
present condition , and, for further guidance, be
contented to apply the general principles of our
nature to circumstances with which men have
had no experimental acquaintance ? The his-
tory of antiquity is full of examples of states
which, having reached a full and normal ma-
turity, gradually sank down under a plethora
of liberty. Let us inquire whether the great
disparity between them and our own, in almost
every other respect, does or does not preclude
us from attempting to derive instruction from
this cardinal point of resemblance.
CHAP. VIII.
OF THE DANGER OF ADOPTING THE EXPERIENCE OF
ANTIQUITY.
We are not blind to the danger of applying
to modern times laws deduced from the con-
sideration of a civilisation differing from our
own so essentially as that even of those nations
of antiquity from which it has been in a great
measure derived; and, apart from those which
are less obvious , there are two respects in
which we must manifestly be on our guard,
in measuring the one by the standard of the
other.
1. Though modern life has been less fruit-
ful in political events than that of antiquity,
and consequently furnishes, in itself, fewer
phenomena from which laws may be traced,
it stands on the shoulders of the latter*, and
* Die Geschichte nach ihm (Plato) hat hohere Ge-
danken , ein Leben von edler und tiefer Bedeutung her-
vorgebracht, als er es geahnet, und er hat sein Bild
sogar vor unwahren, triibenden Zugen nicht bewahren
konnen. Stahl, Philosophie des Rechts. I. B. p. 34.
74
enjoys the benefit of a far richer history. If
a distinction may be drawn between history
and experience , it might be said that we have
more of the former and less of the latter than
the ancients. The civilisation of the two clas-
sical nations was not only more complete in
itself than any which mankind had exhibited
before , but its monuments have been far more
perfectly preserved to us, than those of any
preexisting civilisation had been to them.
Egyptians, Assyrians, and Phenicians, were
very far from holding to Greeks and Romans
the place which Greeks and Romans do to us.
From the purely oriental character of the Egypt-
ians and Assyrians, and the more than half orien-
tal character of the Phenicians , they all of them
differed from a people so eminently and typically
European as the Greeks, far more than the latter
did from the nations of modern Europe ; and ne-
ver having made the experiment of any form of
government beyond that of the patriarchal des-
potism, the earliest and rudest form of monarchy,
which in the heroic ages Greece herself had ex-
hibited, their history could have conveyed little
instruction to self-governing communities. It is
a remarkable fact, moreover, that, such as it
was, it is far more perfectly known to our-
75
selves by means of recent discoveries and la-
bours, than it was to those who lived so much
nearer to it in point of time.
A necessary consequence of the classical na-
tions of antiquity being thus thrown on their
own experience for their political knowledge
was, that for the most part it came too late.
Before the consequences could be foreseen, the
spirit of the people had already pronounced in
favor of institutions which proved incompatible
with progress, and we have already seen that
when its decrees go forth their execution is
inevitable. Politics could not have assumed
the form of an inductive science in the hands
of Aristotle till the freedom, on the completed
history of which that science was founded, had
reached its period of .decline ; the cycle of
Polybius could not have been described till it
was historically closed. If the history of the
ancients has practical lessons to teach, it is
we, not they, who are in a condition to profit
by them. The psychological method of dealing
with politics was indeed open to them with all
the world, even in the earliest times; but with-
out the corroboration of experience it is at no
time safe, and in the necessarily unmethodical
hands of early speculators altogether inappli-
cable to practice. From this consideration we
derive, as it seems to us, an answer to those
who dispute the applicability of the experience
of antiquity to modern life; for as it could not
avail for that civilisation which engendered it,
and which necessarily perished before it was
completed, if it bears not on subsequent civi-
lisation , it is without a meaning , it has existed
and been recorded in vain. Besides it is only
by availing ourselves of this experience that
we possess the advantage over the ancients
which is so eagerly claimed for us by many
who see no practical benefit in the study of
the monuments which they have left. We con-
cede to them no superiority by acquainting
ourselves with what they have done or suffered
or thought; but if we shut our eyes to their
lessons we place ourselves needlessly* on their
level, and must, unless we trust to psycholo-
gical investigation entirely, be willing, like
them, to be wise when it is too late. It will
be by accepting as warnings of possibly ap-
proaching danger what to them proved to be
* Nicht das Vergangene 1st das Hohere , sondern im
Gegentheil die Gegenwart , und die Zukunft ist das
Hochste ; denn zu ihr fiihrt Gott, die Welt , und das Ge-
setz. Stahl I. 56.
77
premonitory symptoms of dissolution, that we
shall best guard against the parallel being com-
pleted. If we do so, he who sets a bound to
our social organic existence, on the ground
that theirs came to a close, limits a goodness
which is infinite, and which may be displayed
in the indefinite preservation of our national
life.
2. In the possession of the Christian Re-
velation modern society differs in kind from
that of antiquity. Not only has Christianity
purified and strengthened the civilising ten-
dencies from above , and communicated to
them greater consistency of action, but, strik-
ing downwards, it has been even more effica-
cious in imposing restraints on the disorganis-
ing elements which lie at the bottom of every
society, and which could be but very imper-
fectly reached either by reason and philosophy
in the abstract, or by their concrete manifesta-
tions in the form of heathen mythology.
In speaking of the Romans, it is true, Po-
lybius attributes the stability of their political
institutions more to their religion than to any
other cause. Though regarding its positive
dogmas with the contempt which they might
78
well excite in the mind of a cultivated Greek,
and thinking it necessary to apologize to his
countrymen for saying anything in favor of
what they regarded as a vulgar superstition,
he does not shrink from stating to their fullest
extent the social and political advantages which
arose from the ever present sense of responsi-
bility which a belief in future rewards and
punishments kept alive in the body of the
people*. As an example he mentions the dif-
ferent manner in which the sanctity of an oath
was regarded by the Romans and by his own
countrymen. It is not a little remarkable that,
at the distance of some 1600 years, Poly-
bius should have been followed in this view
by one whose power of forming an opinion
was scarcely inferior to his own, and whose
prejudices were as little likely to have led him
in that direction. Macchiavelli has devoted no
less than five chapters of his famous discourses
on Livy to the "Religion of the Romans"
and the conclusion at which, in common with
Polybius, he arrives is, "Qu'il est important
de faire grand cas de la religion."**
Now if such was the case with a religion in
* Lib. VI. III.
** L. I. cc. XI. et seq. French Edition Paris An VII.
79
favor of which not much more could be urged
than that it restrained the passions "by the
dread of things unseen, and the pageantry of
terrifying fiction"; which laid down no further
law for the guidance of individual life than
that which nature had already implanted in all
men, whilst many of its institutions, being vio-
lations of, must have tended to invalidate, that
law; what shall we say of a religion which,
whilst it furnishes other and higher motives
for obedience than terror, has supplied us with
a rule of conduct more perfect and more mi-
nute than any which human insight could have
framed, or human institutions enforced; which,
at once wider in its spirit and more special
in its enactments, transcends the law of na-
ture in one direction, whilst it outstrips the
cunningest devices of human prudence in the
other?*
It has been said that Christianity gave forth
no positive response on the subject of slavery;
but it is at any rate certain that, if it did not
* As to the effect of Christianity on the state and the
civil life of the individual, and the error recently com-
mitted by Tinet and the Theologians of his school who
endeavour to separate them; v. North British Review
August 1854, p. 303.
80
introduce the principle that freedom , in place
of being an accident of birth , is a right inali-
enably belonging to man's spiritual being, such
practically has been the view taken of the matter
by every Christian people, and such never was
the view which any heathen people took of it.
According to the Christian Justinian "Libertas"
is "naturalis facultas", whereas "Servitus" is
"constitutio juris gentium qua quis dominio
alieno, contra naturam, subjicitur"*; whilst
Aristotle, who in so far as natural humanity
or insight went certainly was not his inferior,
thus sums up his reasoning on the subject: on
[iev roCvvv sitil cpvGei, rt,V$ OL [isv SA.SV&SQOL OL
de dovAot, cpavsgov oig xccl ovpcpegsi, TO dov-
Aevsiv , xal diKaiov H
Now nothing seems to us to exhibit more
distinctly the efficacy of Christian tendencies,
even where they have not been reduced to
rules 5 and at the same time to place so wide
a cleft between ancient and modern society
* Instit. Lib. I. tit. III. . 12.
** Politic. L. I. c. II. See also the beginning of the
same chapter where he regards the slave as a necessary
member of the complete family. Owicc de Tf'JUtog iv.
dovkcov V.KL ttev&iOW etc.
81
as the fact that this institution, universally
recognised by the one , has been by the
other, if not universally abolished, at any
rate universally condemned. It is impossible
to calculate the effects which must have been
produced on the moral health of the whole
community by the exhalations proceeding from
this substratum of degradation and pollution.
If we attempt to regard the political apart from
the moral and social effects of the change, we
shall form a very inadequate conception of its
importance even politically considered. When
seen from the political side exclusively,
there seems to be reason in the ancient view
that it was the very existence of this social
sewerage from below which preserved the
character of the whole citizen population at
the point at which it was possible to recognise
their equality in private and their participation
in public rights. But, so far from thus remov-
ing and sequestrating its degrading elements,
we know that the structure of ancient society
was such as to bring every class into the most
intimate contact with them. No Greek could
be free from contact with what was considered
an indispensable element in the constitution of
the family, no Roman could fail himself to
82
participate in the wrongs which he inflicted on
those who had been his teachers in youth, who
were his physicians when he was sick, and
who during the best days of the Republic ex-
ercised more than half of all the functions
which belong to the modern civilian of the
middle class.
In freeing us from this ever present source
of degradation and corruption, Christianity has
opened a field of infinite possibilities, down-
wards as well as upwards , and it seems by no
means improbable that the modern appliances
of education, reformatory discipline, and the
like, which are the results of its principles,
may in the end free us to no small extent,
not only from the class who were enslaved by
the vices of others, but from that far more
formidable class who are enslaved by their own.
From the contaminating influences of this lat-
ter class, which may with truth be regarded
as a slave population, no human, community,
ancient or modern, has ever been free, and it
is impossible to calculate what may be the po-
litical eifects of even such a diminution of its
numbers or its virulence as we may not un-
reasonably hope from the means which all the
progressive nations of Europe are now em-
83
ploying. The higher and more secure position
which it has given to the female sex, is another
of the aspects of Christianity in which its po-
litical consequences have already been incal-
culably great. The malrona was the exception
amongst Roman mothers; amongst Christian
mothers the exception is she who is not a wife.
When the future possibilities of Chris-
tianity are taken into account ; we feel that
we may indeed "hope all things". Viewed
altogether apart from the special effects of
which we have spoken , and even from the in-
fluence which its positive enactments have on
the roots of society as these exist in the in-
dividual and the family ; it is obvious that a
religion of which the most prominent tendency
is to substitute for immediate individual gra-
tification motives of action derived from a
wider view of the scheme of the universe than
was possible to unaided human reason, must
be regarded as introducing into society an en-
tirely novel element both of advance and per-
manence.
The state is no longer the highest aim or its
law the highest law of humanity; and conse-
quently the natural relations of the individual
and the family are safe from the inroads to
F2
84
which a false view of public relations continu-
ally exposed them, and along with them the
whole social superstructure, in antiquity*.
Finally, we believe that as yet our experience
of Christianity has been confined to one or two
of the earlier stages of its developement , and
holding/ as we do, its almost infinite power
of expanding to meet the increased require-
ments of new situations, there are scarcely
any limits winch we should venture to set,
either to its effects, or to the perfectibility of
human society through its means. In all our
attempts at anticipating that future, for which
it may be our duty to be prepared, we must
never permit the gloomy pictures of social mu-
tability with which the history of antiquity fur-
nishes us, to scare us from the firm belief that
under the combined action of the modern in-
fluences of augmented human experience on
the one hand, and Christian precept on the
other, we may confidently look forward to a
widening of the borders of safe and permanent
liberty beyond the experience of all former times.
* Es entschied sich mehr und mehr dem Grundsatze
nach (wie zogernd auch in der Vollfiihrung) dass keine
Menschenopfer langer dem Staatsgotzen gebracht werden
diirfen etc. Dahlmann, Politik; p. 218.
85
But though, for these reasons it is obvious
that antiquity furnishes us with no measure of
the degree of social perfectibility, and conse-
quently of liberty, which may be now attain-
able, there are questions with reference to
possible and impossible forms of permanent
political existence which, for reasons which we
shall state more fully hereafter, we think it is
calculated to set for ever at rest. If it shall
appear that there are forms of government
which antiquity found it impossible to recon-
cile with permanent political existence, and if
the causes which led to this impossibility had
their roots, not .in any transitory peculiarity of
ancient society, but in the unchangeable* laws
* No man has laid down more clearly than Hooker,
the distinction between mutable and immutable laws,
and the grounds of this distinction.
"Wherefore, to end with a general rale concerning all
the laws which God hath tied men unto ; those laws di-
vine that belong, whether naturally or supernaturally,
either to men as men, or to men as they live in public
society , or to men as they are of that politic society
which is the Church, without any further respect had
unto any such variable accident as the state of men,
and of societies of men, and of the Church itself in this
world is subject unto ; all laws that so belong unto men,
they belong for ever; yea although they be positive laws,
unless being positive God himself which made them alter
86
of our nature itself j the question arises,, must
not we also adopt these causes as fixed quan-
tities in our calculations , and consent to the
dismissal of forms which have been thus con-
demned? And if, in addition to this, we find
that Christianity, instead of struggling against
them. The reason is, because the subject or matter of
laws in general is thus far forth constant; which matter
is that for the ordering whereof laws were instituted,
and being instituted are not changeable without cause,
neither can they have cause of change, when that which
gave them their first institution remaineth for ever one
and the same. On the other side, laws that men made
for men or societies or Churches, in regard of their being
such as they do not always continue, but may perhaps
be clean otherwise a while after, and so may require to
be otherwise ordered than before, the laws of God him-
self which are of this nature no man endued with com-
mon sense, will ever deny to be of a different constitu-
tion from the former, in respect of the one's constancy
and the mutability of the other. And this doth seem to
have been the very cause why St. John doth so peculiarly
term the doctrine that teacheth salvation by Jesus Christ,
Evangelium aeiernum, "an eternal Gospel", because there
can be no reason wherefore the publishing thereof
should be taken away, and any other instead of it pro-
claimed, as long as the world doth continue; whereas
the whole law of rites and ceremonies, although delive-
red with so great solemnity is notwithstanding clean
abrogated inasmuch as it had but temporary cause of
God's ordaining it."
87
these laws, has recognised them and adapted
itself to them and to their consequences, do
we not, in place of an argument for the possible
realisation of forms of government to which
the main objection was that they overlooked
these laws, find in the example of Christianity
an additional reason for guarding modern so-
ciety against them? Should we find, for ex-
ample that, such was the experience of the an-
cients as regarded the government of the nu-
merical majority, and that this experience was
traced by them not to transitory but to per-
manent causes, shall we not still have the
gravest reasons for suspecting that, in place of
being an ideal of difficult attainment, it may be,
but one after which it is nevertheless our duty
to strive, such a government belongs in truth
to the diseased imaginings of an imperfectly
enlightened national understanding. Let us
clearly distinguish between new social princi-
ples which Christianity has introduced, or out-
ward circumstances which it has modified, and
internal laws which it has recognised*, and we
need have no hesitation in applying the expe-
rience of heathen antiquity to Christian times.
* See Lewis, Methods of Reasoning, etc. Vol.11, p. 131.
CHAP. TX.
THE PUBLICISTS* THE INTERPRETERS OF ANTIQUITY.
It was in consequence of the more rapid po-
litical life of the Greeks , and of the greater
experience** which within narrow limits and
* In England the term "publicist" has hitherto been
applied almost exclusively to writers on international
law. We do not however conceive ourselves bound by
a limitation which could have arisen only in eonse-
quence of the neglect of that department of literature
to which we are endeavouring to offer a humble con-
tribution. The word "Constitutionalist," which we
sometimes use as an equivalent for Publicist in the
sense in which it is here employed , begs at the outset
the principal question with which the publicist has to
deal, by assuming that "constitutionalism" is the only
legitimate form of government , and is itself a proof of
how contracted our notions of scientific politics have
become. If, following our own earlier writers , we were
to employ the word "prudence" as equivalent to the
science of public law, as jurisprudence is to the science
of private law, then the word "publicists" might be
rendered by Prudentes as opposed to Jurisprudentes.
** " The ancients had more experience of democracy,
and a better knowledge of the character of dema-
89
during a comparatively short political existence,
they thus acquired , as much perhaps as of their
general speculative tendencies, or of the acci-
dental appearance of gifted men, that there
arose amongst them a Science of Politics of
which the modern phase, in an age justly
proud of the discovery of the laws of political
economy, scarcely merits to be considered even
as an adaptation.
Montesquieu, in the chapter in which he
treats of the "principle of democracy", says
that "the Greek politicians, who lived under
popular governments, recognised no other force
as capable of sustaining them but virtue, where-
as those of our day speak only of manufactures,
commerce, finances, riches, and luxury." The
accusation, in the identical form in which
gogues than the frame of modern society allows us the
means of attaining 11 . Sir James Mackintosh's Speech on
the Reform Bill.
" The ancients had much more experience than we
have in free governments and in all republican forms".
Sismondi Essays, p. 293; and again: "Every day must
convince us more that the ancients understood liberty,
and the conditions of free governments , infinitely better
than we do", p. 411. See also ibid., p. 358. The work
here referred to is that erroneously called by the trans-
lator, "Sismondi's political Economy " !
90
Montesquieu puts it, is one which is still
(certainly not with diminished reason) brought
by undiscriminating admirers of antiquity
against the moderns, and by which, from the
manifest fallacy which it contains, they injure,
as it seems to us, an argument in which,
to a very great extent, we are disposed to go
along with them. The real error of the mo-
derns consists, not in substituting manufactures,
commerce, finances, etc., for the principles
of government which Montesquieu elsewhere
enumerates, but in cultivating a subordinate
department of politics, of which these are legiti-
mate objects, to the exclusion of what we agree
with him in thinking the more important study
of the general principles of the science itself.
It must be obvious to every one that the
science which treats of the acquisition and dis-
tribution of wealth, which in Montesquieu's
time was beginning* to be cultivated, and
which since has been so marvellously deve-
loped, though unquestionably it has very im-
portant bearings on social and political progress,
and consequently on politics as the science of
that progress, is no more identical with it
than a part is identical with the whole; and
* Quesnay was five years younger than Montesquieu.
91
that a treatise on the production and applica-
tion of manures might as well be viewed as
exhausting the science of agriculture as one
on political economy that of politics. It is no
doubt difficult to recognise the wisdom of the
modern distribution of labour, by which, whilst
a particular branch of detail is made the sub-
ject of the closest and most accurate investi-
gation, the general subject is handed over to
the hasty, occasional, and necessarily superficial
discussion of the newspaper editor, the party
declaimer, or at the very best the political
contributor to a Quarterly Review. St.ill it is
absurd to suppose that the most minute and
painful investigation of any one department of
human effort necessarily derogates from the
study of the more general principles by which
the whole is governed; though the experience
of modern times has unquestionably proved the
possibility of the one being very successfully
carried on by those who have devoted little
attention to the other.
What is now called political economy was
by no means unknown to the ancients. It was
treated, under the name of chrematistics, as a
department of politics, to which, as the genus
under which the whole of the social sciences
92
were ranged, and in which in a certain sense
even ethics* was included, it was subordinated.
There is no reason to think, however, that it
* The train of reasoning according to which Aristotle
subordinated Ethics to Politics was this.
All agree (ot itoMoi v.al of XCCQISVTSS] in regarding
felicity (evdccL^ovia) as the ultimate object of human
life (Tccv&QComvov ayu&ov) , and the science , whose
peculiar object it is , as the master science (TO ravrrjs
TS&OS 7tQie%oi dv roc TCOV ctMcov). Nic. Ethic., Lib. I.
cap. II. As to wherein felicity consists however they
differ widely (nsqi ds rrjs svdKifioviccs , n's SGTLV, d[i-
, v.a.1 ov% ofiotcog ol nolkol rots cocpois dno-
Ethic. Nic., Cap. IV. Lib. I. As the interpreter
of the views of the XKQIKVXSS , Aristotle pronounces it to
consist in the constant activity of our faculties , rational
and intellectual , and in their developement in a per-
fect life (il>v%fj$ svsQysiu Y.KX' d^BT^v}. Ibid. Cap. VII.
But man is a social being (itohrLKov o5o>) and for such,
the perfect life is possible only in the state, hence sv-
daL^iovLcc. cannot be the object of Ethics when taken
as the science of individual, but only of politics as that
of social , relations.
In this view it is clear that Politics come to be the
master science, to which Ethics are subordinated ; though
it is equally manifest that the reasoning proceeds on a
limitation of the province of Ethics which is by no
jtneans constant in the writings of Aristotle. The diffi-
culty , indeed, which we have in fixing the relation of
Ethics and Politics to each other arises from the fact
that the terms which are used to designate both have
93
was made the subject of a very thorough or
systematic investigation. The chief interest of
two significations, a wider and a narrower one, and con-
sequently that the relations of genus and species alter-
nately belong to each. When Politics (TK TTOUTLKK), as
here, are taken in their wider sense, that of a common
term for the whole of the social sciences , and Ethics
(TO. TyoHxof) in their narrower, that of the science of
individual relations exclusively, then Politics are the
genus , and Ethics the species. On the other hand,
when Ethics are viewed as the primary human science,
having for their object the whole range of man's rational
and responsible life, then they become the genus and Po-
litics the species. There is still a third sense in which
Ethics are used, that, viz., in which they comprehend only
individual and social relations; and in this they are co-
extensive with Politics in their widest sense. It is in
this sense that Aristotle says of Ethics, Ethic. Nic.,
Lib. I. Cap. II., noUTMjj TI$ OVGCC, that they are a
kind of Politics.
In addition to these considerations it must be borne
in mind that , even where no such interchange of reJa-
tions takes place, the species at all times contains the
genus (i. e. implies it) it is a metaphysical, as opposed
to a logical whole. Whately, p. 140; Aldridge Com-
pendium Artis Logicae, p. 9. That Aristotle habitually
regarded Ethics as the genus , and Politics as the spe
cies, is practically demonstrated by the fact that he
laid the foundation for his treatise on Politics by that
on Ethics. Such also is the modern view: "Fille de la
morale, la politique a la meme charactere que sa mere."
Cousin, Discours Politiques; Introd. IV. Ed. 1851.
94
antiquity centred in the science of government,
which was zealously, profoundly, and at length
systematically studied; and the consequence of
the attention thus bestowed on it was the tracing
out of the tendencies by which not only the
growth and gradual developement of states
were affected, but of those by which, apart
altogether from violent changes ; a gradual and,
so to speak, normal decay was brought about.
Plato and Aristotle, who for antiquity, and
probably for all time, represent most com-
pletely the two leading mental tendencies of
mankind, the subjective and the objective,
were likewise the greatest of all politicians,
and, in their political as in their other in-
vestigations, their methods were the direct
consequences of these tendencies *. Plato, look-
ing inward for the laws no.t only of the indi-
* Warnkonig in speaking of the turbulent life of the
Greek states, says: "Doch erreichte mitten in diesen
Stiirmen die griechische Humanitatsbildung, und insbe-
sondere die Philosophic ihre gliinzendste Hb'he, und
durch sie auch die theoretische Entwickelung der Staats-
idee. Es entstanden die in der Weltgeschichte ewig
denkwiirdigen Theorieen der Politik oder Staatswissen-
schaft , die in zwei, schon in der Natur der Sache lie-
genden , entgegengesetzten Richtungen sich bewegten, der
idealistischen, die in Plato, und der historisch-practischen,
95
vidual, but also of the social man, regarded
the several excellencies of the state only as
larger and more perfect manifestations of those
of the citizen , and its corruptions and perver-
sions, in like manner, as analogous to the
various forms of human depravity. It is to
the consciousness of the individual that he ad-
dresses himself in his search, not only after
the immutable relations of social life, but the
varying and apparently almost accidental forms
which social organisation assumes. His method,
in a word , was purely psychological, though by
no means, as has generally been believed, to
the total exclusion of historical considerations.
His measure of perfection is an ideal, not de-
rived by abstraction and generalisation from
the phenomena presented by a study of reality,
but directly revealed to the human spirit, more
or less completely as it strives upwards to-
wards its realisation. Aristotle, on the other
hand, was preeminently an observer of ex-
ternal existences; and, if proofs were wanting
of the fact that the inductive method was not
new with Bacon they would be found in the
die in Aristoteles ihren grossten Vertreter fand. " Juri-
stische Encyclopadie. p. 177. see also Stahl. Philosophic
des Kechts. Vol. I. p. 9.
96
care which Aristotle took to root the Science
of Politics in a sound and wide-spreading in-
vestigation of political phenomena. Before
forming his political system he passed in re-
view the constitutions of most of the states
which had existed before his time and which
existed then; and compiled , or caused to be
compiled*, a work in which he described the
constitutions of 150, or ; according to others, of
258 different states, and detailed the principal
revolutions which they had undergone. Of this
work fragments only remain, and these have
scarcely yet been collated with sufficient care;
but from the materials which it contained he com-
posed the invaluable treatise on Politics which
we possess. The confidence with which this
method inspired him, if it does not justify, to
some extent explains, the depreciating manner
in which Aristotle frequently speaks of the po-
litical speculations of Plato, and which contrasts
strangely with the deference with which he
treats his opinions on other subjects**. Each
* Ethic. Nicom,, Lib. X. c. 7.
** The circumstances of Aristotle's life were such as
to render him much more of a practical statesman than
Plato , and probably to inspire him with an idea of the
futility of mere speculation. Our readers will remem-
97
of these methods when pursued to the exclu-
sion of the other to the extent to which Plato
and Aristotle pursued them, is liable to ge-
nerate serious error; but, if the historical me-
thod be less productive of profound and ori-
ginal truth, there is little doubt on the other
hand that it is the safer of the two*; and it
is very remarkable that it was from a neglect
of its use, in an age of which the application of
the inductive method to physics was the chief
boast, that politicians towards the end of
last century were led into most of the errors
of which Europe has since been reaping the
bitter fruits. When first principles which are
true only partially and relatively are enunciated
her the slighting manner in which he speaks of the po-
litical studies of the Architect of Piraeus. It must be
borne in mind, besides, that the Stagirite had a trick of
indulging in contemptuous epithets.
* For a discussion of the comparative merits of the
two methods v. Preface to Aristotle's Politics by J. Bar-
thelemy Saint Hilaire. It is valuable for its apprecia-
tion of the psychological method. In Stahl's Philosophic
des Rechts will be found an admirable statement of the
manner in which Aristotle derived his standard of right
from a contemplation of nature, not in part, where ap-
parent contradictions continually present themselves,
but in whole, where the natural and moral laws are coin-
cident. Vol. I. p. 21., et seq.
98
as invariably and absolutely true, it is no easy
matter, from psychological considerations alone,
to point out the limits within which they may
be admitted with safety; and once taken for
granted, it is still more difficult to stop short
of the consequences to which they lead. When
it is asserted, for instance, that all men are
born with equal rights , and when a writer such
as Rousseau descants eloquently " sur 1'egalite
que la nature a mise entre les homines , et sur
1'inegalite qu'ils ont institute ", the portion
of truth which the proposition contains is
so much more obvious than the limitations
within which alone it can be admitted without
violating other principles equally fundamental,
and the passions of the majority of men are so
much more readily enlisted for it than against
it, that the greater number will always be dis-
posed to receive it as a principle of human
society absolutely true, and will not permit
themselves to be undeceived till they have
tasted the consequences of their error in some
form of social disorganisation*. Now, in place
* Rousseau's Princip schmeichelt den selbstandigen
Neigungen der Menschen durch ein Minimum des Staats-
zwanges; daher der stiirmische Beifall. Dahlmann, Poli-
tik. p. 230.
99
of taking their principle for granted in its pu-
rity, had they had recourse to history, and
endeavoured to discover to what extent it had
been found possible for mankind practically to
recognise it, they would not only have found
that experience had pronounced its absolute
recognition to be irreconcilable with the ex-
istence of society, but they would have come
in contact with opposing principles which,
whilst human nature continues as it is, must
permanently modify it. They would have seen,
(as we shall see afterwards*), the distinction
between equality before the law and equality
of political rights and honours recognised by
the forms of government under which man-
kind had enjoyed the greatest amount of li-
berty; and on analysing this distinction they
would have found it to depend on prin-
ciples of our ' nature as fundamental as those
by which at first sight it seemed to be ex-
cluded.
The great advantage of the historical method
is that if faithfully adhered to it will never
lead us astray from human nature altogether,
as even in the most skilful hands the psycholo-
* Vide infra, and Thucydides, II. 37.
02
100
gical method too frequently does. The ideal
which we reach by the processes of the under-
standing may be inferior to that which the
reason directly reveals, and we may fail thus
to reach the depth or height of which our na-
ture is capable, and to which it may after-
wards attain, but we shall scarcely frame in-
stitutions for circumstances which are impos-
sible, nor in those which we do frame will our
miscalculations of social tendencies be other
than in degree. When Aristotle defended slavery
as a result of the inequality which naturally
exists among men, the error which he com-
mitted was the converse of that of which he
accuses those who make no distinction between
absolute and relative equality. He forgot that
all men have an equal claim to be recognised
as human beings, just as the demagogue for-
gets that they have not an equal claim to power
and honour; and thus far it may be said that
he was as much led astray by the faulty in-
stitutions of his country, as Rousseau, for ex-
ample, was by a deficient psychology. But when
Plato recommended a similar training for both
sexes, he overlooked the distinction between
the natural functions of each, and in commu-
nity of women he proposed an institution
101
which not only psychology and physiology unite
in pronouncing to be impracticable, but which
no organised society ever recognised *. - It is
in a complete union of the two methods ; " un-
questionably, that the perfection* of ir/etliod
consists; but there is too much truth in the
saying that all men are born either Platonists
or Aristotelians to permit us to hope for such
* "Aristotle's refutation of Plato" says Stahl, "had
not the ordinary meaning, ' These your schemes are just
indeed and noble , but impracticable ' ; on the contrary
it was this 'They contradict the conditions of Nature,
and are consequently not what she, the source of Ethics,
will and strives after; they are untrue and unjust. 11
Plato's reply of course would have been that not Nature,
but the idea, was "the source of Ethics." But then
came the further question, whence sprang the idea itself ;
was its source in the last instance not the very same
as that of those human tendencies which Aristotle traced
in their effects. "It is one and the same power," says
Stahl , working out the common origin of the two rival
methods through several very instructive pages, " it is
the same power which produces the natural conditions
and propensities, and by which the goal is assigned to-
wards which humanity in its individual and corporate
capacity has to strive. This view explains the rela-
tion between Nature and Ethics which reality exhi-
bits , and at the same time clears up to us the rela-
tion between Plato and Aristotle." Philos. des Rechts,
V. I. p. 29.
102
a result. So long as our intellectual faculties
are imperfect our habits of thinking will be
one sided ,* a'ad it is hopeless to look for any
one who* shall be both an Aristotle and a Plato.
TiU r 'the advent of such a mental prodigy a
perfectly " satisfactory treatise on Politics will
continue a desideratum in literature. Invo-
luntarily the one method or the other will
gain the ascendant , but ; as no sound mind
is destitute of any faculty , so no sound
writer will be altogether the slave of either.
If the institutions of Sparta were not with-
out their influence in the formation of Plato's
ideal of the state, the dicta of consciousness
contributed even a more important element
towards that conception of the necessary
laws of social existence which Aristotle pro-
fessed to derive mainly from external obser-
vation.
But we must not permit ourselves to be
tempted, either by the extreme interest of the
subject itself, or by the fact that nothing of
importance has hitherto been written on it in
English, to dwell further on the rise of the
Science of Politics in antiquity. Our only pre-
sent concern with the political studies of the
ancients is to obtain from them the results
103
which the history of that civilisation to which
they belonged yielded to their investigation., and
thus to read with the eyes of those among
them who were its professed interpreters, a
history in some important points more ana-
logous to our own than that of the modern
world. For this purpose we shall at once be-
take ourselves to Aristotle: for, though the
labours of his predecessors had by no means
been barren of results, these results, for the
most part, were adopted by him, and he it
was who first placed the study on a properly
scientific basis. From the time at which he
lived , also, he had the benefit of an experience
which enabled him to evolve general laws,
both of developement and declension, with far
greater security than was possible half a century
earlier; and it is this circumstance which gives
to his dicta their peculiar value for those whose
stage of political development (unlike that of
his countrymen when he wrote) may still be
such as to enable them to avail themselves of
the lessons which they convey. Above all, there
is the peculiarly dispassionate and observant
character of the old* man himself, a circumstance
* It is probable that the Politics were written towards
104
which enabled him to a greater extent than per-
haps any other writer, either ancient or modern,
to conform to what ought to be maxim of every
political enquirer:
Unto thee
Let thine own time like an old story be.
CHAP. X. ,
THE DICTA OP THE PUBLICISTS.
According to Aristotle, the test of a govern-
ment being legitimate or illegitimate consists
in the fact of the power and influences of the
governing body having for their object the
common benefit, or the reverse*. "Govern-
the close of Aristotle's life, and he hints (Ethic. Nic.,
Lib. I. c. 3) that, in his opinion, the subject was not
suited for the young. The Republic of Plato on the con-
trary was an earlier production than the Laws in which
something like an approach to the Aristotelian mode of
thinking is traceable.
" * Politic. Lib. III. c. 5.
105
ment", he says, "which is the supreme autho-
rity, must be in the hands either of the one,
or the few, or the many. If the one, the few,
or the many govern with a view to the benefit
of the whole*, these governments are legiti-
mate (o()9m TCoAiTsicti) ; whereas those of which
the object is the peculiar benefit of the one,
the few, or the many, are degenerate or per-
verted forms (TtaQsxfldGsig) **.
Following in the main the views of Plato,
and probably of other members of the So-
cratic School, he then enumerates as legiti-
mate forms;
1. Monarchy; 2. Aristocracy; 3. Polity; and
along side of them, as the corresponding de-
generate forms;
* He elsewhere (Polit. III. 4. 7.) opposes
vcti to OQ&Ki noliTBicu. The same idea is in some de-
gree conveyed by what Plato calls GTKOLOJTSIKI and Plu-
tarch TtCtQUTQOTtCti Y.O.I V7lQ%V6Sl<S.
** It is not, of course, necessary that the whole should
actually be benefited. Aristotle's view is entirely con-
sistent with that of the best modern speculators , who
hold that every government is legitimate, whatever its
form may be, so long as it is an expression of the exist-
ing will of the whole people. In that case its object,
of course, is the common benefit , though its effects may
sometimes be the reverse.
106
1. Tyranny; 2. Oligarchy; 3. Democracy.
''For tyranny", he adds, "is a monarchy in
which the interests of the monarch alone are
consulted: oligarchy has respect to those only
of the rich: whilst a democracy takes into ac-
count the interests of the poorer classes exclu-
sively.
The only important distinction between this
classification and that of Plato is that Plato
has no name by which to distinguish the li-
mited democracy from its degenerate form, and
this circumstance, as Hermann remarks, has
introduced much confusion into his treatises.
There is reason to believe that the use of the
word 7tokiTia to signify the legitimate form
of the popular government originated with
Aristotle*; and the fact of his using in this
specific sense what had hitherto been the ge-
neric term for the state is significant of the
importance which he attached to it.
Now this classification presents us with two
important results, which we shall do well to
note in the outset.
* Plato sometimes approaches it , as for example where
he says. Laws L. VI. c. 5. 'H per KIQSGIS OVTCD yiyvo-
sGov KV 8%oi iiovttQ%iKfjs nod drjfAOKQccTMrjs noh-
, TJS <XSL dSL [ISGSVSIV TTjV ItOliXElCtV.
107
1 . That the completeness with which govern-
ments recognise the interests of the whole com-
munity is not necessarily in proportion to their
popular character; and,
2. That the most popular government of all
is, in every case, a government for the bene-
fit of a class (TIQOS to 6vii(pQOV ro XG>V KTTO-
Q&V. Lib. III. c. 5).
In explaining the nature of the different le-
gitimate forms Aristotle says of the "Polity"
that it arises "where the many govern for the
common benefit*"; that it is a "mixture of
oligarchy and democracy " ; and elsewhere, that
in order to form it we must take the elements
of these two forms separately, and bringing
them together construct it from their union**.
In the passage in the Ethics*** in which he
first enunciates the law of political degeneracy,
he speaks of the Polity as synonymous with what
is sometimes called Timocracy f, or government
according to wealth ; and, in contrasting it with
* Lib. III. c. 5. IV. c. 6.
** Lib. IV. c. 8.
*** Ethic. Lib. VIII. c. 10.
j- Plato's Timocracy is a government according to
honour, rtfiij, not
108
aristocracy*, he says that it differs from it
chiefly in leaning more towards the side of de-
mocracy, whereas the tendency of the other is to
render the oligarchic element preponderating.
From these passages it appears that according
to Aristotle, the Polity is the only form in
which popular government could realise] the
true idea of the state, that, viz., of an organisa-
tion for the benefit of the whole community**,
which, whilst it took cognisance of the interests
of the possessors of wealth and intelligence, by
appropriating to them an influence in the go-
vernment in some degree corresponding to that
which they possessed in society, and conse-
quently exceeding that to which their mere
numbers would have entitled them, still pre-
served in the hands of the great body of the
people such a preponderating influence in the
last resort, as to prevent the higher classes, by
availing themselves of the indirect influence
which must always belong to them, from as-
* Polit. Lib. IV. c. 6.
** " Res publica , res populi". Cicero. Republ. Lib. I.
c. 25.
"Did God create the Hebrews that Saul might reign
over them"? Algernon Sidney on government. V. I.
p. 8. Edit 1750.
109
suming the attitude either of a dominant faction,
or of a privileged class.
The Polity was thus, in Aristotle's political
system, the form of government which ap-
proached most nearly to our own free English
Constitution, and in seeking practical lessons
from his teaching our object must be to trace
the principles according to which he found its
development and decay to be regulated.
It will be remarked that in Aristotle's classifi-
cation no place is allotted to that tripartite go-
vernment which has played so great a part in the
modern world. The Polity, a.s conceived by him,
unquestionably wanted the monarchical element;
and this fact seems the more remarkable when
we consider that the idea of combining the three
primary forms must have been perfectly fami-
liar to his mind. Plato had shadowed forth
such a government in the Laws*, and Aristotle
himself tells us that it had been treated of by
other writers**. There has been much specu-
lation as to who these writers were. The com-
mon opinion has fixed on Hippodamus of Mi-
letus and Archytas of Tarentum, two Pytha-
* Lib. III. c. 2. See also Lib. IV. c. 5.
** Polit. Lib. II. c. 3.
110
goreans to whom 'Stobaeus has attributed very
remarkable fragments, which, if genuine ; are
quite unequivocal as to the acquaintance of
Aristotle's predecessors with the idea of the
mixed government. But as Aristotle frequently
speaks of both of these persons, and particu-
larly at very considerable length of Hippoda-
rnus and his system, there is some reason to
think that, if the passages referred to had been
theirs, he would have mentioned them speci-
fically; and it is at any rate extremely pro-
bable that, in order to explain the allusion in
question, we do not require to go so far as
to the school of Pythagoras. We know that
the teaching of Socrates engendered a whole
family of political speculators, all of whose
writings except those of Xenophon and Plato
have perished; and it is very possible that any
one of them may have discussed a combination
to which their master had referred, and which
could scarcely have failed to suggest itself to
an ingenious mind, occupied as the minds of
all the publicists of antiquity were with the
institutions of Sparta.
But, whencesoever he may have derived it,
we are not left to conjecture as to Aristotle's
acquaintance with the idea of the tripartite go-
Ill
vernment. In two places* at least he not only
describes it with accuracy, but bestows on it
a commendation which, though passing and
careless, and by no means indicating a high
sense of its importance, still quite clearly marks
his conviction that it was a step in the direction
of permanence and safety. That such should
have been his opinion seems necessarily to
follow from the fact of his being so fully alive
to the danger to which the Polity was exposed
from the democratic element, as actually to
fix on democracy as its appropriate degenerate
form. Nor was he in any degree averse to
monarchy in the abstract; on the contrary he
frequently seems to prefer it to all the other
forms, and particularly to the Polity, which
from its nearness to democracy he regarded
with a species of distrust**.
It is possible that the very insignificant role
which the monarchical element played in the
constitutions of Sparta*** and Carthage, in place
* Polit. Lib. II. c. 3. and 6.
** GVVOQOL ya^ SiOiv ctvrai. Ethic. Nic. Lib. VIII. c. 10.
*** In the Cretan institutions which resembled those
of Sparta in so many respects , the monarchical element
was altogether omitted; its place, as a separate executive,
being supplied by the y.dff/u-ot, who were ten in number.
112
of raising Aristotle's notion of its value may
actually have depressed it. But, incomplete and
inefficient though the mixed government was in
its existing form, one would have expected it to
suggest to a mind such as Aristotle's the possi-
bility of its far more extensive application ; and
on the whole we know no more striking proof of
the fact -that nothing but the fulness of time can
so ripen theoretical conceptions as to fit them for
practical purposes than the little fruit which
the discovery of the mixed government bore to
the states of antiquity. There can be no doubt
that to the mind of Aristotle it presented it-
/self simply as a modification of the Polity, so
unimportant* as to leave it exposed to the
same influences and prone to the same form of
degeneracy. Though he no where pursues the
subject, his declining to assign to the mixed
government either a separate place or a sepa-
Polybius however denies that there was any similarity
betAveen the political institutions of Crete and those of
Sparta. Lib. VI. 3.
* Aristotle probably was sagacious enough to feel the
real difficulty which attends the admission of the mo-
narchical element as an efficient power , viz. the ten-
dency which it has to unsettle the minds of men. as to
the real centre of sovereignty in the popular will.
rate name is conclusive as to the fact that he
regarded the additional barriers which it op-
posed to democracy as likely to prove ultimate-
ly insufficient, and the modern world may per-
haps derive a not uninstructive hint from the
fact that in this opinion he is followed by
writers whose practical acquaintance with it
has been greater, and who have attached to it
far more importance than he seems to have
done.
Polybius, so far as we know, is the earliest
writer who fully appreciates the tripartite go-
vernment, and distinctly sets forth its advan-
tages ; and in this , as in other respects, he has
been followed by Cicero in his Kepublic so close-
ly as greatly to invalidate the claims to ori-
ginality which, in the tumult of joy which its
discovery excited, were made on all hands in
behalf of that long lost treasure. M. Sudre
suggests * that a tradition may have existed to
the effect that Scipio .ZEmilianus was an ad-
mirer of the mixed government 5 and there was
at any rate an appropriateness in attributing
to him, as Cicero has done, sentiments which,
if he did not arrive at them by means of his
* Histoire de la Souverainete p. 503.
114
own reflections on the constitution of his coun-
try, the conversation of his friend and tutor
must assuredly have suggested. "That kind of
Government", says Polybius*, u is undoubtedly
to be esteemed the best, which is composed of
all the three." "Itaque quartum quoddam ge-
nus reipublicae maxime probandum esse censeo,
quod ex his, quae prima dixi, moderatum et
permixtum tribus**," is the echo of Scipio; and
he elsewhere aptly characterises it as that form
"quod conflatum fuerit ex omnibus***".
Both Polybius and Cicero give as examples
of the political trinity: first the constitution of
Rome, and then those of Sparta and Car-
thage. Cicero dwells upon the early kingly
government of Rome, particularly the consti-
tution of Servius Tullius, as his principal ex-
ample; and in appearance it unquestionably
was so, for in it alone of the three was the
executive power centred in one individual ; but
Polybius seems to have felt that a monarchy
in which the king was elected f by the as-
* Lib. VI. c. 1.
** Republ. Lib. L c. 29.
*** Cap. 35.
f Cicero approved of elective monarchy, not only as
exemplified in the Roman kingly government but abso-
115
sembly of the people, which from internal
causes of disorganisation had long since ceased
to exist, and with reference to which the tra-
ditions were in many respects confused and
contradictory, went very little farther towards
giving historical roots to his theory than any
other form of government in which the execu-
tive were separated from the legislative func-
tions, and he consequently rests his case, so
far as it depends on Roman history, on the
consular rather than the kingly institution*.
The chief reason of this diversity of view is
probably to be found in the changes which*
had taken place in the Roman government in
the time which intervened between Polybius
and Cicero. During his seventeen jfcars resi-
lutely, and Sismondi in our own time has very ably
taken the same side, a view, which the experience of
France since he wrote has by no means invalidated. "In
politics", as he has elsewhere well said, "there is no
orthodoxy out of which there is no salvation." Sis-
mondi, Essays 350.
* It is remarkable that neither Polybius nor Cicero
mention the Dictatorship as a temporary recognition of
the monarchical principle. The reason probably is that
they had both but too much reason personally to regard
it with disfavor.
H2
116
dence in Italy as a state prisoner, Poly bins
had contemplated with admiration and wonder
the efficiency of that government "through
which almost the whole habitable world, in
less than the course of fifty three years, was
reduced beneath the Roman yoke, an event of
which there is no example in any former
time*". To the Greek detenu the Roman in-
stitutions, then in the pride and prime of their
purity and power, seemed, to combine more
than the vigour of a monarchy with the ad-
vantages which, in their best days, had be-
longed to the freest states of his native coun-
try. In Cicero's eyes, even before his own
misfortunes came upon him, they appeared in
a very diijerent light; for, notwithstanding the
extravagant value which he attached to his
own administration, he could not have faile'd
to see, that, whilst the consulship had ceased
to be a check on democratic influences, it was
eagerly courted, both by civil demagogues and
military commanders, as a constitutional step-
ping stone to unconstitutional powers. In such
circumstances it is not astonishing that he
turned with longing from the manifest evils of
* Lib. I. c. 1.
117
the consular to the shadowy glories of kingly
times *.
When the monarchical element was restricted
to a separation of the executive from the other
functions of the state, Sparta and Carthage at
once took their places as appropriate instances
both of its existence and its good effects. In
one respect indeed Sparta came nearer to the
modern state than Rome, even during the kingly
period; for in Sparta the custom which was
universal in the heroic ages had been pre-
served, and the kingly office was hereditary;
but then on the other hand it was not only
modified, even before the creation of the rival
power of the Ephors, by the peculiarities which
belonged to the whole of the Doric institutions,
but was farther deprived of all proper mo-
narchical character, in substance as in name,
by the fact that there was not one king but two.
* There is no subject on which Cicero is so much in
earnest as the political and social degeneracy of his time.
The following words are as sad as if they had dropped
from the pen of Tacitus. Hac tamen in oppressione
sermo , in circulis durntaxat, et conviviis, est liberior
quam fuit. Vincere incipit timorem dolor, sed ita, ut
omnia .sint plenissima desperationis. (Epist. ad Atticum,
L. II. Ep. XVIII., Caesare et Eibulo cos.).
118
Carthage, again, in this respect was more
nearly on a footing of equality with the Roman
consular government ; for the heads of the exe-
cutive, though their office endured for life,
besides being two in number, were elective*.
It thus appears that the historical examples
of Polybius and Cicero scarcely bear out even
their views of the union of the monarchical
with the other political elements ; and still less
can they be regarded as anticipations in anti-
quity of that constitutional state, which has
with justice been regarded as the great politi-
cal discovery of the Germanic nations.
But however imperfect may have been the
form in which the constitutions of these states
exhibited the monarchical element, it is in-
structive to remark that the opinion of the
publicists was decidedly to the effect that they
were invigorated by the infusion of it which
they did possess. Aristotle says, with reference
to Carthage,** that "the sound organisation of
the state is proved by the fact, that, though the
people took part in the government neither in-
* Niebuhr says that in regard to the political consti-
tution of Carthage we are quite in the dark. Lectures,
V. I. p. 107.
** Polit. Lib. II. c. VIII.
119
surrection nor tyranny arose"; and Polybius is
not less unequivocal in attributing its sudden
rise and great prosperity to its original consti-
tution than in ascribing its downfall, of which
he was an eye witness, to its departure from it*.
On the subject of the balance of power in
Sparta he has the following observations, which
seem almost as if he had borrowed them from
a modern constitutional lawyer. "The dread of
the people, to whom a certain share was al-
lotted in the government, restrained the ex-
cesses and abuses of royalty. The people, on
the other hand, were maintained in due sub-
mission to the kings by the apprehension
of the power of the senate. For the mem-
bers of the senate, being all selected from
the best among the citizens, were always
ready to support the cause of justice by throw-
ing their own weight into the scale; when
either side was in danger of being oppressed
by the other, to give such strength to the
weaker party as the constitution of the state
required. By these means the Lacedaemonians
preserved their liberty entire for a much lon-
ger time than any other people".
* Polyb., Lib. VI. c. II. ex. 3.
120
But though these governments, by recognis-
ing the executive as a separate power , are
thus admitted by the publicists' to have raised
up an additional barrier against that form of
degeneracy to which the Polity was prone, we
have already seen that they did not so far
change its character as to induce Aristotle to
treat them as exceptional cases. He still re-
garded their besetting danger as on the side of
the people , and as neither of them perished till
long after his death, if their final downfall was
in accordance with the law which he enun-
ciated, it must be regarded as a proof of its
accuracy, and a very striking fulfilment of
the prophecy which it implied.
Polybius on the other hand not only saw
democracy assume the ascendant both in Car-
thage and Sparta, but was a witness to the
consequences of the event. Immediately after
the passage which we formerly quoted in which
he commends the original constitution of Sparta
he continues: "But at the time of the war of
Annibal the Carthaginian constitution was worse
in its condition than the Roman ******. Among
the Carthaginians the people possessed the
greatest sway in all deliberations, but the se-
nate among the Romans ; and, as in one repub-
121
lie all measures were determined by the mul-
titude, and in the other by the most eminent
citizens, of so great force was this advantage
in the conduct of affairs, that the Romans,
though brought by repeated losses into the
greatest danger, became through the wisdom
of their counsels superior to the Carthaginians
in the war*". The ultimate fate of the con-
stitution of Sparta came scarcely less directly
under the observation of Polybius than that of
Carthage 5 for its seven hundred years existence
was terminated in his youth by Philopoemen,
his father's friend and his own, who establish-
ed a. democracy in its stead, and, if in this
particular instance that measure was not the
sole cause, it was the immediate forerunner
of political dissolution. Before the history of
Polybius was written, Laconia was an incon-
siderable portion of a Roman province, and
the will of its universal people as powerless
for good or evil as that of a mob of Helots
and Slaves in the streets of Sparta a hundred
years before.
But there is another political doctrine of the
* B. VI. ex. III. c. II. p. 172.
122
ancient publicists, which to some extent was
probably suggested by the classification of
which we have spoken, and of which the re-
sult was a still farther generalisation of the
same conclusions. The idea of the "Cycle"
probably originated with Plato, but Polybius
was the first to reduce it to an intelligible form.
According to Polybius not only had each of
the legitimate forms a corresponding degene-
rate form, but there existed farther a general
system of progression, in accordance with
which all these forms succeeded each other.
His own exposition is so clear that we shall
give it in the excellent old translation of Mr.
Hampton. "Of all these," i. e. the six primary
and secondary, "the first in order is Monarchy,
which is established by the bare work of na-
ture, without preparation or design. From
Monarchy arises Royalty, when art has been
applied to correct the Views of the former; and
when Royalty has degenerated into its conge-
nial evil, which is Tyranny, the destruction of
the latter gives birth to Aristocracy. This
again being changed, according to the natural
order of things, into Oligarchy, the subjects,
roused to vengeance by oppression, resist the
injustice of their governors, and establish
123
Democracy*. And in the last place when the
people themselves become haughty and un-
tractable and reject all law, to Democracy
succeeds, in the course of time, the government
of the multitude (Ochlocracy)** ". The next and
last step leads to utter political disorganization,
analogous to the savage condition which pre-
ceded the commencement of political life; and
in a subsequent passage he discribes it. "They/*
i. e. the multitude, " run together in tumultuous
assemblies, and are hurried into every kind of
violence, assassinations, banishments, and di-
visions of lands; till being reduced at last to
a state of savage anarchy they at once find
a master and a monarch, and submit them-
selves to arbitrary sway***". "Such", he adds,
" is the circle in which political societies are
revolved, and such the natural order in which
the several kinds of government are varied,
* Democracy is here , in accordance with Plato's no-
menclature , used in the sense of Aristotle's Polity , or
legitimate popular government.
** B. VI. ex. 1.
*** Eixdrcog xoivvv , flnov , ovv. e cdlrjs TtohrsLCcg
Xa&lOTCCTCCl 7] iv. drjUOKQKTLCIS , g|j , OiftCCt, Trj$
svd'Qia$ dovlsicx. Tt'ksiGrri TS v.cd
Plato. Republ. Lib VIII. c. 15.
124
till they are at last brought back to that ori-
ginal form from which the progress was begun".
In this enumeration it is obvious that no new
forms or even combinations of forms are in-
troduced; (for the first two Monarchy and
Koyalty are merely different names for the
same form) ; but what is both remarkable and
/ instructive is the order in which they follow
each other , which is the same as that in which
/ Aristotle invariably mentions them*. Some-
( times, it is true, he gives the pure apart from
the degenerate forms, but on all occasions he
begins with the rule of the one, and ends with
that of the many**. Such, moreover, is the
* Polit. III. c. 6. IV. c. 11. Ethic. Nic. VIII. 10.
** The observations which Aristotle, Lib. V. c. 10.,
makes on the Mystical Cycle of the Pythagoreans, as
adopted by Plato, are totally inapplicable to the Cycle of
Polybius, which is little more than an inference from his
own classification of forms of government. When Sir
Cornwall Lewis said, Vol. II. p. 443, that the Platonic
theory of the cyclical revolutions of governments was
overthrown by the decisive criticism of Aristotle, and ap^
plied that observation to Polybius , he forgot that, whilst
the "criticism" might have been known to Polybius,
the theory supposed to be criticised, in so far as it was
modified by Polybius , could not possibly be known to
Aristotle.
125
order which was adopted by Plato , and pro-
bably by the whole Socratic School, who pre-
ceded Aristotle, and by Cicero, who followed Po-
lybius ; and such also has been the sequence in
which modern systematic writers have generally
treated the forms of government. Macchiavelli,
in his Discourses on Livy, followed Polybius
closely without mentioning him ; and one of the
last and greatest of German Scholars*, without
acknowledging Polybius, or indeed any of the
ancients as a guide, and proceeding on the re-
sults of his own researches into ancient history,
has adopted this very cycle. Such a coinci-
dence, which in the case of such a writer could
not be accidental , a,nd which therefore may be
regarded in a certain sense as involuntary, is
far more important than a formal adoption of
the speculative doctrine.
Amongst professed political speculators ** the
Cycle has been almost as frequent a theme as
the Ideal State; and were it not that for the
purposes of the present discussion our interest
in its truth is a very limited one, we should
* K. J. Hermann in his Staatsalterthiimer.
** Hegel , Gervinus , Comte and Vico, have all treated
of it from their respective points of view. See also Za-
charia vom Staate Vol. II. p. 231.
126
have felt bound to consider at length the ar-
guments by which it has been supported or
impugned. The conclusion to which such an
investigation would have led us would pro-
bably have been, that the divergencies of opi-
nion were by no means so great in reality as
the undue confidence with which half truths were
advanced on either side had made them to ap-
pear. Those who repudiated the doctrine most
strenuously would often have been willing
enough to admit, that, in so far as it asserted
simply that the tendency of political societies
was, first to progress towards liberty, and then
to degenerate into licence, it had a vast pre-
ponderance of experience in its favour. On
the other hand it is but fair to those who,
like Polybius *, attached to it more importance
than it seems to deserve, that we should bear
in mind that no limit in point of time is as-
signed by them to its various stages, and that
* In the case of Polybius himself, so great was the
confidence which he had in its invariable character, that
he pronounces it easy, the present place of any govern-
ment being given, to predict the next change which
awaits it, and he applies his formula to the govern-
ment of Rome , with a success which those will best
appreciate who are most conversant with the subsequent
history of that country.
127
in this we have probably an indication of the
general latitude of construction with which
they intended that it should be applied.
It could not, of course, be the meaning of Po-
lybius, or of any other sensible person, in enun-
ciating this, or any other political law, that we
should expect from it the same regularity or
precision of action which is observable in the
laws by which the development or decay of
physical nature is governed*. The subjects
with which morals and politics are conversant
preclude the expectation of such regularity.
The changes are here dependent on an infin-
itely greater number of influences than those
which bear on the development of a plant or
an animal. Apart from the- constitutional pe-
culiarities, which, being inherent in the origi-
nal structure of the state, necessarily influence
its after changes, these changes are dependent,
at every stage, on the manner in which the
previous phase was passed through; they are
influenced by the temperament of the people,
the physical character of the country in which
they live, the views of gifted and energetic
men who at irregular intervals spring up among
* Vide ante chap. I.
128
them, by the amount of internal and external
communication , by the spirit of the age of the
world to which they belong, and especially by
that of conterminous nations. Circumstances
are continually occurring which no human sa-
gacity could foresee, which no human power
could avert, and the effects of which, even if
they were anticipated, could be measured by
no invariable standard, which nevertheless roll
back for a time the tide of progress, or
stay the headlong torrent of decline. Even
in progressive communities ages may pass
with less change than a single week or day
may witness at another period. In some the
patriarchal monarchy, with which political
life begins , may be of long endurance ;
in others, as America, circumstances may
so favor democracy as to enable it to hang
together for several generations. Such an in-
stitution as feudalism may for centuries give
to the whole world the character of an aristo-
cracy, whereas in other circumstances a middle
class may divide with the crown the whole in-
fluences of the state, thus rendering the pas-
sage from Monarchy to Democracy almost im-
mediate. Even apparent relapses are by no
means unfrequent, in consequence of which a
129
state of society which seemed on the point of
disappearing for ever is again firmly estab-
lished. The short lived tyrannies of Greece*
* Gervinus has justly remarked that u The fact that
modern absolutism , like the tyranny of antiquity, only
forms the transition from aristocracy to democracy, is
sufficient to decide the resemblance of the two pheno-
mena' 1 . Introduction to the History of the 19 th century.
Section II. p. 7. Miss Homer's translation. The whole
section is very instructive. The general conclusion at which
he arrives is, that "The development of the states of Eu-
rope in modern times has followed the same course as
those of antiquity, although in wider relations of num-
bers, space and time". In enunciating the doctrine
in the outset , he carries his generalization even farther.
"In the history, of the whole human race this law may
be again observed in its largest manifestations. From
oriental despotism to aristocracy, from the government
of the ancients and of the middle ages , founded on
slavery and serfdom, to the state policy of modern
times, which is yet in the course of development, a
regular progress may be perceived from the intellectual
and civil freedom of one alone , to that of the few and
many. But where states have completed their term of
existence, we may again observe a descent in civiliza-
tion, freedom and power, from the highest point in this
ascending scale of development, from the many to the
few , and from the few again to the one alone. This
law may be traced throughout history in every separate
state, as well as in the above mentioned group of states".
p. 3.
i
130
are an example of a relapse of this description,
altogether inconsistent with the general ten-
dency of the time, which was clearly in the
direction of democracy. The same apparent
result may be produced by an accidental anti-
cipation of a condition of affairs for which the
general spirit is not yet ripe. During the Pro-
tectorate the probable future of England must
have seemed to be divided between a military
despotism and a republic, but the protectorate
turned out to be nothing more than a tempo-
rary interruption of the more regular march
of events towards the very goal which it seemed
to have attained. It is such irregularities as
these, together with the vastness of the field
and our limited means of survey, which have
rendered men hopeless of tracing any principle
of progress or decline in political societies, and
yet, if all allowances are made, we agree with
Macchiavelli* in thinking that it may well be
questioned if there is one of them which in-
validates the general truth of the ancient law.
For the purposes of the present argument, how-
ever, it is obvious that the accuracy of the last
stage alone is important. Whatever may be the
* Discours. Lib. I. c. II. p. 26.
131
variations in the earlier steps of the sequence,
if the final result to which it points be trust-
worthy , it conveys to us this very pregnant
fact, that the rule of the numerical majority
is the degenerate form to which not only po-
pular governments are prone, but that it is the;
final form of degeneracy of all governments
whatsoever. In every case the change by which
it is introduced is the last act of social organic
existence, and its brief and troubled sway the
deathbed sickness of the body politic.
These conclusions of the fathers of political
science, in place of being invalidated, as some
have supposed*, are enhanced by the fact that
they were arrived at in circumstances in which
a democracy, even of the most unlimited kind,
partook largely of the character of an oligar-
chy; and where its degeneracy into an irra-
tional mob-government ought consequently to
have been less imminent than in modern
times when the drj^iog includes the whole body
of the people. It seems to us that the narrow
limits of the governing body in the states of
Greece went far to neutralize the influences
adverse to stability which we alluded to when
* Sudre, Lewis, etc.
i 2
132
speaking of the demoralising effects of slavery ;
and even to counterbalance the advantages
which in the modern world, the cause of
order has derived from the system of repre-
sentation. We shall have occasion again to
speak of the effects of representative govern-
ment, but even here we are unwilling to omit
the remark of M. Sismondi that the discovery
of printing and the diffusion of intelligence by
newspapers has placed the government , as of
old, in presence of the whole nation, and ren-
dered the sesvants of the nation as com-
pletely dependant on it, even where, as in Ame-
rica, it covers an immense space, as they for-
merly were on the people of Athens.
CHAP. XI.
HOW DID THE ANCIENTS PROPOSE TO ESCAPE FROM
THE CYCLE?
The dicta which we have brought together
in the preceding chapter seem to warrant us in
stating the following as the results of the ex-
perience of antiquity, in so far as that expe-
rience throws light on our present subject.
1 st The two tendencies of which we have
spoken, those namely of permanence and pro-
gress, contended for the mastery during the
whole course of ancient civilization.
2 nd The progressive tendency invariably
gained the ascendancy to the effect of assert-
ing in the end an exclusive recognition.
3 rd The form of government which its vic-
tory imposed was democracy, by which a po-
litical equality of all citizens was understood*.
4 th Democracy in every instance proved to
be the government of a class (the tyranny of
* Aristot. Polit. , Lib. VI. c. 1.
134
the many) and as such, being inconsistent with
the individual freedom of action of the whole
body of the people, was destructive to perma-
nence and progress alike.
The response thus pronounced by the oracle
of experience in the ancient world ; as read by
its most cunning interpreters, is a solemn and
at first light a very sorrowful one for human
progress. The last, and, as it appeared, the in-
variable result of political development was a
form of government which rendered progress
impossible, and, there being no standing still, de-
cline consequently became inevitable. Accord-
ing to this theory, when the last stage had been
reached, there was nothing farther to be done
but to permit society to resolve itself into its
elements, and again to commence the dreary
cycle which was again to terminate in a similar
dissolution. That an organisation which had at-
tained its completion should fall to pieces and
crumble away, till in the end it served no other
purpose than to fertilise by its traditions the
soil from which a fresh and vigorous political
life is to spring, seems so much in harmony
with the general scheme of the world's govern-
ment, that mankind have made up their minds
to it pretty much as they have done to their
135
own dissolution*. And perhaps they have been
right in doing so; at all events the world's
previous history furnishes us with no secure
ground for asserting that they have been wrong.
But the analogy between the physical and the
social world in this respect , though a strik-
ing, is not in reality a close one. As regards
the dissolution of animals and plants our in-
duction is sufficiently extensive to warrant an
universal conclusion; and even if it had been
far less extensive than it is, the similarity be-
tween the animal and vegetable organisations
which now exist, and those which have ceased
to exist is so great, and the surrounding circum-
stances so nearly identical , as to give to the
conclusion a very high probability. In politics
all this is reversed. The instances are so few
as scarcely to warrant any conclusion at all ;
and if they were far more numerous than they
are, their character is so dissimilar, and the
circumstances in which they are placed so
wholly unlike, as almost to defy the application
of induction altogether. The question however
whether any society can be rendered absolutely
* Egli e cosa verissima , come tutte le cose del mondo
hanno il termine della vita loro. Macchiavelli Discorsi
sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio lib. III. cap. 1.
136
permanent; (permanent, i. e., whilst human affairs
remain as they have hitherto been -- for the
world too has its day) is a question which is,
and is likely to continue to be insoluble by
mankind. But, like most insoluble questions it
is one which happily does not bear on our pre-
sent conduct. Whether there be absolute li-
mits to the perfectibility and endurance of so-
cial organization or not is a matter of no
practical moment, so long as it is clear that
these limits, if they exist, are separated from
our present position by a vast untrodden region
which is as open to human endeavour as any
over which mankind have hitherto passed.
Now notwithstanding their theory of the
cycle, which seemed to cut them off from it,
the ancients were firm believers in the ex-
istence of this field of farther human possibili-
ties, and it was this belief which forced upon
them a farther analysis of that doctrine itself.
That democracy had hitherto invariably become
the government of a class might be reason
enough for its hitherto having been invariably
the forerunner of disorganization and decline,
for class government of all kinds they believ-
ed to be degenerate government , and not
least the government of the lowest class of
137
all. But was it a necessary consequence of
political development that it should end as
it had hitherto ended? Must every attempt
to give unlimited recognition to liberty inevi-
tably lead to a form of government which was
thus inconsistent with liberty and progress
alike? These were questions which, notwith-
standing their sorrowful experience, the publi-
cists of antiquity did not cease to ask them-
selves ; and they knew that, if, from the fact
that such a government was a degenerate go-
vernment, they could ascend to the cause why
it was so, a door to indefinite progress might
still be opened. In offering us the results of
this investigation the publicists abandon the
character of chroniclers and classifiers of events,
and assume the higher attitude of propounders
of political theory. Those who represent Aris-
totle as a mere collector of phenomena, who,
from the order in which he found them to
have occurred in times past, evolved laws for
their future occurrence, do him full as great
a wrong as those do Plato who assert that he
contented himself with psychological results,
heedless how much they were contradicted by
the facts of human experience. Although, as
we formerly remarked, the one adopted the
138
historical , the other the psychological method,
and each, from the very opposite direction of
their mental tendencies, adhered to his own
method perhaps to excess, they were both far
too clear sighted to do so exclusively, and in
the case of Aristotle at all events we conti-
nually see that, so soon as a result is histori-
cally ascertained, he sets about analysing it,
and inquiring into its causes, with a view to
ascertaining whether its character be accidental
or necessary, and whether its presence be ex-
ceptional and transitory or general and per-
manent*. It is thus with the most rigid ad-
herence to scientific method that he carries po-
litical facts beyond the limits of the states in
which he observed their occurrence, and sets
them forth in the broader light of laws of hu-
man society**. If, in what have been ascer-
tained in fact to have been well ordered and
progressive states, he finds on farther inquiry
* Politic., Lib. II. cap. 7.
** Was aber Aristoteles beobachtet , kann als solches
nicht das Maass des Gerechten sein. Er muss es erst
mit einander vergleichen und das Allgemeine aus dem
Besondern herausfinden; er ist daher nothwendig in ste-
tem Abstrahiren begriffen. Stahl , Philosophic des Rechts.
V. I. p. 26.
139
that their stability and progress have been
coincident with forms which recognised and
conformed themselves to the principles of hu-
man life in the abstract, he hesitates not to
pronounce these to be legitimate forms for all
time. If , on the contrary, he finds that a form
, which has proved in times past to be incon-
sistent with order and progress can be farther
proved to violate an universal and abiding law,
on the same principle he pronounces a perma-
nent sentence of condemnation against it. In
both cases his confidence in his previous ge-
neralization is confirmed by the agreement of
its results with those obtained by the subse-
quent psychological investigations which it was
the means of suggesting.
In assigning the reasons which led him. to
class democracy and oligarchy among the de-
generate forms of government, he applies pre-
cisely the method which we have here pointed
out-, and the psychological result which he re-
gards as the ultimate ground of condemnation
is that, though from opposite directions, they
each commit the error o'f mistaking a partial
for an universal truth. "Democracy", he says,
" arises from the circumstance that, being equal
in certain respects, men believe themselves to
140
te equal in all respects; being equally free, for
example, they think that an absolute equality
subsists among them. Oligarchy on the other
hand, arises from those who are unequal in
some respects supposing that they are unequal
in all respects; e. g., being unequal in riches,
they imagine that there is no longer any kind,
of equality that exists among them*."
The law which these two forms thus violate
in common is that by which nature has made
men, not absolutely and universally, but rela-
tively and partially equal.
The distinction between absolute, and relative
or proportional equality is one to which we
have often already alluded, and to some of
our readers it may seem so obvious as scarce-
ly to require that we should dwell upon it
in detail. To the speculative politicians of the
ancient world, however, it seemed to be faught
with consequences so vast that they are never
weary of expounding it by illustration and en-
forcing it by argument ; and , as we concur with
them in believing that by its application alone
can the escape which we desiderate be effect-
ed, and a practical answer given to the de-
* Politic., Lib. V. cap. 1.
141
mands of progress without impairing that very
liberty in name of which these demands are
propounded, we shall make no apology for
devoting to it a few additional pages.
The whole organisation of society in the an-
cient world rested on the hypothesis of human
inequality 5 and of the elements of disorgani-
sation which it exhibited not a few are to be
traced directly to an unqualified and undistin-
guishing recognition of this hypothesis in prac-
tice. From the earliest times it found expres-
sion in two celebrated institutions , of which
the consequences have been strangely different;
but of which the origins probably were not
very dissimilar , castes and slavery. The
first, peculiar to the East or to those nations
which partook of a decidedly oriental character*,
received its complete development in Egypt and
in India. The second divided mankind, not in
the classical nations of antiquity alone, but in
all the progressive nations of the world, into what
may also be regarded as the two great castes
of the bond and the free. The assumption on
* Sudre observes that the principal merit of Solon's re-
form consisted in his repudiating the principle of caste, by
transferring political power from an aristocracy of birth
to a timocracy. Histoire de la Souverainete* p. 155.
142
which these distinctions respectively proceeded,
and to which that of castes unswervingly ad-
hered, was that of a difference, not between
man and man, but between one class of men
and another, and this not accidentally and
temporarily but necessarily and permanently.
Now this assumption, had it been correct in
point of fact, would have gone far towards the
theoretical justification of these institutions,
though it might have done little to reconcile
us to the manner in which they were practi-
cally administered. If it were true that every
Brahmin differed from every Sudra, not as a
fortunately born and cultivated differs from an
unfortunately born and uncultivated man, but
as a man capable of cultivation differs from
a man incapable of it, then with reason might
the one as an entire tribe be permanently
placed at the top and the other at the bottom
of Hindoo society. The same is true of the
distinction between slaves and freemen in the
cities of Greece. If Aristotle's premise,* "that
by nature some men are free and some men
slaves," be granted him, his conclusion,** that
TLVSg fV
** Otg KCtl 6V[JiCpQSt, TO SoviSVSLV KCtl SlY.KiOV S6TL.
it is "both profitable and just that the latter
should act as slaves", becomes irresistible, for
his middle term, that political justice is but
another name for the recognition of natural
law, is a proposition which he rightly assumes
as an axiom.
But the ground on which, in modern times,
we feel entitled to repudiate both of these in-
stitutions alike is not that the arguments by
which they are sought to be defended are in-
consequent, but that the premises on which these
arguments rested are false. Without entering
either on physiological or psychological discus-
sions as to the respective merits of different
races of men, we hold that the possession of
a common humanity in this world and a com-
mon hope in the next constitutes an equality
sufficient to render it an act of injustice that
we should so far prejudge the capabilities of
any individual, as to shut the door from his
birth against his social progress. The simple
fact of his being born, for aught that we can
assert to the contrary, with the responsibilities
of a man entitles him, according to our modern
view, to the hopes of a man, and consequently
to have the question of how high he shall rise
in the social scale left open to be settled by
144
his own efforts, and by those mysterious in-
fluences from a higher source by which the
destiny of every individual is guided. If he
belongs to a race or even a family that has
hitherto been unprogressive, there is a presump-
tion against his progress; but the moment that
this presumption has been belied by the fact,
we feel that it is according to the fact and
not the presumption that his social position
must be assigned to him.
At first sight it seems strange that the in-
stitution of castes should have been so much
more adverse to progress than that of slavery.
That the larger number of human beings in a
country should be regarded not as men but as
things, not as the subjects merely but as the
absolute property, they and their children, of
the smaller number seems to outrage our sense
of justice more flagrantly, and do more grie-
vous violence to our feelings of humanity, than
that the whole inhabitants should be divided
into classes and that too, as was actually the
case, according to principles of classification
which were not only reasonable but enlightened.
The explanation lies mainly in the fact that
the distinction between caste and caste was
more indelible than that between the slave and
145
ils master. If the slave succeeded in raising
himself morally and intellectually to the level
of a freeman , it was always possible that his
actual equality might be recognised, legally
and even politically, by one or other of the
many forms of emancipation which always ex-
isted alongside of slavery; but where the sys-
tem of castes prevailed no amount of wisdom
could convert a warrior into a priest, no
amount of valour could confer on a tiller of the
ground the dignity of a warrior. The first had
proceeded from the mouth of Brahma, the se-
cond from his arms, and the third from his
loins, and there the matter rested once and for
ever.
Another vast distinction consisted in the fact,
that, whilst the system of castes extended to
the whole population, that of slavery left a very
considerable minority* free from its fetters.
But, though free from the obstructions which
* It must be borne in mind that in almost all the
states of antiquity there was a numerous class of per-
sons who held an anomalous position between the
slave and the citizen. For the most part they enjoyed
private but no public rights, and for the purposes of the
present discussion may all be regarded as belonging to
the category of the politically unfree.
146
it directly imposed, they were not free from its
influences ; and this fact introduces an element
of which, as we have elsewhere observed, we
must never lose sight when we compare an-
cient with modern society. "Der Mensch fangt
mit dem Barone an " was the saying of a mo-
dern politician : "Mankind begins with the
Citizen <? was the doctrine of the ancient publi-
cist; but neither the noble nor the citizen
was independent of those from whom he had
separated himself by a line of which nature
indicated no trace, and which, in spite of his
best efforts, the progress of events was con-
tinually effacing.
But because nature gave no countenance to
the doctrine of inequality, in the only sense
in which it could have served as a justification
for these institutions, does it therefore follow
that there is no inequality among men which
nature herself has established, and of which po-
litical institutions may justly take cognisance?
Because all men are equally human beings, are
they therefore all equal human beings ?
In considering this question we shall find
that if the doctrine of inequality under one
form led the ancients astray, in another it
saved the classical nations at all events from
147
errors which have borne bitter fruits to the
modern world. If ancient society erred in
rashly recognising a species of inequality
which had no other foundation than human
folly and selfishness , modern society has scarce-
ly erred less in blindly refusing to recognise
another species which has been imposed by
divine wisdom and goodness.
It is one of the most remarkable consequences
of the imperfection of our nature that progress
scarcely ever follows a directly forward or up-
ward course, and it need not therefore either
surprise or discourage us that, when in the mo-
dern world the doctrine of inequality in
its extreme form was for the first time fairly
abandoned, it should have given place to the
directly opposite doctrine of absolute equality.
The only thing that saved antiquity from a simi-
lar extravagance probably was, that there it ne-
ver was abandoned at all , either in theory or in
practice, and that, when its application became
impossible in one form, a remedy was sought,
not in a new doctrine, but in another form
of the existing doctrine. This is precisely
what we see taking place when we compare
the doctrine by which the Greeks justified
slavery with that by which they regulated
K2
148
citizen life. The unlimited inequality which
was held to distinguish master from slave,
manifestly could not be used to distinguish ci-
tizen from citizen, for, if there was no com-
mon ground of humanity between the former,
there was, ex hypothesi, a common ground, of
citizenship between the latter. The minimum
of citizen rights and privileges, whatever that
might be, must belong to all and to all equally,
so that up to this point it was not so much that
^a limitation was imposed; the doctrine was
rendered inapplicable by the very nature of
the subject. But, though citizens were equal
in some respects, it by no means followed that
they were equal in all respects even as re-
garded their citizenship; though they were
equally citizens it did not follow that they
were equal citizens, for the possession of the
minimum by no means implied the possession
of the maximum. Among citizens, then, there
was still inequality in point of fact, though
manifestly not of the unlimited kind which had
been taken for granted as dividing slaves from
freemen, and consequently there was still room
for the application, under corresponding limi-
tations, of the political doctrine which took
cognizance of that fact. What then are these
limitations? To say that we are to recognise
a limited as we did an absolute inequality , is
to convey no positive rule of conduct, for
there may be infinite degrees of limitation.
Besides, notwithstanding the doctrine on which
slavery was founded, there was a feeling even
in antiquity that justice is always a species of
equality*. How then was the matter to be
solved? For according to this view justice must
be at once equality and inequality. The di-
lemma gave rise to one of those distinctions
in which the Greeks so much delighted, and
the faculty of drawing which Aristotle regarded
as the distinguishing characteristic of cultivat-
ed men**. It was first pointed out by Plato in
the "Laws", and is worked out by Aristotle
in his discussion on justice in the 5 th book of
the Ethics with what seems almost a perverse
amount of subtility and minuteness. "There
is", says Plato, "an old true saying, that equa-
lity produces friendship. But in what the
equality consists which possesses this power is
* El OVV TO KIKOV UVLGOV, TO SlKKlOV 16OV OTtSQ "X.OL
UVBV Xoyov Sonet naGiv. Ethic. Nic. Lib. V. c. 3. Otov
donsi TO loov dincuov sivcci , xea yccg S'GTIV etc. Polit.
Lib. III. c. 5.
* To 8ioqt&w yaQ ovv. E'GTI ztnv noUcov. Ethic. Nic.
Lib. X. c. 1.
150
not very evident , and this circumstance has
occasioned much trouble. For there are two
kinds of equality, the same in name, but in
reality almost opposite. The one of these
every state and every legislator is in a condi-
tion to administer, in so far as honours are
concerned, by means of the ballot, the equality
consisting in measure, weight and number. But
the truest and best equality is by no means
easy for every one to see ; for it is the judge-
ment of Zeus, and "yields but little to men,
though what it does yield either to individuals
or to states is the cause of all the good that
falls to their lot. It measures out more to the
greater and less to the smaller, giving to both
in moderation, and according to their natures.
Moreover it distributes according to reason,
more honour to those who have more virtue,
and on the contrary to those who have less
virtue and education, less honour, but still ac-
cording to their respective deserts. Now this
is justice, and that political justice too after
which we must strive, that equality to which
we must look in organising our state"*.
* Nopwv L. VI. c. V. p. 162. Ed. Hermann. The
whole chapter , which it is not easy to render satis-
factorily, is highly interesting- and important.
151
The justice which corresponds to each of these
two kinds of equality, Aristotle distinguishes thus.
The one is compensative or corrective justice,
(TO diogfttttwov diKKiOv\ that justice by which
the legislator seeks to establish, or the judge to
restore perfect equality in those respects* in
which, apart from individual merit or demerit,
men are entitled to be equal on the ground of
their common citizenship, or, as we should say,
of their common humanity. It is this species
of justice which governs legal relations whe-
ther between citizen and citizen, or between
the citizen and the state**. The other is dis-
tributive justice (TO diavs^nxov dtxatov), that
justice according to which rewards, honours, and
public advantages are to be measured out. In
apportioning the latter an element of calculation
is involved which does not belong to the former,
that, viz., of proportion or relation (avc&oyov).
There must be proportion between the individual
and the thing (ol$ xal ev ols), that those who are
unequal may not have equal things (pr} foot,
ovx itia ot>(7t***). Of this kind of justice, as
* ev TOL$ cvvKUdypKGi in contracts, bargains, and the
like.
** Ethic. Nic. Lib. V. c. 4.
*** Is not the rule, " Si inaequalibus aequalia addas,
152
opposed to the other, it may be said that it
consists not in equality but in proportion, and,
as opposed to injustice, that it consists not in
inequality but in disproportion. (TO per ovv
dixcuov rovto avakoyov' TO $' cidixov, TO Ttaga
TO dvdA.cc'yov.)
It is this species of justice which forms the
basis of the political relations between the ci-
tizen and the state. ('En, in rov tear' atyctv
TOVTO <5?JAoi>. TO yccQ SLXCCIOV sv iat$ diavo[iccis
6/ioAoyovfffc 7tdvT$ xccz' atyav nvcc dsiv dvcu.
etc.*
The idea of proportional equality, which in
its abstract form is thus worked out in the
Ethics, is exhibited in various applications in
Aristotle's treatise on the Politics**.
In the 5 th Book particularly, in treating of
the causes of revolutions, he exhibits the con-
sequences of its neglect. It is to this cause,
that he traces the rise of democracy***; and by
omnia erunt inaequalia," an axiom as well of justice,
as of the mathematics? And is there not a true coin-
cidence between commutative and distributive justice,
and arithmetical and geometrical proportion? Bacon;
Advarict. of learning.
* Ethic. Lib. V. c. 3.
** Politic. Lib. III. c. 5. quoted above.
*** Lib. V. c. 1.
153
way of corrective he again expounds this dis-
tinction with the same arithmetical and geo-
metrical illustrations which he had used in the
Ethics. In the 6 th chap.* we have the fol-
lowing very remarkable expression : povov ya.Q
[iovL[iov TO XKT' atyav Itiov, xal TO e%iv Ta
CCVTCOV. For the only durable government is that
which is based on the principle of relative or pro-
portional equality **, and which thus assigns to
every one what really is his. (Suum cuique).
In so far as Aristotle is concerned therefore,
there can be no mistake as to the fact, that
it was to the doctrine of proportional equality
that he looked for escape from the cycle, and
that it was by means of its application that he
believed in the possibility of a more stable
condition of affairs, and a longer political life,
than had been granted to any of the states of
his own time.
If these views were suggested by the timo-
cratic institutions of Solon, practical politics
owe more to the Athenian constitution than
* Lib. V. c. VI.
** It is by no means easy to find satisfactory equi-
valents in English for KCCT' <x!-iav IGOV. Had the idea
been more familiar the language would probably have
been richer.
154
ideal politics do to that of Sparta, after which
so many Utopiae have been imagined. That
the obligation has not been acknowleged , seems
to justify the charge of M. Sudre* against the
publicists of antiquity, that, of the two typical
systems which history presented to them, they
delighted to copy and to honour the less worthy.
The manner in which this distinction which
may with truth be regarded as the corner
stone of political science, was practically re-
cognised by Solon is known, in a general
way, to every one, and will be better under-
stood when we come to speak of the distri-
bution of political power. The well known dic-
tum of Pericles, in his famous funeral oration,
as reported by Thucydides,** may serve in
the mean time as a proof of its continued re-
cognition at Athens.
"In name," he says, speaking of the con-
stitution of Athens in his own day, "from its
not being administered for the benefit of the
few but of the many, it is called a democracy;
but with regard to its laws, all enjoy equality
as concerns their private differences; while with
* Histoire de la Souverainete. p. 555. *
** Lib. II. c. 37.
155
regard to public rank, according as each man
has reputation for anything , he is preferred for
public honours, not so much from consideration
of party as of merit; nor again, on the ground
of poverty, while he is able to do the state any
good service, is he prevented by the obscurity
of his position*".
CHAP. XII.
HOW DO THE MODERNS PROPOSE TO ESCAPE FROM
THE CYCLE ?
It may be safely asserted that in every or-
ganised society which has enjoyed any high
degree either of stability or of freedom the
principle of proportional equality has not only
been practically .at work, but that its working
has been extensively aided by positive institu-
tions. Even in the rudest and simplest forms
of social life , a principle so deeply founded in
nature could not have failed to force itself into
action. The necessity which the public safety
* Dale trans, p. 112.
156
imposes of placing offices of trust in the hands
of those who are strong enough to endure la-
bour and to support responsibility, has, in
every variety of circumstances, overridden the
jealousy of preeminence. "Twenty men", says
Harrington, "(if they be not all idiots, and
perhaps if they be,) can never come so together
but there will be such a difference in them,
that about a third will be wiser, or at least
less foolish, than all the rest; these upon ac-
quaintance, tho' it be but small, will be dis-
covered, and (as stags that have the largest
heads) lead the herd: for while the six, dis-
coursing and arguing one with another, shew
the eminence of their parts, the fourteen dis-
cover that they never thought on 5 or are cleared
in divers Truths which had formerly perplexed
them. Wherefore in matter of common con-
cernment , difficulty, or danger they hang upon
their lips as children upon their fathers." In
the recognition of the "stags that have the
largest heads," as a nobility; in the timocratic
suffrages which have every where formed the
bases of representative governments ; and above
all, in the combination of the three pure forms
of government into what the ancients called
the mixed government, and what we call the
157
constitutional state, we have eminent exam-
ples of the practical and salutary working of
this principle.
But there is a wide difference between oc-
casionally and blindly acting on a principle,
now in excess now in defect, as immediate
necessity seems to dictate , and consciously re-
cognising the same principle as a rule every
departure from which is a violation of order.
Though the unconscious and consequently un-
systematic recognition may have satisfied the
requirements of a rude and primitive society,
we have already seen that it by no means fol-
lows that a conscious and systematic recogni-
tion may not be imperatively called for by
those of a society more refined, and conse-
quently presenting more complicated relations.
So long, for example, as all men under the rank
of the landholder or the wealthy burgher could
be safely excluded from all share of political
influence, it may have worked perfectly well
that all those who partook of political influence
under the rank of a Baron should be politi-
cally equal. It is obvious that the political ma-
chine can never take cognisance of minute
personal distinctions; and here the political
recognition was perhaps not very outrageously
158
at variance with the social fact. But it by no
means follows that the same will be the case
if, in the progress of social development, it
becomes necessary to recognise the existence
of public rights in the mere man, whilst at
the same time no cognisance is taken of the
vast disparity between his position, as such,
and that of the lowest class of those who have
been hitherto enfranchised , a disparity greatly
exceeding that which separates those who at
present enjoy the equal suffrage. If the former
system fitted rudely and awkwardly to the facts
of society, it is by no means impossible that
the latter system may not fit at all ; we have
already seen that such has been the experience
of mankind in every case in which it has been
tried hitherto, and we have been able to find no
reliable ground for hoping that it will not be
our own.
Nor need it astonish us if a more refined
political organisation should be exacted of
us at every stage of our progress. If that
progress has been real, it surely is not un-
reasonable that it should at last force upon us
the necessity of consciously recognising a prin-
ciple on which mankind have unconsciously
acted from the beginning of time. The tran-
159
sition from unconscious to conscious existence,
from a blind and involuntary to an intelligent
and voluntary obedience to the principles of
our nature, is the universal law of progress,
and a law which is as binding on man in the
aggregate as it is on the individual man.
But, so far from discovering any such con-
scious recognition of the principle of propor-
tional equality, wherever constitutional* states
exist, we find (so far as we can read the pub-
lic conscience) a sort of confused notion that
absolute equality is the ultimate rule of justice,
and relative or proportional equality a viola-
tion of that rule defensible on no other ground
than that of public expediency for the time
being. In some of our later constitutional
writers, it is true, something like a faint glim-
mering of what we regard as the sounder doc-
trine may be traced, but stated in a manner
so hesitating and wavering as to shew that its
full import was far from being revealed to them.
"Its" (the English Constitution's) "main ob-
ject is to secure some share in the election of
representatives (so far as that result may in the
* As to the standische Verfassungen of Germany, v.
infra, Cap. XVI.
160
nature of things be approached) to every per-
son who from his apparent circumstances can
be supposed capable of an independent exer-
cise of the privilege 7 while on the other hand,
it regulates the distribution of the right of
suffrage with some regard to the consideration
of comparative wealth or property, by allow-
ing a person who possesses a qualification in
more places than one to vote in the election for
each, and consequently to return several re-
presentatives to parliament."*
Such feeble traces of the doctrine are mani-
festly to be regarded, rather as a reflex of its
unconscious application hitherto, than as a
scientific basis upon which future practice may
fall back in its efforts after greater consistency**.
Of the value of the doctrine , in the sense in
* Stephen's Blackstone.
** Foreigners have sometimes done us too much ho-
nour in attributing to us an effective recognition of this
principle. "Far", says Sismondi, "from the double vote
being considered in England as a violation of the equal-
ity of the citizens , the same man can frequently vote
as a Master of Arts in one of the Universities, as a free-
holder in two or three countries, as a freeman of two
or three towns. " That our traditions have rendered
such an occurrence possible seems to point to our future
practice the direction in which it ought to move.
161
which it was understood by Aristotle , viz., as
a means of escape from the cycle by satisfy-
ing democratic claims and at the same time
obviating their consequences, we have found
no indication in any English writer.
But modern political life cannot have been
altogether bereft of principle , and we are con-
sequently bound to inquire to what means of
escape those amongst ourselves have trusted
to whom the magnitude of the danger was as
apparent as it was to Aristotle. Now the doctrine
behind which those who, whilst they rapturous-
ly applaud every separate proposal to extend
the suffrage, are still averse to what manifestly
must be the ultimate consequences of such a
line of conduct, commonly shelter themselves,
seems to be, that the suffrage is a "privilege",
not a "right"*; and the practical protection
against democracy on which they rely is, that
by extending the suffrage a point will be
reached when, not only the moral but the phy-
sical force of the community being in the
hands of the enfranchised, they will be able,
without fear of violence, to refuse the suffrage
* Mr. Tremenhere (Political Experience) says that this
distinction is recognised by Aristotle. I find no such
recognition.
162
to those below them. In this way it is said
that we need never arrive at what is called
the manhood suffrage at all; and that there
will always be a social cess-pool into which
the lees of the community may be drained off.
To the doctrine and to the scheme alike the
following objections seem to be fatal;
1 st They rest on no principle, except one
which is. as false in politics as in morals; viz.
that "might makes right."*
2 11(l They take for granted the possibility of
an occurrence which is inconsistent with the
whole experience of mankind; there being no
historical example of a state which has thus
stopped short on the high road to democracy.
3 d They suppose the sympathies of all classes
of electors to be the same, whereas it is ob-
vious that those of the lowest class would con-
stantly be with the non-electors, and that, the
social pyramid being broadest at its base, little
assistance would be requisite at any time to
place the physical force again in the hands of
those who were excluded from the suffrage.
* In the absolute and universal case right and might
are of course necessarily coincident, and were there no
disturbing element at work they would be so in the
particular and individual case also.
163
4 th But, above all, these views, when used
as a permanent answer to the claim for public
rights on the part of any portion of the com-
munity, involve principles at variance with
the idea of an indefinite social progress, which
lies at the root of the institutions of every pro-
gressive state.
If you say that the common interest, which
is the object of every legitimate form of
government, will always exclude from parti-
cipation in legislation a portion of those who
are to obey the laws, you not only set a
limit to the conceivable development in virtue
and intelligence of the lower class of citizens,
but you designedly and permanently establish
a class of persons who are not citizens at all, and
who, as regards their public relations, are per-
manently unfree. Until you arrive at this result
you have no resting place, no principle of exclu-
sion which is not arbitrary in its nature, and
temporary in its operation. The ground on
which the ten pound voter claims the privilege
to day, the five pound voter, if society be pro-
gressive, will be in a condition to occupy ten
years hence ; and if you refuse in the one case
to listen to the very same argument which you
hold to be conclusive in the other, you have de-
L 2
164
nied what, if not an absolute, is surely at
least a relative right.
Even viewing the matter practically, though
there may be apparent convenience for the
present in saying that the suffrage is a privi-
lege which the governing body, as representing
the whole community, is entitled to withhold,
there is reason from past experience to think
that, when it is actually claimed, it will be
claimed in such a manner as to render it of little
practical importance by what name it is called.
Another ground of confidence on the part of
English politicians seems to consist in certain
virtues which are supposed to attach to the
representative system, as opposed to the system
of direct voting practiced in the states of an-
tiquity. Sir Cornewall Lewis says*: "If we
compare the legislature of France ( in the year
1848 9 ? when the suffrage was universal (that
is, belonged to all adult males), with the su-
preme assembly of Athens or Rome, we shall
find that France, as compared with those
states, is a narrow oligarchy; and we are
only entitled to consider the French constitu-
tion of these years as democratic, if we reckon
* Methods of observation and reasoning in Politics,
Vol. II. p. 84.
165
the suffrage of the Frenchman (that is, his right
of voting for representatives) as equivalent to
the suffrage of the Athenian or Koman (that
is, his power of voting in person in the so-
vereign assembly of citizens)." Now here
surely Sir Cornewall commits the oversight of
forgetting that representatives not only may
be, but practically are, here as well as in
France, pledged virtually if not actually to
the leading votes which they are to 'give in
the sovereign assembly; and that this is
more particularly the case in all great con-
stitutional questions. On the occasion of the
general election which preceded the passing of
the Reform Bill in 1832, there probably was
not a single representative returned who was
not in reality a delegate , i. e. pledged to vote
either for or against that measure, and who did
not fulfil his pledge*. NOAV in such circum-
* We are quite aware that the theory of the constitu-
tion is correctly stated by Mr. Hallam where he says,
" Each member of the House of Commons is deputed to
serve, not only for his constituents, but for the whole
kingdom." Constit. History Vol. I. p. 266. What we speak
of is the practice, and , as regards the question at issue
in the text , we would ask if it be quite clear that
the theory was not that each citizen in the assemblies of
antiquity was bound to consider not his own private
166
stances the representative obviously becomes
the mere mouthpiece of his constituents, and
representative government a machine by means
of which the votes of the constituency are col-
lected. If A votes for B, who is pledged to vote
for E (the Empire, we shall say, in the person of
N.), it is obvious that B. simply transmits A's
vote to the sovereign body. Sir Cornewall Lewis's
mistake consists in his regarding the vote of
the Athenian or Roman citizen as equivalent
to the unfettered vote of the modern representa-
tive, whereas it is only equivalent to A ; s vote
in the example which we have given; with
this further difference in the wrong direction
that A has the privilege of transmitting his
vote, which he can do with ease and conve-
nience, in place of being compelled to give it
in person , which probably would have induced
him to forego it altogether*. It is true that
where the electoral sections of the community
are of different sizes, the vote of a single in-
interest alone , or that of the particular district to which
he belonged, but the interest of the whole state, and
to regulate his vote accordingly.
* "If pure democracy is a bad government, repre-
sentative democracy cannot be worth more." Sismondi.
If it were it would not be representative.
167
dividual in the smaller is more important than
in the larger ones according to the represen-
tative principle, whereas if they were given
directly in the sovereign assembly they would
be equal ; but such irregularities are not ne-
cessary parts of the representative system, but
consequences of its imperfection, and besides
they have even now scarcely any tendency to
prevent the expression of the will of the nu-
merical majority from becoming omnipotent.
The House of Commons is no doubt still,
in the main, an aristocratic body, but this
fact is to be accounted for by causes by no
means inseparable from the representative sys-
tem. Were what to some would probably
appear the unimportant change introduced of
paying* members even a very insignificant
* It is not difficult to see how Dahlmann, and his
countrymen generally , should have failed as practical
politicians , when we find him insensible to the danger
of such an institution as that of paying representatives.
Politik, p. 170. By the present Prussian constitution, and
indeed most of the constitutions of Germany, the members
of the lower Chamber are paid. The same was the case
in France , under Louis Philippe , and is still the case
in Belgium. If it is excusable anywhere it is in a co-
lony, such as Canada, where it is difficult to find indi-
168
sum for their services , we doubt whether it
would retain its present character at the end
of another election ; and still precedents in
favor of the practice, though in very different
circumstances, might be produced from our
own history, and no serious encroachment
would be made on the representative system.
Under such forms of representative govern-
ment we know that the wildest and most
ochlocratic revolutions of the modern world
have occurred, and we cannot see that in
England the representative system alone would
offer any reliable guarantee against them. In
direct accordance with modern experience, Aris-
'totle assures us that a measure for paying
representatives, (or rather in his time those
citizens who attended the ecclesia in per-
son), if not a cause of democracy, will al-
ways be one of its earliest results*. So soon
as the lower class of citizens become politi-
cians the influence which their numbers com-
mand soon enables them to procure a remu-
neration (iii6&6$) for their time; and, as this
remuneration, though a great temptation to
viduals of intelligence who are willing to postpone their
own affairs to those of the public.
* Poli*. Lib. IV. c. 5.
.
the r
169
le poor, is not sufficient to induce the rich to
neglect their private affairs, the consequence
is that the assemblies soon cease to contain
even an admixture of the upper classes. How
little the result is affected by the introduction
of the representative principle, we learn from
De Tocqueville and other writers, who tell us
that the upper classes in America withdraw
themselves from public affairs, for the very
same reason. By paying representatives you
create an inducement to persons of the lowest
class to devote themselves to public affairs,
and the calling of the demagogue is formally
inaugurated.
But, if these grounds are insufficient to
warrant our hope of escape from the ancient
law, to what other novel sources in modern
life shall we look for delivery from what the
very able writer whom we have just quoted
has denominated "the most uniform, the most
ancient, and the most permanent tendency
which is to be found in history"*?
During more than a century and a half, it is
unquestionable that we have enjoyed more un-
alloyed social prosperity than, for a like space
* De Tocqueville , Democratic en Amerique Vol. I. In-
troduction, p. 14.
170
of time, ever fell to the share of any other
people, and still it is a grave question whe-
ther (Curing the whole of this long period we
have not, in accordance with this very histori-
cal law, been, silently and constitutionally, drift-
ing in the direction of a danger of which, in
our younger and less prosperous but at the
same time less plethoric days, we ran little
risk; and whether it may not now require all
the vigilance of conscious effort* to prevent
us from declining into a form of political life
which, when it threatened us in the days of the
Long Parliament as an active disease, we were
strong enough spontaneously to resist. The
struggle between the monarchical and popular
elements of our constitution, which went on
"during the six centuries of the progress of
the English people towards liberty '',** was ter-
minated at the Revolution in favour of the
latter, and, if the Bill of Rights did not articu-
lately set forth the sovereignty of the general
will, it assumed it in every clause which it
* Dans le cours d'un long gouvernement on va an mal
par une pente insensible , on ne remonte au bien que par
un effort. Montesquieu p. 65.
** Sir James Macintosh's History of England. Ad-
vertisement. VI.
171
contained.* "It" (the Revolution,) says Mac-
aulay, ** "finally decided the great question
whether the popular element, which had, ever
since the days of Fitz-Walter and de Montfort,
been found in the English polity, should be
distroyed by the monarchical element , or should
be suffered to develope itself freely, and to be-
come dominant."
With the exception of the two unimportant
Rebellions of 1715 and 1745, we are not aware
that a blow has been struck , or a serious word
spoken, in favour of an extension of the mo-
narchical principle since 1688, and few persons
* Like most of the doctrines of English polities,
that by which the Revolution is justified is inconsistent
with itself and grossly illogical. The King, it is said,
had broken the contract with his people. But if the
king was capable of contracting Avith the people , the
people, as the other parties to the contract, were surely
incapable of sitting in judgment on its breach or its
fulfilment. Strange as it may seem the theory of the
Revolution assumes the divine right of kings , to the
effect at least of holding them to be sharers in the so-
vereignty independently of the general will. If an image
borrowed from mercantile affairs was indispensable, that
of a firm dissoluble by a majority of the partners, would
have served the purpose better than a bilateral contract.
See Whewell's elements of morality etc. Vol. II. p. 196.
** History of England, Vol. II. p. 667.
172
we imagine, since the Act of Settlement* at all
events, have apprehended real danger from the
principles which led to these ill considered out-
breaks. The monarchical element with us,
indeed, as in Sparta after the institution of
the Ephors, has become rather a social than a
political institution. It is remarkable, however,
that in grasping our "darling liberty", we still,
with the instinct of habit, turn to the direction
from which it was so long threatened, and fe-
licitate ourselves on the security with which
we hold it when we find that from this quarter
at least it is no longer in danger. We still act as
if we had but yesterday escaped from the de-
lusions of an age in which, Mr. Macaulay tells us,
"to believe in the political doctrines of Hobbes
was considered to be a mark of a fine gentle-
* The act of settlement was the seal of our constitu-
tional laws, the complement of the Revolution itself and
the bill of rights , the last great statute which restrains
the power of the crown , and manifests in any conspi-
cuous degree, a jealousy of parliament in behalf of its
own and the subject's privileges. Hallam Constitutional
History Vol. Ill p. 196. The commons were elevated
in the eyes of foreign nations, till the monarchy itself
has fallen comparatively into the shade, ibid. p. 190. The
same views pervade the whole work.
173
man"*, and in which those of Filmer were re-
cognised by a solemn act of the University of
Oxford. We forget, that, as a state of rest is
inconsistent with the laws by which human af-
fairs are governed, the very cessation of danger
from one quarter is itself an indication of its
presence in another. If the monarchical ele-
ment has been limited, to the extent of being-
no longer a source of danger to liberty, we
have, in this very fact, a ground for looking
with suspicion on one or other of the two re-
maining elements of which our polity is com-
posed.
Can it be said, then, that since the Revolu-
tion the aristocratic element has become ag-
gressive? The power of the House of Lords
effectually and permanently to resist a popular
movement fell into abeyance at the passing of
* I. p. 270; Elsewhere (II. p. 236) he says, "There
are two opposite errors into which those who study the
annals of their country, are in constant danger of fall-
ing, the error of judging the present by the past, and
the error of judging the past by the present ******. The
former error is more pernicious in a statesman , and the
latter in the historian." In seeing no danger to Eng-
land but the dangers of the past, those arising from the
encroachments of monarchy, Mr. Macaulay surely com-
mits the statesman's error continually.
174
the Reform Bill in 1832*, (if it even existed
so long, otherwise than in theory); and, disguise
it as we may, it cannot be denied that its di-
rect** legislative function has since been almost
confined to affirming the decrees of the all
powerful Commons. Nor was it the influence
of the higher aristocracy alone which then gave
way. The county elections, which, till then,
where not directly in the gift of the peers
themselves, were almost exclusively in the
hands of the minor gentry, were at once re-
moved beyond the reach of anything more
than the indirect influence which in all cir-
cumstances must belong to the possessors of
wealth. In the Burghs , which at all times are
the strongholds of democracy, the. reduction of
the suffrage to one fifth of that which was ad-
* See Dahlmann , who as a well informed Hanoverian,
can scarcely be regarded as a foreigner ; and who is far
more trustworthy in matters of fact than of opinion.
Politik , p. 67.
** Indirectly the constitutional action of the House of
Lords is still very great, chiefly from the importance of
the offices which are almost exclusively held by its mem-
bers , of whom in a sense it may be said,' as of the Ro-
man Senators , that "many of them have exercised so-
vereign power, many are preparing to exercise it." See
some good observations in Liddell's History of Rome.
175
mitted in counties has had this effect even more
decisively. But it is needless to multiply trite
examples, since the acknowleged object of the
measure (which in itself was nothing more than
a legislative recognition of the national con-
sciousness, and an expression of tendencies
which for years had been at work), was to di-
mmish the relative power of the aristocracy
and higher middle class, as compared with
that of the democracy and the lower middle
class. That its effects have been such as to
fulfil its intention is a fact too well known to
require to be established.
There is one respect however in which, if
we mistake not, a slight misapprehension
exists with reference to the position of the
higher aristocracy. It is seen that, so far
from diminishing , the wealth of most of
our noble families has increased, that in the
midst of peace and plenty they have added
field to field, and it is thence inferred, not
unnaturally, that, wealth being in truth the
root of the influence of the aristocracy, that
influence must necessarily be increasing also.
Now this view, as it seems to us, proceeds
from an oversight of two very important con-
siderations.
176
1. The whole land of the country has not
increased in extent, and, relatively to the other
sources of wealth , even the cultivated land has
not increased in value, since the Revolution. If
a nobleman then, whose income derived from
land at that date was, we shall say, twenty
thousand a year, has added ten thousand a
year to it, by what means has the addition
been made? For the most part, unquestion-
ably, by purchasing the estates of some four
or five smaller proprietors in his neigh-
bourhood, each of whom individually was
inferior to him in influence, but who collec-
tively possessed a greater amount of influence
than that which his additional ten thousand
a year represents. Nay it is not unlikely
that each of these individuals, in virtue part-
ly of his position, and partly of his person,
exercised as much influence over the general
voice by which the laws are decreed, as the
difference between 20 and 30,000 confers on
the one man in question; and, as in all
probability every one of these individuals
belonged , if not by fortune at least by
sympathy , to the aristocracy , its influ-
ences instead of being increased have
thus been very seriously diminished (to the
177
extent of nine "landed-men" of a thousand
a year).
2. Nor is the position of the higher aristo-
cracy rendered more permanent or secure by
thus swallowing up the minor gentry. The
direct effect of every such accession of pro-
perty is to widen the gulph between the nobi-
lity and the commons, to lessen the sympathies
of the one class for the other, and to diminish
the interest which they take in each other's
prosperity. If there be one circumstance more
likely than another to induce the body in whose
hands legislation has permanently centred to
adopt measures adverse to the aristocratic ele-
ment, it is the objection which they feel to
see such vast accumulations of territory in
the hands of individuals. There is a species
of moral and social influence different from
every other, which belongs to the possession
of landed property, but which by no means
increases in direct proportion to its extent,
and even those who are not very favourably
inclined to aristocracy in itself, are averse to
see such resources for good as it possesses,
so much social and political power, wasted.
It was in this sense, far more than in its
bearings rs productiveness, that Pliny used the
178
expression so often adduced by the advocates
of small-holdings, "latifundia perdidere Ita-
liam, et jam vero provincias."
Algernon Sidney complained that the Titu-
lar Nobility of his time, from their small num-
ber, and from other causes, had become un-
able to discharge to the community the func-
tions of the Official Nobility of the earlier
times of the constitution, and consequently
had lost the influence as a power in the state
which properly belonged to their class. His
precise complaint against them, of course, was
that they were unable so to hold the balance
between the crown and the commons, as to
prevent the encroachments of the former,
whilst ours is that they are impotent against
the latter. With the substitution of the de-
mocratic, for the monarchical element, how-
ever, there is scarcely a word in his noble*
* Hallam's notice of Algernon Sidney's book is dis-
gracefully inadequate , and clearly did not proceed from
an acquaintance at first hand; an injustice, however,
which need scarcely astonish us when we find him
dispatching Chaucer in a few passing words! Is it possi-
ble that even the dispassionate and laborious Hallam is
not altogether raised above the prejudices and indo-
lences with which the rest of us are so sorely beset?
179
chapters on nobility which is not more appli-
cable to the present time than to his own.
"Those who have estates at a rack rent", he
says, "have no dependants. Their tenants, when
they have paid what is agreed, owe them no-
thing, and, knowing they shall be turned out of
their tenements as soon as any other will give
a little more, they look upon their lords as men
who receive more from them than they confer
upon them. This dependance being lost, the
lords have only more money to spend or to
lay up than others, but no command of men;
and can neither protect the weak nor curb
the insolent."* The remedies for this state of
matters which have been adopted in other
countries (the abolition of the laws of entail,
primogeniture,** etc.) are in the highest degree
dangerous to the permanence of the greater
landed proprietors, and they have already
been entered upon among ourselves to such an
extent as to enable us to see that the current
* Discourses concerning Government. Vol. II. p. 313.
Ed. 1750.
* The two first measures adopted by the new legis-
lature of Australia were, the abolition of primogeniture
and the introduction of vote by ballot !
180
of legislation is by no means running in favour
of the aristocratic element in the state.
But, if it be thus unquestionable that neither
the monarchical nor the aristocratic .element
has made headway since the Revolution,
what shall we say of the democratic element?
Of the strength and constancy of the democra-
tic current, in this country, there is, as it seems
to us no more striking indication than that af-
forded by the fact, that the favourers of aristo-
cracy have always approached to, usually after
a slight struggle have adopted in their inte-
grity, the measures and principles of the fa-
vourers of democracy, never the reverse. To
account for such a fact as that of the ultimate
victory always being on the side of democracy,
by saying that the one party has been always
in the right, and the other always in the wrong,
is to assume, in favour of individuals and
classes, a superiority in one particular of which
there is no indication in any other. The fact
is that the one party has been sailing with
the stream, the other against it, and the re-
sult has been that no resistance on the part
of the latter has been sufficient to prevent it
from being carried in the direction which the
course of events has taken.
181
To enumerate the legislative measures fa-
vourable to the democratic element since the
Revolution would be to copy the index of the
statute book during that period*. If any one
wishes to convince himself of the universality
and consistency of this tendency, let him ima-
gine the consequences of a proposal of an op-
posite kind. Suppose any ministry were to
give notice of its intention to bring in a Bill
to restrict the suffrage, or to increase the power
of the House of Lords, or the privileges of the
Crown?
The irrevocable character which has been
found to belong even to financial measures
which contain or are supposed to contain in
them the slightest admixture of a democratic
tendency is another proof of our allegation.
But we have here come on a branch of our
subject where we are positively bewildered
* The French Edition of De Lolme which we possess
was published exactly a hundred years after the Revolution,
and gives probably a pretty fair picture of the relative
strength of the different political elements in De Lolme's
day. Could any one, on reading that book, fail to see
that the democratic element has gained on the other
two since that period?
182
with the " infinita multitude testiuin "; * and our
only fear in bringing them forward,, and in
exhibiting the consistency and directness of
their evidence, is, lest, after the manner of un-
skillful advocates, we should overload a por-
tion of our case in which we cannot doubt
that the verdict is already in our favour.
" General propositions " (in politics), says Sir
G*. Cornewall Lewis** "may be considered as
presumptive truths , which are more likely to be
applicable than not to be applicable to a given
subject.. Hence we may start, in our ana-
lysis of the subject, from the presumption, and
examine whether it does not apply; we may
call on the specific instance to shew cause
* We have the colonies claiming and obtaining demo-
cratic institutions; and England's only full grown child
a pure democracy; \ve have a manufacturing population,
which is democratic, increasing; a rural population,
which is aristocratic, diminishing; we have popular edu-
cation advancing; higher education stationary; etc. etc.
Finally we have the unanimous testimony of impartial
(or rather partial) foreigners who have made a study of
our position, e. g., Dahlmann, Gervinus, De Toqueville,
Montalembert , etc. etc.
** Methods of observation and reasoning in Politics.
V. II. p. 168.
183
why it should not come under the. general
rule".
Now we have assumed the ancient doctrine
of the cycle in a modified form (to the ex-
tent that all constitutional states tend towards
democracy) to be such a presumptive truth ;
and, after the considerations which we have
submitted, we leave our readers to judge whe-
ther, as matters stand at present, there is
ground for believing that England is in a con-
dition to " shew cause why she should not come
under the general rule".
The preceding observations have had refe-
rence chiefly to England, and extend them-
selves, by implication, only to those states in
which a representative system similar to our
own has been introduced. But before finally
dismissing the question of how the moderns
propose to escape from the cycle, it is neces-
sary that we should cast our eyes in another
direction , where a principle involving the very
solution which we have ascribed to the publi-
cists of antiquity unconsciously lies hidden.
The idea which lay at the root of the old
communal and provincial life of Germany was
that of giving expression to the wills, not of
individuals , but of classes ; of representing not
184
heads but interests; and the system in which
this idea found expression still forms, as it
were, the substratum, of the public law of Ger-
many. So little is known in this country of
what may be called the minor public rights of
the citizen of a German state that to many the
mere fact of their existence ,will be a no-
velty, and we therefore make no apology for
translating the following passage from a work*
which, though written before the revolution of
1848, contains what we believe to be still an
accurate account and just appreciation of the
value of what may be regarded as the rudi-
ments of public life in Prussia :
" The meetings of the circle (Kreistage) are
composed of the members of the highest order
(Rittergutsbesitzer), of the deputies of towns,
and of the peasants. The election of the de-
puties to this assembly of the circle, and to
the other assemblies of the orders of the
state, takes place in the following manner. In
the assembly of the circle the greater landed
proprietors , ( Rittergutsbesitzer , or 'possess-
* Preussen , seine Verfassung und Verwaltung etc. v.
Bulow-Cummerow.
185
ors of a knight' s-fee) appear in person. To
the communal and provincial assemblies they
send a representative selected from their or-
der. The burghers of each town again send a
representative to the assembly of the circle.
For the purpose of selecting deputies for the
communal and provincial assemblies , the de-
puties of several small towns meet together
and name one of their number. The larger
towns have a direct vote. The peasants or
small landed proprietors choose deputies in
their villages, who, meeting with the deputies
of other villages , name a representative to the
assembly of the circle; and these representa-
tives again, meeting with the representatives of
other circles, choose a representative to the
communal and provincial assemblies. A meet-
ing of the communal assembly is held every
year in the principal town of the province, to
which the three orders of all the circles thus
send deputies. In these assemblies all the
communal affairs of the province are discussed,
and the accounts of the communal exchequer
are taken up. To them also belongs the duty
of superintending the roads , the institutions
for the poor and for lunatics, hospitals, fire
insurance societies , and so forth. A com-
186
mittee of their number conducts the affairs of
the province between the times of meeting."
Now we entirely agree with the writer from
whom we have quoted , and with his greater
predecessors in the same opinion, Stein and Har-
denberg, in regarding these and similar institu-
tions , trifling as their present functions are, as
furnishing the foundations of a far sounder and
more efficient constitution , than can possibly be
constructed for any German state after what
Germans call the French, but what with greater
accuracy might be called the Anglo-American,
model. We are consequently altogether at one
with him, when, in a subsequent publication*, he
objects to the Prussian elective law of 1850, as
substituting a mere money census, more re-
fined indeed than that of our present suffrage,
but scarcely recognising any other principle,
for a constitution based upon historical insti-
tutions by means of which it would have been
possible to take cognisance of the whole m-
lerests of the universal Prussian people. The
following passage, which expresses, we are told,
the creed of the conservative reformers of Prussia,
seems to us to contain much wisdom, which in
* Die Reform der Verfassung aus dem conservative!!
Gesichtspunkte. 1851.
187
/
its indirect application need not be confined
to Prussia alone:
"We are of opinion that in order to inau-
gurate a complete representation of interests,
the deputies of the chambers must be selected
by the Provincial assemblies, without however
restricting them to the choice of their own
members. The members of the provincial as-
semblies being selected by the assemblies
of the circles, and these again by the vil-
lages, such a chamber would represent the
interests of all, and would have the farther
advantage that the representatives thus sent
up would be intimately acquainted with the
circumstances of the different provinces" (which
in Prussia are very different), "and would be in a
condition to procure for them the consideration
of the chamber and of the government. With
these proposals are united other substantial
advantages. The representation would thus
acquire a broad basis; the constitution would
be built upon the lower institutions of the
state: would be more simple in its form: and
would furnish the means of gradually passing over
to an universal representation. The representa-
tiv^es sent to the highest chamber would be
trained by the discussions of the subordinate
188
assemblies, and above all they would be fewer
in numbers, and thus would be likely to ex-
hibit more understanding and sound sense,
qualities which, as experience has shewn, usu-
ally diminish as the assembly increases in
numbers.''
What the immediate practical effect of such
arrangements might be, either in Prussia or
in any other German state, is a point on which
we can form no confident opinion; but that
the principles which they involve offer an ulti-
mate theoretical escape from the cycle, for which
we look in vain to our own present election laws,
is certain enough. What is equally certain
however is that we possess no such political
substratum as the circle, communal, and pro-
vincial assemblies of Germany, whereon to
base a refined and extended system of repre-
sentation; and that any direct suggestions from
that quarter must be derived rather from the
modern arrangments by which these institu-
tions have been ignored, than from views wis-
er in themselves as they seem, by which they
are regarded as the basis of German public life.
Now the Prussian constitution of 1850 is in-
structive in this respect, that alongside of uni-
versal suffrage, it has actually introduced a gra-
189
duuted timocratic scale. As we are not aware of
the existence of any English translation* of the
Prussian organic constitutional law of 1850, it
may not be out of place that we should here
present to the reader the articles which fix the
constitution of the second chamber**.
Art. 69. The second chamber consists of three
hundred and fifty members. The elective circles
will be fixed by law. They may consist of
one or more circles (Kreisen), or of one or
more of the larger towns.
Art. 70. Every Prussian, who has completed
his twenty fifth year, and who in the parish
(Gemeinde) in which he resides possesses the
privileges of a parish elector, shall be an ori-
ginal elector (Urwahler). Whoever has the
right of election in more parishes than one
can exercise the rights of an original elector
in one only.
Art. 71. For every two hundred and fifty
souls of the population , an elector (Wahlmann)
is chosen. The original electors are divided into
three divisions , according to the amount of the di-
rect taxes of the state for which they are liable;
* None appeared even in the " Times " !
** Verfassungs-Urkunde fur den Preussischen Staat.
Berlin 1850. (Published by Royal authority), p. p. 12, et sq.
190
and after such a manner that on each class
of original electors a third of the whole sum
shall fall.
The whole sum is reckoned:
a) According to parishes, where the parish con-
stitutes of itself an original elective circle.
b) According to circles , where the original
elective circle consists of more parishes
than one.
The first division consists of those original
electors upon whom the highest amount of tax-
ation falls, till a third part of the whole sum
is exhausted.
The second division consists of those original
electors upon whom the next lower amount of
taxation falls , till the limits of the second third
part are reached.
The third division consists of the lowest
taxed original electors, upon whom the re-
maining third part falls.
Each division elects apart ; and elects a third
of the required electors (Wahlmanner).
Art. 72. The Representatives (to the Cham-
bers) (Abgeordneten) are elected by the elec-
tors.
By a previous article (65), the highest taxed
191
class farther selects, according to similar prin-
ciples, ninety members of the First Chamber.
Such is the present election law of Prussia,
rendered nugatory as a substantial guarantee
for liberty by the great and ill defined powers
assigned to the monarch, not in theory or by
antiquated tradition, but by the existing so-
vereign will of the Prussian people, and con-
sequently by the practice of the state. It is
more than self-delusion, it is absolute contra-
diction, to suppose that any representative sys-
tem, however perfect, can afford a guarantee
for the essentials of liberty to a people who
are contented to place the centre of supreme
power beyond their own controul; for such a
supposition manifestly amounts to the absur-
dity to holding that a people may at once will,
and not will, its own freedom. Whilst the prin-
ciples of the Germanic confederation are ad-
hered to,* and ultimate sovereignty is held to
centre, not in the representatives of the people
but in the king, the Germans are where we
were in England before the Revolution of 1688
* Bundesbeschluss vom 28. Juni 1832 . I. (v. Zacha-
ria Vol. I. p. 31) and recognised as the existing law of
the confederation since the Revolution of 1848. v. Be-
schluss vom 23. August 1851. p. 48.
192
(if they be so far) , and all substantial controul
over the monarch, even in financial matters,
logically implies a revolution*. Till the "be-
rathende Stimme", the voice of counsel, rises
into the "befehlende Stimme", the voice of
command, the categorical imperative of the
constitutional Parliament, all representation
for the higher objects of politics must be a
mockery. But these observations bear, not upon
the constitution of the representative system,
but on the relation which it bears to the royal
prerogative.
The chief defect of the system itself seems to
be that pointed out by M. Biilow-Cummerow, and
to which we have already referred, viz. that it
throws the chief power into the hands of a
11 Geldaristokratie ", "die schnodeste von alien",
whilst it leaves unrepresented other interests
which the lower political institutions of the
land had already recognised. With all its de-
fects, however, it cannot be denied that it
aims at a recognition of the principles to which
* A logical result to which the confederation were not
blind, and for which they supplied the only remedy
which was possible from their point of view, viz. armed
intervention in behalf of the Monarch, Bundesbeschluss
nt sup. . II. p. 31.
193
the ancient publicists looked with so much
hope, an universal recognition of unequal
public rights. The present political institu-
tions of the Germans indeed exhibit in a re-
markable degree the very features which any
one acquainted with that people would have
anticipated; viz. a very high degree of in-
telligence, rendered practically inoperative by
a vacillating and feeble will. Both in its
strength and its weakness the modern German
character bears no small resemblance to that
of the ancient Greek, and to us, whose natio-
nal peculiarities are the reverse of theirs in
both particulars, the coincidence of their poli-
tical views is of peculiar importance, as de-
monstrating that, wherever the problem of po-
litics has been adequately thought out, the re-
sults, in the ancient and modern world, have
not been at variance.
Nor is it in Prussia alone that a wide re-
cognition of unequal political rights has been
fixed upon as the only means of reaping the
benefit, without incurring the evils, of the in-
evitable widening of the political circle. Most of
the other states of Germany have adopted similar -
principles, whilst, by leaving the source of so-
vereignty as a bone of contention between king
194
and people, they have equally experienced their
futility.
Bavaria was the first state of the Germanic
Confederation which adopted (26 May 1818) a
constitutional government; a measure towards
which advances had been made so early as
1808. The following sections, whilst they shew
that here also the principle of inequality of
public rights was very distinctly recognised,
exhibit a closer adherence to the historical in-
stitutions of Germany:
. 8.* The number of members (of the se-
cond chamber) shall be in proportion to the
number of families in the kingdom, and in such
proportion that one member shall be returned
for every 700 families.
. 9. Of the number thus fixed there shall
be returned by,
a) the class of minor noble proprietors, one
eighth ;
&) the class of ecclesiastics of the catholic
and protestant churches, one eighth;
c) the class of burghers of cities and market-
towns, one fourth;
* Die deutschen Verfassungs-Gesetze der Gegemvart,
v. Dr. Heinrich Albert Zacharia. Vol. 1. p. 117.
195
c() the class of smaller landed proprietors
who possess no manorial rights, two fourths
of the representatives ;
e) each University, one representative.
According to this arrangement the minor no-
bles and the ecclesiastics shared between them
one fourth of the whole representation, and it is
obvious that the vote of each member of either
of these classes must have been of far greater
value than that of a single burgher or peasant
proprietor, though the numbers returned by all
the members were only equal to one in four
of the whole representatives.
The revolution of 1848 brought upon Bavaria
a suffrage, universal and equal to all who pay
direct taxes, with no guarantee against mob-
government, except the by no means unimpor-
tant one of the double system of voting (by
Urwahler and Wahlmanner). Time has not
yet tested this experiment sufficiently to war-
rant a final judgment on its merits. Of the
constitution of 1818, however, it is certain that
it so far did its work as to save Bavaria from
the most violent consequences of the revolutio-
nary fury of 1848.
In Saxony constitutional monarchy was in-
N2
196
troduced in 1831*. By the constitution of
that year, which was overturned in 1848,
and restored in 1850, the second chamber
consists of twenty representatives of the
greater landowners; twenty five representa-
tives of the towns; twenty five of the pea-
sants; and five of the commercial and manu-
facturing interests. A property qualification
is requisite both for electors and elected, the
amount for the latter being considerably greater
than that for the former. The representatives
of the greater landowners are chosen by the
direct vote, those of the towns and peasants
by the double vote.
To follow out the election laws of the minor
states of Germany would lead us beyond the
limits, and would be inconsistent with the de-
sign, of the present work. In principle they
add little to the examples which we have given.
In all of them the political influence allotted to
the individual bears some proportion to the so-
cial influences of the class to which he belongs,
or to the amount of his own contributions to
the public service ; and in most of them public
* Zacharia , ut supra.
197
rights of some kind are either widely recognised,
or are already universal.
Whilst recognising the soundness of these
principles in the existing institutions of Ger-
many, and deeming the means by which they
have received expression, though perhaps inca-
pable of direct application still very worthy of
consideration whenever the revision of our own
election laws shall again be forced upon us by
the necessity of extending the circle pf public
rights , we cannot but regret to observe that the
frenzy of 1848 has everywhere left traces far
from favourable to the safe development of liber-
ty in Germany. The tendency almost invariably
has been to sacrifice the principle of represent-
ing orders to that of representing either mere
existences, or, at the very best, wealth; a ten-
dency which we grieve to see has extended it-
self even to the free Hanseatic City of Lubeck *.
But, however unfavourable to the future of
Germany, to us this fact may teach the lesson
that, of all the periods which the leaders of a
people may have it in their power to choose
for agitating questions relating to the funda-
mental laws of the state, the least hopeful and
* Zachariae Vol. II. p. 1121.
198
the least safe is one of great political excite-
ment. If the work which was forced upon
them in 1848, and in which they failed, had
been voluntarily undertaken by the intellectual
magnates of Germany ten years earlier, the re-
sults might have been very different; and, as
regards ourselves, it is far from unlikely that
means which might be abundantly adequate to
ward off future dangers , will no longer avail
us when^ we fly to them as a refuge from pre-
sent calamity.
CHAP. XIII.
DO ANY PUBLIC RIGHTS BELONG TO MAN AS MAN ?
The results of the whole doctrine of the an-
cient publicists on the subject of justice may
be expressed in a single sentence: "All free
men are entitled to an equal recognition of
their rights, but all free men are not entitled
to a recognition of equal rights"*; or still
more shortly in a single proposition, "All free
men are entitled to a recognition proportioned
to their rights." If the rights are equal the
recognition must be equal, if the rights are
unequal the recognition must be unequal, in
proportion to their inequality.
The rule thus given manifestly brings us at
once in contact with an issue in fact, and that
the selfsame issue that is placed before us by
the celebrated definition of justice which was
adopted as the groundwork of Roman juris-
* The American Declaration of Independence held it
to be a "self evident truth," that "all men are created
qual!"
200
prudence. "Justitia," says Ulpian "est con-
stans et perpetua voluntas jus suum cuique
tribuendi." In the last instance then politics
and jurisprudence come together. Justice is
alike the root and the object of both, and
both equally acknowledge that justice consists
in a recognition of the fact* that such and
such proportions belong to such and such per-
sons. But, though their objects are the same,
the subjects with which they deal are widely
different. The science of Politics can take no-
cognisance of individual qualities, except on
the hypothesis that the individual falls under
some one of .certain -classes which it belongs to
it to fix. Jurisprudence, again, accepts the classi-
fication with which politics furnishes it, and fixes
the position of the individual accordingly**. Let
us take the simplest example. "A man's right
to be recognised as a man depends on the
fact of his being a man".*** The dictum is
binding on the politician and the lawyer alike,
because it is the dictum of that sense of justice
* "Truth is the rule of justice". Algernon Sidney,
Discourses concerning Government. Vol. I. p. 57. By
"truth" he means, the true state of the case.
** Kant's Rechtslehre; . 49.
*** Lieber's Political Ethics.
201
from which neither can absolve the other: -
of that Soul "over which God can and will al-
low none to rule but himself alone."* But in
its abstract shape its application to an indivi-
dual case is impossible. Before the lawyer
can either recognise Titus as a man, or deny
him that recognition , the politician** must tell
him what are the qualities of a man and what
constitutes their recognition. Now for an answer
to these questions the politician must fall back
in the last instance on that same arbiter who
told him that Titus must have his due. But,
though the general law is engraven on the
hearts of all men in all times and places, the
meaning which it conveys when read with re-
ference to the special case varies with every
shade of difference in the reader. Where, then,
is the practical politician to find his guide? for
it does not necessarily follow that , in the mat-
ters with which he has to deal, any two men
should have the same opinion. The question
* Luther.
** See the reasons stated by Falk (Juristische Ency-
clopadie p. 87.) for classing the Philosophie des positi-
ven Rechts , on the borders of which we are here tread-
ing, with the politischen \Vissenschaften.
202
is one which we formerly discussed*, and it
is sufficient here that we should recall the re-
sult at which we arrived. His guide, - - the
guide which he not only ought to follow but
which he must follow, is the general con-
science** as enlightened by the general intel-
ligence of his time. If he is persuaded that
this monitor is in error, his rights of protest
and remonstrance remain to him both as a
moralist and as a speculative politician, in
every capacity indeed except that of a practical
politician. As such he is bound, not by his
private conscience and his private intelligence,
but by that public conscience and intelligence
to which he is presumed to have contributed
the share of light or darkness that is in him.
Now the public conscience of antiquity and
that of the modern world have determined very
differently the questions with which we are
here occupied. The former, guided by a prin-
ciple which we have already considered and re-
jected,*** limited to a minority of the sane, and
* Ante; Cap. II.
** The word "conscience" in this acceptation is not
new. "A commonwealth is nothing else but the national
conscience." Harrington's Oceana p. 58.
*** Vide Chap. XI.
203
so far as human laws were concerned, blame-
less inhabitants of the state, the character
which we extend to all who have not forfeited
it by the loss either of reason or innocence
judicially ascertained. In any inquiry there-
fore into the doctrines of antiquity on the sub-
ject of the rights of individuals, with a view
to comparing them with our own ; we must ex-
clude from our consideration the existence of
the slave population altogether; and if we do
so, and, for "free man", read "man", simply,
we shall without difficulty obtain guidance from
ancient experience. Personal liberty and free-
dom of action, which, with their consequences,
make up the Jura private, were conceded equally
to all, and on the same ground apparently on
which they are conceded in modern times,*
viz. that their corresponding duties were within
the reach of every one.
A had obtained his life originally,** and as
* As to the reciprocity of rights and duties see
Stephens's Blackstone I. 132.
** We purposely assume the fact of original freedom
as the proper starting point, though we are far from
attributing to it directly the possession of jural rights,
either public or private. As to the views of the lead-
ing German writers on the philosophy of law, Kant,
204
a free man he possessed it, independently of
B ; but he could claim it as a right against B
only so long as he recognised in B a similar
right. It was the recognition alone which placed
A within the pale of society, and founded
a jural relation to B, and if the recognition
ceased so did the right. If A took B's life
away, he forfeited the title on which his own
life was held. Again A could claim the right
of acquiring property to any extent, and of
possessing it to the extent to which he had
acquired it, because he was in a condition
to grant the same right to B. But if A com-
mitted a theft on B his title to his own pos-
sessions was gone.
But all these, so to speak, were passive rights,
they were rights to be let alone; and their
corresponding duties were passive also, du-
ties of letting alone. The duties were within
the reach of every capacity however humble,
and the rights consequently emerged equally
to all, however small might be the benefit
which they were capable of deriving from their
use. To question that the duty was performed,
Hegel, Fichte, &c., on this point, see Warnkonig's re-
cently published Juristische Encyclopaedia, p. 89, et seq.
205
would have been to* question the sanity or the
innocence of the individual; to deny the right
where its performance was admitted would
have been to commit an act of manifest in-
justice.
The public conscience , both in ancient and
modern times, has consequently recognised the
private rights of mankind as a possession in-
separable from freedom, and the practical po-
litician has thus far had his course pointed
out to him unequivocally.
But can public rights be claimed on the same
footing by the mere man? To enable us to
answer this question we have simply to find
whether in point of fact public duties can be
performed by him. Now the duties which
found public rights differ from those which
found private rights first of all in this, that,
whereas the former were passive, the latter are
active.* The fact that I have let my fellow
citizen alone will never found for me a claim
that he should help me, or honor me, or submit
* Kant speaks of active and passive citizens of the
state , observing that the last is a contradiction in terms,
in as much as the idea of citizenship implies active par-
ticipation in public affairs. Rechtslehre, 46.
206
to me. Even the fact that I am willing that
he should have a voice in what concerns me
will not entitle me to have a voice in what con-
cerns him, because he may be capable and
I may be incapable. The passive duty I can
always perform, and have consequently always
the passive right; but the active duty may be
beyond my power, and the active right conse-
quently beyond my reach.
But it is not on that account the less with
a question of fact that we have still to do. If
the man , as man simply, does perform an active
duty to his neighbour or to the state, then
the active right is in him, as against his neigh-
bour or against the state. In the sphere of
active, just as much as in that of passive du-
ties and rights, the "suum cuique" will be
violated, if the recognition is withheld whilst
the fact is present; and it was this principle
that the ancients acknowledged when they said
that wherever, as in public rights, absolute
equality was impossible, justice still called for
relative and proportional equality. They were
unequivocal in their admission that if it can
be shewn that there is any portion, however
small, of citizen duties, which is discharged
to the state by the simple human unit who
207
lives and labours within its borders, then the
rights of citizenship corresponding and propor-
tioned to this small portion of duty, emerge in
his person as fully as do the fullest citizen
rights in him who fills up the fullest measure
of citizen duties.* It was their clear insight
into this principle which prevented the ancients
from committing the egregious blunder of sup-
posing that a barrier can be erected against
democracy by setting a final limit to the ex-
tension of political privileges.
But as to the all important fact itself the
opinions of antiquity were as much divided as
have been those of the modern world, and in
very few instances did the lowest class of ci-
tizens, even with the safety valve as it was
considered, of the slave population below them,
attain to a fuller recognition of public rights
than that which in all the progressive states
of Europe is already given to the mere man.
Both Plato and Aristotle advocated the ex-
clusion of the whole classes which live by la-
bour, on the ground that they had no leisure
to form opinions on public questions ; and, though
* -Aol y9 ciitb %QYiUKTG)v KOLVtov, lav yiyvrjTtti rj dia-
^irj &c. Aristot. Ethic. Nic. Lib. V. cap. 4.
208
the practice in many places was more liberal
than the theory, it nowhere rose to a broad and
unqualified recognition of public rights in the
mere man.
In modern times the question of fact has
stood on a still more unsatisfactory footing,
for, though we can with justice boast that the
existence of public rights in the mere man
has been frequently recognised to its fullest
extent, it has been invariably imperilled by
being united to what seems its kindred false-
hood, namely, that public rights exist in all
men equally. In every existing state with
which we are acquainted in which public rights
of any kind are conceded to a man on the
ground of his humanity alone* the concession
* By some of the leading constitutionalists in our own
country it is acknowledged that in point of principle
political rights fall necessarily to be conceded to the
human unit in every free country, (v. Stephen's Black-
stone, Vol. II. pp. 325342.) The absence of their re-
cognition is defended on the ground that political inde-
pendence cannot be expected of the indigent. The ar-
gument would be pertinent if the question regarded the
extent of these rights. But, if true, it ought to be found
in the mouths of the advocates of democracy, seeing
that the aristocracy would be the gainers by the inabil-
ity of the poor to resist the undue influences of wealth
209
will be found more or less coupled with this
fatal error ; and , in every state in which they
are withheld, their denial is justified on the
ground of their supposed inseparable con-
nection with absolute equality. If the most
tenacious Conservative could be persuaded that /
Universal Suffrage does not necessarily lead/
to political equality, we believe that his chief/
objection to it would be overcome.
But, though it be clear that the existing state
of the public conscience furnishes the practical
politician with no safe ground to go upon in
recognising the existence of public rights in
the mere man, it by no means follows that
the theorist may not be called upon, in the
name of ultimate justice, to overthrow the
very barriers which the practical man is bound
to respect. If he believes the public conscience
to be in error,* he is not only entitled but bound
to reject its dicta.
and position. The fact of its being put forward by the
aristocracy proves that such is not the result which they
really anticipate from an extension of political privileges.
* It would be very interesting to enquire into the
absolute value of the dicta of the public conscience.
There has certainly been a very wide spread feeling
that, in the particular circumstances of the case in which
210
It being conceded then that equal political
rights must be permanently denied, on the
ground that equal political duties can never, in
any circumstances, be performed by all men;
and it being also conceded that unequal or li-
mited public rights must be withheld so long
as the performance of their corresponding du-
ties is not recognised by the existing public
spirit 5 the speculative question still remains
open, whether some public rights will not
ultimately fall to be recognised in the person of
the mere man, on the ground that he performs
some public duties.
Now this claim (for the present we say no-
thing of its limits), seems to us to rest on the
it is expressed, it is the nearest approach to inspi-
ration; and it is remarkable to find such a man as
Macchiavelli saying " Ce n'est pas sans raison qu'on
dit que la voix du peuple est la voix de Dieu".
Discours sur Tite Live, Vol. I. p. 289. See also
Sismondi, p % . 289. The danger of such opinions is that
they have a practical tendency in the direction of poli-
tical fatalism. It is constantly forgotten that but for
the active interference of gifted individuals the public
spirit would not be what it is, and, even with this advan-
tage , that it is infallible is a conclusion which it is to be
feared the widest views of optimism will scarcely war-
rant in this world.
211
following grounds as securely as any political
claim rests on any ground whatever:
1. He defends the state, if not with his means,
then with his person; and in doing so he de-
fends not only the private rights of the sub^
ject, in which he participates, but the public
rights of the citizen, thereby performing a
public duty.
2. Wherever a system of indirect taxation is
adopted, he pays taxes, and as such he per-
forms in kind the selfsame public duty of
which the timocratic suffrage, in the case of
others, is the corresponding recognition. It is
not having, but giving, that is the ground of
claim in any case to the property suffrage, and
the only difference between his claim who
gives little and his who gives much is a dif-
ference of degree.
If direct taxation were adopted exclusively,
and this lowest class of citizens were exempted
from it*, then their claim to representation on
this ground at least would be excluded.
Let it not be supposed that in propounding
this view we give countenance to the doctrine
* According to the Solonian constitution the Thetes
were exempted from direct taxation, but there were in-
direct taxes which they paid.
02
212
that "Taxation without representation is rob-
bery". The stranger, who is so taxed, has as
an equivalent the protection which a state,
voluntarily chosen as the place of his temporary
abode, affords to his private rights;* and even
he who is born on the soil cannot be said to be
robbed, whilst the option of departure is left
to him. A parental government (and a govern-
ment founded on the general will is not necess-
arily devoid of that character), like a natural
parent, may without injustice claim a portion
of the fruits of the labours of its children so
long as it affords them the shelter of its protec-
tion ; but whilst they are excluded from all con-
troul over the conditions on which this protec-
tion is afforded, they live under a regimen, which
may be legitimate in certain circumstances, but
of which the subjects have nothing of that
character of participants in the sovereignty
which belongs to the very idea of citizenship.
Taxation without representation is not robbery,
but it is not citizenship.
3. But lastly there is a still more universal
claim to participation in public rights, which
* The dientes in the early times of Rome were in
this position.
213
is entitled to recognition on the same principle.
The family is the first arena not only of social
but of citizen duties; and he who discharges
these faithfully has founded a claim to political
recognition. The sound old English maxim that
every man's house is his castle is applicable
without exception to England's children, and we
must consequently take for granted, till the con-
trary be proved, that each individual within his
own doors is doing his part towards maintaining
that only trustworthy foundation of the political
superstructure, a well-ordered and blameless
family life. When regarded from the point of
view of his domestic relations, every sane hu-
man being* possesses a weight in society, to
* Vicarious Representation. Persons under age, and
above all adult females of families which enjoy public
rights, are not excluded from representation, but are
vicariously represented. Women who bear citizens dis-
charge citizen duties, and consequently have citizen rights,
but these, like their social rights, they must and do make
available through the males of their families. KKLXOI
TL diKcpegsi, yvraiyiag KQ^SLV 77 rovs KQ%ovras vno TCOV
yvvaiH(nv KQISG&OH, ; TKVTO yap 6V(i^citvBL. Every adult
male, when he tenders his vote virtually says, "This my
vote comprises the votes of the females of my house-
hold," and practically it is modified by the influence
which they exercise over him. It expresses opinions
214
which the suffrage, when understood in the
sense which we shall presently see, is the true
one, must endeavour to give expression.
We have stated these facts less strongly
than we feel them, because we are aware that
from their exaggeration, more political evil has
arisen, and is likely to arise, than from any
other source of error. Still they are facts of
which we shall not get rid by simply ignoring
them. Our real safety here, as in so many other
cases, lies in a clear distinction between what
is true and what is false in the doctrine of our
opponent, not in a consistent and obstinate
.denial of the whole doctrine, simply on the
ground of the consequences to which it may lead.
"No consequence", says Sidney, "can distroy
any truth."* Our ancestors looked them bold-
ly in the face from the earliest dawn of our
constitutional history. Among the Teutonic
nations, in their original seats, they received
a practical recognition. "De minoribus rebus
which are the result , not of his individual character
alone , but of the whole circumstances in which he is
placed. If these have been independent of female in-
fluences altogether, then there was no female claim and
consequently there is no exclusion.
* Discourses on Government. Vol. I. p. 19.
215
principes consultant, de majoribus omnes".*
'/The nation" says Savigny, "was composed
of the universal body of free men; in them the
sovereignty resided".** And again : "I regard
the class of free men as the basis of the whole
Germanic organisation ; and by that we must not
understand a negative liberty, liberty opposed
to slavery , but on the contrary something po-
sitive, the capacity and the exercise of all the
rights of citizenship. The expression "digni-
ty" of which Moser made use, completely ren-
ders the idea of their position". The words
"dignity" and "free-man" correspond to those
of "caput" and "civis optimo jure" among
the Komans.
This view is confirmed by the best modern
writers on the institutions of our own Anglo-
Saxon forefathers. Kemble, following Pal-
grave and others, tells us that, when any
new chapters (capitula) had been added to
the ancient law or Folkright, messengers
were dispatched by the Wittanagemote into
the provinces, to obtain the assent and signa-
ture of the free-men, and the chapters thus
* Tacitus, Germania.
** History of the Roman Law in the Middle Ages.
216
ratified became the law of the Land.* Even
after the Conquest, the principle of an uni-
versal participation in public rights was not
only tacitly implied in the direction which po-
litical progress took, but was consciously re-
cognised in the theory of the constitution. This
assertion might be verified from many sources,
but nowhere more strikingly than in the re-
markable words of Robert of Winchelsea, Arch-
bishop of Canterbury in his letter to the Pope
quoted by M. Guizot: ** " Consuetude est regni
Angliae, quod, in negotiis contingentibus statum
ejusdem regni, requiritur consilium omnium
quos res tangit".
It is true that in the earliest periods of our
history to recognise the existence of public
rights in all free men (i. e. in all whose pri-
vate rights were equal) was by no means the
same as to recognise them in all the adult
male population. There was then a class of
the unfree, which though never very numerous,
and, as M. Guizot has justly remarked, never
permanent as in antiquity, was still important
* Saxons in England. Vol. II. p. 190.
** Histoire des Origines du Gouvernement Kepresen-
tatif. Vol. II. p. 187.
217
enough materially to influence political life.*
Still the argument (to those of us who have
rejected the principle of slavery) is not affect-
ed by this circumstance, and its validity in ge-
neral is not denied by our constitutional writ-
ers. "In a free state", says Blackstone "every
man, who is supposed a free agent, ought to
be in some measure his own governor; and
therefore a branch at least of the legislative
power should reside in the whole body of the
people".**
Nor has the course of our development,
from the times of Edward I. to our own, been
such as to conflict with the principle that all
free Englishmen have public rights ; on the
contrary, its unvarying tendency has been to
increase the numbers of those in whom they
are acknowledged, "English history", says Sir
James Mackintosh, "stands alone as the history
of the progress of a great people towards liber-
ty during six centuries"***; and again, "The
Great Charter gave out on each occasion only
so much of the spirit of liberty and reformation
* Lappenberg, Vol. II. p. S20.
** Stephen's Blackstone, Vol. II. p. 324. and again
p. 342. .
*** to History of England.
218
as the circumstances of succeeding generations
required, and their character would safely
bear".* Nothing can be truer than this dic-
tum, in a general way, so far as we have
gone hitherto; but let the members of that
party to which Sir James Mackintosh was too
closely united for his own freedom of view
see to it that the Charter does not some day
give out what will contribute neither to the
reformation, the safety, nor the liberty of Eng-
lishmen. Lord John Russell said long ago that
universal suffrage (in the vulgar sense, of course)
is "the grave of all temperate liberty, and the
parent of tyranny and license"**; and the
doctrine has our assent not only as a general
proposition, but because we believe it to have
peculiar weight when applied to our own coun-
try. When we think of the density with which
our island is peopled, and the consequently great
numbers of the very poor, and when we re-
flect moreover that a vast proportion of our
town population consists of manufacturers,
whilst even in the country we have whole dis-
tricts entirely in the power of a mining popu-
lation, we can scarcely hope that, should we
. * Vol. II. p. 221.
** Government of England, p. 352.
219
ever have the misfortune to arrive at niob-
government, it will not be one of the most vi-
cious that the world has ever seen. The cir-
cumstances of Germany in these respects are
less unfavourable than our own, and those who
know the Germans best will bear us out when
we say that in ordinary circumstances they
are the most well-conditioned and sweet-blooded'
people in the world, and still it was surpris-
ing how much brutality came to light when
the lees of the people were stirred up by the
short ascendancy of the rabble in 1848. It is
vain to hope that we should acquit ourselves
better in a similar trial. If we will not be
warned in time let us be assured that here as
there ; and more than there,
die Bestialitat
Wird sich gar herrlich offenbaren. *
But though we fully participate in the fears
with which Lord John Russell, and the other
members of his party, regard a consummation
which it has been the business of their lives
to hasten, we are very far from having the
same feeling towards an extension of a propor-
tional participation in public rights even to the
* Faust.
220
whole body of the people. Whilst we believe
such an event in some shape to be inevitable,
we are optimist enough to regard it not as a
perversion of liberty, but as the legitimate re-
sult of political progress. Sismondi, as every
body knows, was a most inveterate opponent
of the vulgar universal suffrage, but of the
modified suffrage he has expressed an opinion
from which, though we say nothing of its im-
mediate applicability to the affairs of any in-
dividual state, we cannot withhold our abstract
concurrence. "It is by associating all the ci-
tizens in the national power, that the most
noble object of all social science, the improve-
ment of all , can alone be hoped for ".*
* Essay on Universal Suffrage.
CHAP. XIV.
THE SUFFRAGE.
Having treated of the principle on which the
claims of individuals and classes to political
influence may be urged, we have also indicat-
ed that on which absolute political justice re-
quires that they shall be recognised. If the
public duty performed is the measure of the
claim, it must be also the measure of its re-
cognition. But the principle by which practical
questions relating to the suffrage must be de-
cided is of a far simpler kind, and one which
does not come into operation until public opi-
nion has, rightly or wrongly, pronounced its
verdict on the absolute right. When we would
determine to whom, at any particular time, the
suffrage is to be given, and in what propor-
tions, we must inquire, not into the extent of
the duties actually performed, but into the ex-
tent of their recognition by the community,
and the consequent social power and influence
of those who perform them. In one word, it
222
is not social rights, but social powers, which
indicate the measure by which political in-
fluence must be meted.* The suffrage is a
device, not for testing the absolute justice of
claims , or estimating their value , but simply
for giving a true and accurate political ex-
pression to them as they exist. Its business
is to express, not the political weight which
ought to belong to any class of citizens, but to
translate for each individual, so to speak, into
the language of politics the utterances to which
his fellow citizens have already consented to
give heed within a narrower circle. If the rights
of the individual resulting from the duties which
he performs exceed their recognition by his
fellow citizens, then, no doubt, to the extent to
which such is the case he will suffer injustice
by a suffrage regulated on this principle; but
it is an injustice from which he must seek to
escape by other than direct political means.
He must submit to the circuitous process of
making his influence felt in the community,
and thus of converting his right into a power.
Again, even where the influences which it is
called upon to express are inconsistent with
* Vide cap. I.
223
the wellbeing of society, it lies not .with
the suffrage to alter them. To regard the suf-
frage as a corrective for social evils is to mis-
understand its nature, and to use it as such is to
engender discontents which sooner or later will
endanger the public safety. The error which we
have here pointed out is one which pervades, as
it seems to us, the whole of M. Guizot's eloquent
book on the history of representative govern-
ment. In speaking of the function of repre-
sentative government he says:* "Le probleme
est evidemment de recueillir partout dans la
societe les fragments epars et incomplets de
ce pouvoir (le pouvoir de droit, which pro-
ceeds, according to him, not from duties per-
formed but from capacity to perform them),**
de les concentrer, et de les constituer en gou-
vernement. En d'autres termes, il s'agit de de-
couvrir tous les elements de pouvoir legitime
dissemines dans la societe, et de les organiser
en pouvoir de fait, c'est-a-dire de concentrer,
de realiser la raison publique, la morale pu-
blique, et de les appeler au pouvoir. Ce qu'on
* Vol. II. p. 150.
** Le droit de'rive de la capacite et lui appartient.
Vol. II. p. 227.
224
appelle representation n'est autre chose que le
moyen d'arriver a ce resultat. Ce n'est point
une machine arithmetique destinee a recueillir
et a denombrer les volontes individuelles. C'est
un procede naturel pour extraire du sein de la
societe la raison publique, qui seul a droit de
la gouverner". M. Guizot here states the very
converse of what we hold to be the true idea
of representation, whilst the task which he
assigns to it is in practice impossible. In place
of gathering up the "pouvoir de droit" and
converting it into " pouvoir de fait ", every go-
vernment must, as a condition of its own sta-
bility, accept the "pouvoir de fait" as it finds
it, and, recognising politically its social in-
fluence so long as it continues to exist, strive
to convert it into "pouvoir de droit". To attri-
bute this latter function to the suffrage, how-
ever is to confound it with those other insti-
tutions of the state, religious, educational, and
jurisprudential, of which it is the province to
bring the social influences of the community
into accordance with u la raison, la justice, et
la verite qui sont la loi de Dieu". It is true
that in every community, however debased,
justice, reason, and truth do possess some degree
of influence. They are actual powers, and
225
to the fullest extent to which they are such
they must receive political expression through
means of the suffrage; but if we go beyond
this , and depress other less worthy influences,
in order to give them more weight in the state
than they possess in the community, we apply
to politics precisely the principle which when
applied to religion all reasonable men now
agree in condemning. It is admitted on all
hands that if we wish to prevent a false reli-
gion from influencing society we must era-
dicate it from the minds of individuals, strive
to pull it up by the roots in detail, and not,
by excluding the individuals who hold it from
social equality or political power, give to its
growth the increased impulse which the lop-
ping of persecution never fails to communicate.
Now the same holds true with every other form
of injustice, irrationality, and error. At the same
time however we must be on our guard against
the opposite mistake, not unfrequent in these
times , - - namely, of actually developing false
principles into powers by communicating to
them an amount of political recognition beyond
the influence which they actually possess in
society. We must remember that political re-
cognition of social evil is justifiable only to
226
the extent to which it is inevitable, that is , to
the extent of depriving it of the advantages*
which it would derive from attempts to suppress
it which must of necessity be unsuccessful.
Finally, to all representation which takes cog-
nisance of the influences which ought to go-
vern society (pouvoirs de droit), rather than of
those which do govern it (pouvoirs de fait),
whether political or religious, there is this ob-
jection, that it violates what we stated as the
radical principle of all free government, name-
ly, that it shall be the expression of the exist-
ing spirit of the people.
It having been thus determined that the of-
fice of the suffrage is to give political expres-
sion to the social powers actually existing in
the community, the questions which fall next
to be answered have reference to the form or
forms of suffrage by which this may be adequate-
ly and permanently accomplished.
Now, from the principles which we have al-
ready laid down, two general propositions at
once present themselves, and mark off the li-
* An irregular authority , not avowed by the laws, is "
always more dangerous than a much greater authority
derived from them. Hume, Essay VII. p. 52. See also
Macchiavelli , Discourses on Livy, cap. XXXIV. p. 179.
227
^ ___
mits oi' such a suffrage in the two opposite di-
rections of democracy and aristocracy. These
may perhaps be most conveniently stated in a
negative form.
1. In no stage of social development, actual
or possible, so long as the nature of men re-
mains unchanged, can it be a suffrage which
simply sums up the individual opinions of the
citizens. This conclusion presents itself as an
obvious consequence of the fact of human in-
equality, and is in truth but another mode of
stating the opinion of the ancient publicists,
that democracy is the government of a class.
The partial character of the representation
which is secured by the universal equal suffrage,
and its consequent inadequacy to satisfy the
conditions of the suffrage as we have defined
them, comes out perhaps most clearly of all
when we consider that, in addition to depriving
some classes of the political influence correspond-
ing to their social position, and thus to a cer-
tain extent disfranchising them, it deprives
every individual, to whatever class he may
belong, of the whole direct political influence
which corresponds to the social influence which
be has acquired. A and B, at the age of twenty
one, we shall say, are both fairly represented
P2
228
by the manhood suffrage. At the age of forty,
by a life of virtuous effort , A has merited and
obtained the consideration of his fellow citi-
zens, and his case will be no unusual one if
his influence, whether for good or evil, has in-
creased ten-fold. In his person, consequently,
now centre the pouvoirs de fait to ten times the
extent to which they belonged to him at the
former period of his life. B, on the contrary,
differs from what he was only in having lost
the potentiality of influence which renders every
man important at the commencement of his
career. He has done and suffered nothing to for-
feit his public rights. He is neither a criminal,
a lunatic, nor a pauper, and the influences of a
human unit still are his. This however is but
one tenth of that which now belongs to A, and
a suffrage which establishes an equality be-
tween these two individuals consequently leaves
nine tenths of A's actual social influence unre-
presented! Can it be said of such a suffrage
that it accurately translates social into political
power? But, obvious as this view is, it requires
to be adopted with some qualifications. We
believe it to be quite possible that, for a limit-
ed time and in peculiar circumstances, an uni-
versal equal suffrage may approach, almost as
229
nearly as any other , to an expression of social
influences. For a time influences which are
excluded from direct representation may in-
directly receive their full share of political re-
cognition, and anti-democratic institutions, such
as hereditary monarchy and nobility, may exist
alongside of a suffrage which centres all direct
power in the democratic element. Such a state
of matters, however, existing as it does on suf-
ferance, will probably exist only till democracy
has learned to use the omnipotence which the
suffrage has given it ; and at all events we have
no other guarantee for its continuance than a
moderation on the part of democracy which
neither it nor any other dominant political ele-
ment has ever hitherto exhibited.
2. The second proposition which results
from our principles is likewise a negative one,
namely, that no suffrage can permanently repre-
sent the whole powers of the state which ex-
cludes any portion of the citizens from particip-
ation in direct political power. We have qua-
lified this proposition like the former one, because
here also we believe it to be possible that the
influences of a portion of the citizens may, for
a time^ be adequately represented by a suffrage
in which they do not directly participate. The
230
right of Conclamation, which our Saxon ances-
tors recognised, implies its converse, the right of
Contraclamation ; (in the language of modern
usage the right of Petitioning for and against)
a power which for a time may very well re-
present the whole social influences of a rude
and ignorant rabble. We have elsewhere shown
that to suppose the social condition of any
portion of the citizens of a state to continue to
be thus adequately represented is to set a
limit to social progress, in one direction at
least.
These two negative propositions mark off for
us a suffrage which is unequal on the one hand
and universal on the other; and such, if we
mistake not, as it conforms itself to the un-
varying laws of our nature so it is the only
suffrage which can permanently fulfil the con-
ditions involved in the idea of a perfect suffrage,
that, namely, of giving direct political expression
to the whole mass of existing social influences
in the completed state.
CHAP. XV.
FARTHER CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ULTIMATE
SUFFRAGE.
Within the limits which the inflexible laws
of our nature have thus assigned to the suffrage
in its ultimate form, a wide space is allowed
for its adaptation to the peculiar requirements
of different races of men , and to the necessities
which different historical antecedents have creat-
ed. If the suffrage is to express influences
which are unequal, it must be unequal, if
it is to express interests which are universal,
it must be universal: but the means which it
may adopt for measuring the inequality of in-
dividuals are prescribed by no such rigid rule,
and the value which is given, in each society,
to the human being, in virtue of his mere exist-
ence, will vary as does the actual- power which
belongs to him in that capacity. In a new,
poor, or rude society, and, above all, in a country
that is thinly peopled, it is obvious that thews
and sinews will go for more than in one that
is old, rich, refined, and populous.
232
Nor, in saying that the political expression
must be proportioned to the actual social force,
do we mean to say that its proportion must be
accurately observed in the case of each indi-
vidual. It is obvious that a system, which is
intended to deal with the circumstances of the
masses , must dispatch the claims of individuals
by a rule too simple to take cognisance of what
is peculiar in the position of any one , and that,
in order to avert that injustice on a great scale
which the tardy or inefficient working of the
political machine would occasion, injustice on
a small scale must be submitted to with pa-
tience. So long as the principle, according to
which public rights are dispensed, is such as
to forbid the absolute and permanent exclusion
of any social force whatever, the indirect poli-
tical influences on which the social influences
can at all times fall back will be a sufficient
remedy for all temporary and partial exclu-
sions which the circumstances of the state may
require. If the principle of the constitution be
maintained inviolate, it will come to the aid of
the excluded, long before their exclusion is
felt in the form of a tyranny of the enfran-
chised.
But, though we are thus furnished with a
233
sufficient answer to those who might urge us
to rush forward to the realisation of a suffrage
theoretically perfect, we are supplied with no
apology for declining to develope it, gradually
and safely, in accordance with the idea which
our own history, during ages, has spontaneously
worked out. If an universal recognition of po-
litical rights was involved in the theory of our
constitution as it was understood by our an-
cestors, and if our practice during "six cen-
turies' 7 has been, often unconsciously, in ac-
cordance with this theory, we should assume
the attitude, not of conservators but of inno-
vators, if in order to preserve transitory anfl.
unfruitful consequences we abandoned an abid-
ing and generative principle. If the funda-
mental law has been progress he who counsels
a stationary policy is a radical i. e. one who
strikes at the root. But again, if by progress-
ing in the direction of what hitherto has been
regarded as liberty, we are in danger of
strengthening one element of the constitution,
to the extent of preventing the others from
exerting the political power which has hitherto
belonged to them, and which in every or-
ganised society must belong to them, we must
find a remedy in giving to these latter also a
234
more direct action. In one word, if the direct
power of the democratic element must be in-
creased by an indefinite extension of the suf-
frage, then the balance of the powers which
go to make up the constitutional state can
be preserved only by recognising more fully,
through means of the suffrage also, the other
social influences.
And now, that we have arrived at the
more special part of our subject we must
again repeat our opposition to the views
of those who would deter us from recognis-
ing acquired, as well as congenital influences,
and from thus representing the organic na-
ture of our society, by the fear that, in or-
der to do so, we should require the aid of a
more refined and complicated political machine
than that which our ancestors employed. We
cannot but regard the extent to which this fear
already prevails, in this country, as a rather
unusually conspicuous instance of the effect of
that onesidedness of view which at all times
distorts the judgements of the majority of men.
We have got possession of the unquestionable
truth that there is danger in complicating the
political machine, and we henceforth become
possessed by the idea that this is the only di-
235
rection from which danger is to be apprehended
from its imperfections. We forget that, as ci-
vilization advances, the relations of mankind
necessarily increase in complication, and that
every institution which is to continue to deal
with these relations must adapt itself to their
character. A system of jurisprudence which
satisfies the requirements of a rude and simple
people, though it may contain the general
principles which are suited to their character
through all the future stages of their progress,
can never meet the more special circumstances
which arise when the same people have be-
come refined and artificial ; and what is true
of the relations of the citizens to each other,
is true also of their relations to the state;
with this difference that public Law, at all
times, from its very nature, must possess a
simplicity which, in private law, is impossible.
But even though necessity did not force upon
us the attempt so to refine the political ma-
chine as to increase the accuracy of its work-
ing, it is difficult to see what answer we should
continue to give to those who should call upon
us to make it in the name of social progress.
Whilst every other institution, by gathering the
fruits of experience, is perfected in its details,
236
is that greatest of all institutions, through which
the sovereignty of the state expresses itself, to
undergo no other modification than the most
hazardous one of having the sphere of its ope-
rations indefinitely extended? If the classes
or individuals whose influences are excluded
should come to us, and, on the ground that by
this very extension of the suffrage all indirect
means of making their social value politically avail-
able are now denied to them, ask us to admit
them to a direct participation in political rights,
and if our answer were simply, the suffrage
has hitherto taken no cognisance of the in-
fluences in virtue of which you claim, and,
though we counsel its extension, we never can
countenance what you call its development,
would they not have good cause to bring
against us the reproach which, three hundred
years ago, Sir Thomas More put into the mouth
of his interlocutor. "They would set up their
rest on such an author as a sufficient confuta-
tion of all that could be said, as if this were
a great mischief, that any should be found
wiser than his ancestors; but, though they
willingly let go all the good things that were
among those of former ages, yet, if better
things are proposed, they cover themselves
237
obstinately with this excuse of reference to
past times. I have met with these proud,
morose, and absurd judgements of things in
many places, particularly once in England."
CHAP. XVI.
A GRADUATED PROPERTY SUFFRAGE CONSIDERED.
Every one knows that the history of anti-
quity has preserved to us, two* memorable in-
* It must be a subject of abiding regret to specula-
tive politicians that Dion failed to realize under the
younger Dionysius , or to take advantage of the short
opportunity which his own success at Syracuse afforded
him for realizing the political schemes of Plato. Had
he done so we schould probably have had to record a
third instance of a polity founded on a gratuated suf-
frage; and this too a polity established in accordance
with theory, and thus contrasting with the others which
sprang out of existing exigencies. It must be admitted,
however , that the small measure of prudence which
Dion and his master exhibited in the measures by which
they sought to carry out their scheme, gave no great
promise of practical wisdom in the scheme itself.
238
stances of what Aristotle called a u timocracy",
or government according to wealth. In the two
states in which civilization reached to the great-
est height which it ever attained in heathen
times, this form of government was adopted
at an early period, and it was under the in-
stitutions of which it was the groundwork that
they grew great. We refer, of course, to the
constitution of Solon at Athens, and that which,
at Kome was attributed to Servius Tullius.
They resembled each other in as much as in
both the amount of property possessed by the
citizen was made the measure of his political
influence, but they differed very essentially in
the means by which this was effected. Solon's
timocratic classification had reference to eli-
gibility for the higher offices of the state, not
to the right of voting in the assembly of the
people. In the ecclesia all the citizens voted
equally, either by a show of hands or by
ballot, and the purely democratic character of
the assembled was modified, not by its own
constitution, but by its relation to the fiovkri,
on the one hand, and to the court of the vopo-
&EXKI, on the other. By the Servian constitu-
tion, the timocratic principle was carried farther,
and regulated not eligibility only, but also the
239
power of electing, the value of the vote of a
citizen in the comitia centuriata being depend-
ent on the class* in which he voted, and hi&
class being determined by the amount of his
property. In alluding to these remarkable in-
stances of the successful application, to the
actual government of states, of the timocratic
principle in a more developed form than the
extremely rude and elementary one in which
it forms the basis of our own political system,
it must not be supposed that our object is to
recommend the adoption in this country of
a minutely graduated property suffrage. We
must now, as when- arguing formerly, that r
as a condition of its continued efficiency, the
suffrage must come to partake of the greater
refinement which, as civilization advances,
every other institution of the state acquires,.
be understood simply as urging the practi-
cability of recognising politically that social
inequality which actually exists among men.
* Dahlmann has justly remarked (Politik, p. 37.) that
the division of the centuries into seniores and juniores
introduced another very important counterbalancing ele-
ment to the power of mere numbers, in as much as the
absolute number of men above 45 years of age must
have been much smaller than that of those under it.
240
In what manner this is to be done, in each
particular state, must depend on the peculiar
circumstances of that state itself. If, in the
existing institutions of this country, property
already receives a political expression adequate
to its social value, then, according to the prin-
ciples which we formerly laid down, however
rude may be the machinery by which this
is accomplished, it is not in farther enfranchis-
ing it that we are to seek for a counterpoise to
any excess of power which may have fallen to
the share of any of the other social influences.
An attempt to restore the balance by overloading
what might be regarded as the opposite element
could only have the effect of exciting a cry of
injustice, which must inevitably shake the po-
litical security of the element thus artificially
favored. Now in addition to the consideration
that, of all kinds of social influence, that which
springs from wealth most surely and easily
makes its own way to political power*, we
must bear in mind that in this country there
* "I can scarcely conceive any laws or institutions
which would much diminish the influence of well spent
wealth, whether honourably inherited, or honestly earned."
Sir James Mackintosh's speech on the Reform Bill. Han-
sard, Third series. Vol. IV. p. 690.
241
is an institution, the very end and object of
which is to give political expression to the
social influence of great possessions. It is true
that the Peerage does not in theory adopt the
timocratic principle in the selection of those
who are to share its privileges, but it is no
less true that it does so practically to the
extent of giving to the whole of the very
wealthy class, in this country, either, directly
by means of their own votes, or indirectly by
means of the votes of a body of persons, all
of whom belong to their class, a very large
share of political power. Nor does it greatly
modify the timocratic character of the Peerage
that it recognises wealth only when united with
nobility, because with us nobility is at all
times open to wealth so soon as its possessor
shall have proved himself equal to any of the
higher duties of citizenship. "Nobility," says
Aristotle, "is ancient wealth and virtue''. With
us the peerage is the form in which the state
recognises their existence, and, being the his-
torical, it is therefore the safest manner of
applying the timocratic principle to the cir-
cumstances of the wealthiest class of English-
men. But there is another channel through
which the timocratic principle acts indirectly,
242
with no small efficiency in this country at
present. Though the amount of income which
is required for eligibility to the House of Com-
mons, besides being peculiar to England, is
not of itself sufficient to give to that body the
character of one chosen on timocratic princi-
ples , still as society is constituted in this coun-
try at present such practically is the case. We
have already remarked* that it is to the fact
that, without being possessed of wealth to a con-
siderable extent no one can undertake the duties
of a member of the House of Commons that that
assembly is indebted for the aristocratic character
which belongs to it, and which, notwithstanding
the preponderance of the democratic element
among the electors, renders it when once elected
positively a check on democracy. But we have
also seen that this safeguard is one which a single
measure already repeatedly called for by a cer-
tain party** in the state, and in favour of which
historical precedent and the custom of many
neighbouring states might -be cited, would at
once sweep away. Should members of parlia-
ment ever be paid for their services, though
* V. Cap. XII.
** Payment of members is one of the "Points of the
people's Charter."
243
the sum allowed them were barely sufficient
to procure the decencies of life to a person of
the middle class in London, we hesitate not
to say that, with the hopes which parliament
otherwise holds out, demagogy would become
a flourishing trade in six months, and on the next
occasion of a general election democracy would
assert its omnipotence. But, as the wealth-
iest class finds political expression by means
of the preponderance which law and custom
thus gives to it in the legislature, so does more ;
moderate wealth in some degree by means of a
suffrage which, in an extremely rude and ge-
neral way, still recognises the timocratic prin-
ciple as its basis. It is obvious however that
such would no longer be the case were the
suffrage to be made at once uniform and uni-
versal. So long as the institutions of the
state continued on their present footing the
influence of the wealthiest class would remain,
but the middle class would at once lose such
vantage ground as it at present possesses.
As the suffrage is, it still excludes from
direct participation in political power a vast
majority of the adult male population of Eng-
land, and if property has, as the democratic
character of our present legislation seems to
Q2
244
indicate, scarcely even now the amount of po-
litical power which corresponds to its social
influence, it is very clear that on a system
which excludes the timocratic principle alto-
gether it must to a large extent be disfran-
chised. Should any very extensive addition
be again made to the franchise it will there-
fore be necessary, if property as an existing
social influence (pouvoir de fait) is to continue
to be represented, that some means be adopted
by which either the present constituencies may
retain something like the influence which now
belongs to them, or additional power be thrown
into the hands of others more accurately corres-
ponding to the moderately wealthy class in
the community. Such a result might possibly
be brought about by giving a double vote to
all who pay income-tax, or by some equally
simple expedient.
CHAP. XVII.
OTHER METHODS OF RECOGNISING SOCIAL
INEQUALITY.
But as it is not in wealth alone that men
are unequal, so it is not by the application of
the t timocratic principle alone that their ine-
quality may be politically recognised.
It is true that, if one single measure of so-
cial importance is to be selected, much may
be said in favour of wealth. If not absolutely
the only one which can be applied to the whole
community, it is the one which can be applied
with the greatest facility, and is therefore that
upon which, even where others are adopted,
every political system which, aims at taking
adequate cognisance of inequality must rest as
a groundwork. Wealth has farther the advan-
tage of being an indirect measure of the ex-
tent of citizen qualities, which, in the indivi-
dual case, are not necessarily united with it,
but which, in the general case, can exist only
under conditions which it supplies. It affords.
/X 246
a rude means of estimating such intelligence
as arises from instruction, and such patriotism
as is based on the fear of change.*
If the political machine is to be developed
with an advancing civilization, however, it is
not difficult to imagine means by which, though
still in a very general manner, it should take
cognisance directly of such citizen qualities as,
apart altogether from their union with wealth,
are actual social powers. The enfranchisement
of graduates of the English Universities is a
recognition, already ancient**, of a source of
inequality altogether different from wealth, and
it would be no difficult matter to extend it to
members of all the learned professions, and to
* Has an established government , in church or state,
any better ally than the selfinterestedness of mankind?
Hallam Constit. History, III. 245.
** The spiritual element in the community has never
succeeded in obtaining any equivalent for the political loss
which it sustained at the Reformation. Speaking of the
constitution of the Upper House, previous to the disso-
lution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII., Mr. Hallam
says: "Though the number of abbots and priors to whom
writs of summons were directed varied considerably in
different parliaments, they always, joined to the twenty-
one bishops, preponderated over the temporal Peers". Con-
stitutional History, Vol. I. p. 73. See also Vol. III. p. 34.
247
all persons who had risen to a certain rank in
the public service. It is hard to see why a
man should not have a vote in consequence of
his having sat in Parliament, governed a pro-
vince, or commanded a regiment or a man-of-
war, as well as in virtue of his being the pos-
sessor of a hovel worth ten pounds a year. Even
on the ground of convenience, we can see little
that could be said against such a proposal ; be-
cause such facts as those that we have men-
tioned, in the history of a man's life, are at
least as easily ascertained as his means, and
neither the system of registration nor of vot-
ing need be greatly complicated by an arrange-
ment which would give him the same advan-
tage from them politically which socially they
invariably confer. That such an arrangement
is not altogether alien either to English insti-
tutions, or to the existing current of public
opinion, we infer from the fact that it has
been adopted by two of the most progressive
of our colonies, has received the sanction of
the imperial legislature, and is now in actual
operation.
"The qualifications for Electors for the Le-
gislative Council", (the Upper House) of Victo-
ria, "are as follows: all persons of full age,
248
natural born, or naturalised subjects , having
a freehold estate of L 1000 value, or L 100
per annum , or being leaseholder at L 100 per
annum for five years , or being graduates of any
University in the British dominions, or barristers
or solicitors of the supreme court of Victoria "
(why not of the supreme courts of Great-Bri-
tain?) u or Medical qualified practitioners , or offi-
cers in Her Majesty's sea or land forces, hav-
ing paid rates and taxes, to which they are
liable, are entitled to vote for members of the
Legislative Council." The suffrage for the
Legislative Assembly (the Nether House), is
based on property alone, and is of course lower
than that for the Council*.
In Van Dieman's Land, (which, by some un-
accountable freak of the Colonial Office, has, of
late years, come to be called Tasmania), the
Legislative Council consists of fifteen members,
aged thirty, natural born or naturalised sub-
jects of Her Majesty, elected by the inhabi-
tants twelve months resident within the district
for which they claim to vote, under any one
of the following qualifications : namely, as free-
holders of L 50 per annum, graduates of Bri-
* Mills's Colonial Constitutions, p. 310.
249
tish Universities, barristers, solicitors, medical
practitioners, ministers of religion, military or
naval officers. The Second Chamber, or
House of Assembly consists of thirty members,
of full age, &c.; and all the inhabitants of full
age are entitled to vote who are freeholders
to the value of L 1 00 , or leaseholders for
three years, at L 10, or who are possessed of
any of the above named qualifications of electors
for the Legislative Council*.
The circumstance that these most wise regula-
tions are mentioned by a writer so intelligent
as Mr. Mills as simple facts ; without one
word to indicate his sense of the importance of
the principle which they involve, shews to how
great an extent, in all probability, they have
been the result of that unconscious tendency in
the right direction which so often helps our
countrymen along at the present time, rather
than of that conscious political foresight which
our ancestors knew by the name of "prudence/"
A suffrage minutely graduated to intelli-
gence would no doubt have all the practical
disadvantages of one minutely graduated to
wealth 5 and, in as much as it would require
* Mills's Colonial Constitutions p. 327.
250
the establishment of one uniform system of
national education, would be besides at va-
riance with those ideas of individual and fa-
mily freedom from government interference
which are so deeply rooted in English character,
and in accordance with which all our institu-
tions have grown up. The same objections
however by no means apply to a suffrage
which should take cognisance only of those
distinctions as regards the intelligence of
classes (e. g. between handworkers and head-
workers) which exist in all civilized societies,
and which in our own have been socially re-
cognised for ages. To enfranchise the classes
we have mentioned , as such, that is, to give
them votes independently of and in addition to
those which, in the general case, they would
hold in virtue of their property, would require
no new state - machinery, no interference with
the existing principle of our educational insti-
tutions, whilst it would go so far at least to-
wards the attainment of the object of which
we are in search, viz. security from the con-
sequences of an inevitable extension of politi-
cal privileges.
It is besides worthy of consideration that,
though the social advantages on which such a
251
suffrage would be based might not in reality
be more attainable to the mere man than the
wealth which , if the timocratic principle were
adhered to, would raise him to the same degree
of influence, they differ from it in this respect
that their claim to preference is far more rea-
dily and cheerfully conceded. Where they have
been the result of accident or favor, and, even
where they have been directly purchased*,
there is always the feeling that they do neverthe-
less in point of fact confer a social importance
which could not have belonged to the individual
without them, in virtue of the wealth or favor
of which they are the representatives. They
differ from wealth something in the same way
in which coined money differs from bullion.
They are the stamp by which society has al-
ready acknowledged the value which it attaches
to their possessors, and by representing them
directly you thus represent only influences
which have already conquered for themselves
the character of actual powers.
Another very great advantage which such
* Suppose a man has spent L 7 or 8,000 in purchasing
the Colonelcy of a Regiment, he is a power in the state
to a much greater extent than if he had purchased into
the Funds or Railways to the same amount.
252
means of recognising inequality possess , as
compared with the graduated property suffrage,
at least for the present, is that they might
be introduced gradually , and consequently
without any great risk of exciting violent oppo-
sition on the part of the democratic element.
Were a graduated property suffrage proposed,
there can, we fear, be little doubt that the
jealousy of the advocates of equality would be
roused , that a cry would be raised that the
people (which in the mouths of such persons
means the mob) were being defrauded of their
rights, and we should find ourselves at once
in presence of the final struggle between an
equal and an unequal universal suffrage. Now
were such a struggle to come upon us without
preparation , even at the stage to which we
are already advanced on the road to demo-
cracy, the result would scarcely be doubtful,
and were it to come after another extension
of the suffrage in the democratic sense, it is
still more clear that the issue must be unfa-
vorable to social stability. The true policy of
all who hold what we regard as true conserva-
tive views thus must be , not to stand by
inactive, or to confine their action to directly
opposing the current of events, but to assume
253
the aggressive whilst it may be yet time, and
to endeavour, in the absence of political excite-
ment, to prepare for meeting the final trial
which sooner or later they must encounter.
If the classes we have mentioned were to vote
apart , as the different classes do under the
new Prussian constitution, so that their senti-
ments, as distinguished from those of the com-
munity might be known ; it is certain that a
weight would belong to their suffrages, beyond
that of the mere number, or direct political
weight, of their votes, and that thus they might
exercise a very powerful influence in rendering
a wider recognition of social inequality possible
when the time for widening the political circle
did ultimately arrive*. Such a line of policy,
we are farther persuaded , would rally round
the conservative banner, many whose confi-
dence has been alienated by the shiftless cha-
racter of those who profess to bear it , and
* Since these sentences were written we have had the
gratification of observing that the sentiments which they
express have occasionally found their way to the public,
not only in such works as M. Harris's pamphlet on the
"True theory of representation in a state", but even in
the columns of "the Times."
254
whose common sense has been outraged by
the impossible task of "obstruction'', which
they have proposed for their party.
CHAP. XVIII.
BY WHAT MEANS MAY THE PUBLIC SPIRIT BE
INFLUENCED AND DIRECTED ?
But what shall we answer if to all proposals
to develope our political system, either by a more
refined application of the timocratic principle
on which our present representation is based,
or by the introduction of the direct representa-
tion of intelligence or virtue, it be objected
that, according to the view which we ourselves
have taken of the present course of social
progress, the only influences which claim an
increased recognition are those which are
purely democratic. The counterbalancing forces
whether of wealth or intelligence, on our own
principles, can receive from the suffrage nothing
more than a political recognition of their actual
255
social weight, and it follows that, if this weight,
relatively to that which belongs to the masses
on the ground of mere existence, has dimi-
nished, by no legitimate contrivance can even
its present political importance be preserved
to it.
To meet this view of the facts we fall
back on a principle stated in the intro-
ductory chapter in which we treated of the
relation between legislation and the spirit of
the people, viz., that though legislation is bound
irrevocably to the spirit of the people, as it
exists, this spirit, by all who are not political
fatalists, must he regarded as open to be acted
upon and modified, to an unlimited extent, by
those influences which at all times are in the
hands of the more enlightened and influential
portion of the community, both as individuals
and as bodies. This brings us to a conside-
ration of the guiding and modifying influen-
ces which may be brought to bear on the spi-
rit of the people and on the existing tendencies
of society. \h
From the sovereign character wich we have
ascribed to the public spirit, it is obvious that
the first and most general characteristic of
these influences is that they must address them-
256
selves exclusively to the convictions of the
community, and that they must in no case
attempt to constrain its will by appealing to
its hopes or its fears. If it is of the essence
of a free state that the general will shall he
sovereign, it is also of the essence i of a so-
vereign will that it shall be incapable of being-
bribed or frightened; and, if this independence
of the national will is characteristic of free
states generally, it is so specially of our own,
where the executive department of government
is in practice entirely dependent on the legis-
lative and where there is consequently, as
opposed to the general will, absolutely no
executive at all.
We are thus relieved at the very outset
from the necessity of discussing the relative
-value of moral and physical force. In dealing
with the general will we are dealing wdtli an
absolute despot, but with a despot whom every
member of the community is entitled to ap-
proach with argument and remonstrance, and
the formation of whose character, moral and
intellectual , depends , in each generation , on
the activity of a much smaller number of in-
dividuals than is perhaps generally imagined.
257
Thucydides said of the Athenian state, in
the d'ays of Pericles, that, though nominally it
was a democracy, it was in reality a govern-
ment administered by the first man. According
to our view he would have uttered no paradox
if he had said that notwithstanding this cir-
cumstance it was still a democracy, not in
name, but in fact; nay more, that, whilst that
man remained, it was a democracy in the most
favorable circumstances. If we suppose Peri-
cles to have made use of no other means for
gaming the ascendancy which he possessed
than the speeches which the historian has put
into his mouth, it is obvious that he acknow-
ledged the sovereignty of the general will by
the very means which he adopted to render it
consistent with his own. The influence which
he exercised was legitimate, not on the mo-
narchical , but on the republican theory of the
state. It was not to him but to the reason
that spoke by his mouth that he urged obe-
dience ; it was not his will that was to be
sovereign, but the general will enlightened, it
might be, formed, by his understanding. On
this hypothesis he arrogated to himself none
of the prerogatives which Aristotle, in one of
the most beautiful chapters of his work, has
258
conceded to the born king*. It is extremely
possible that Aristotle had the Olympian 'him-
self in his eye when he said that to exercise
authority over such a one would be almost
the same as to attempt to command Jupiter,
or to take part in his power. Still, whatever
the effect may have been, so long as Pericles
confined himself to the art of persuasion, how-
ever great may have been the measure in
which he possessed it, and counselled nothing
which he did not conscientiously believe to be
for the common weal, he did only what, in
every free state, every citizen is not only en-
titled, but called upon to do.
Now, though the appearance of such a leader
as Pericles does not occur in every generation,
there probably never was a generation of civi-
lized men, however free might be their insti-
tutions, to which a body of persons, few in
comparison with the whole community, did not
fill the place which he did to the Athenians
at the commencement of the Peloponnesian
war. For the most part , if any particular
period of history be mentioned , we can tell
the names, and count the numbers, of those
* Politic. Lib. III. Cap. 8.
259
who, in any individual state, most prominently
and directly influenced the current of public
thought and action. True it is that to those
of whom history takes note, there would fall
to be added,- in order to sum up the leaders
of a whole generation, a still greater number
of persons whose activity was not less import-
ant or influential, but who, partly from acci-
dent and partly from choice, were covered by
a privacy which history endeavours to pene-
trate in vain. In every age there have doubt-
less been those to whom the most eminent
public characters have stood absolutely in the
subordinate relation which Aaron occupied to
Moses*, gifted and influential men and women,
of whom their .own generation knew little, and
posterity knows nothing. Still, if both classes
were reckoned together, the tale would be incon-
siderable**, not only as compared with the whole
community, but with those who record their
names in polling -books, or even who sit as
members of the legislature. Nevertheless it is
with this class of persons (who, notwithstand-
* Exodus V. 16. "He shall be to thee instead of a
mouth, and thou shalt be to him instead of God."
** See Coleridge's Statesman's Manual, p. 214. 5,
Pickering's edition.
R2
260
ing their limited numbers, as little possess ne-
cessarily the character of an oligarchy as Peri-
cles did that of a monarch) that not the gui-
dance alone, but, what is far more important,
the formation of the public spirit of the nation
rests; and if, as history seems to tell us, con-
scious effort be necessary in order that this
spirit may be impelled in a direction that is
safe, or diverted from a course that is danger-
ous, it is by their activity, and not by any
restraining force in the mere machinery of go-
vernment, that the result must be brought
about. The most urgent requirement of every
community, therefore, for its own sake, and
apart from all wider questions of the interests
of the human race and of civilization at large,
is, that those who exercise, and, whilst human
nature remains unchanged must continue to
exercise , this practical imperium in imperio,
shall be as enlightened, as conscientious, and as
energetic as is consistent with the frailty of
man; and that, being such, they shall be
placed in the most favorable positions and fur-
nished with the most efficient means for dis-
charging their social function.
CHAP. XIX.
OF THE LEADERS OF THOUGHT, SCIENTIFIC ANI>
POPULAR.
We have said that over the appearance of
such political leaders as Pericles mankind can
exercise no more controul than over that of
any other man of extraordinary gifts. Homer
or Socrates were not less within the reach of
systems of national education. As regards
important individual characters of a less pro-
minent description, the same, though less ob-
viously and strikingly, is scarcely less literally
the fact. Their numbers , their endowments,
and to a great extent also the intensity of
their action in each individual people and
generation, depend as little on human volition,
or human exertions, as do the sunshine or the
shower. The rise of every creative, or even
powerfully and originally adaptive mind, among
a people, if not a special in the sense of an
exceptional, is still so manifest an interference
of providence on their behalf, that it has often.
262
seemed to us to be a form , of blessing for
which the prayers of the Christian Church
might not unbecomingly be offered up.
But are we hence to infer that we can do
nothing for our own guidance by the ordinary
means which God has put at the command of
ordinary men in ordinary circumstances ; and
that we are bound , or entitled , to leave the
course of events to be ordered by accident,
or manifest folly, till men of genius are rained
down upon us, like manna on the Israelites?
Such we believe to be very far from our duty.
Though we cannot call forth men of this class,
and perhaps cannot even do so much as we
are apt to imagine towards their individual
training when we have got them, we can sup-
ply the conditions of their working, we can
train and form their instruments. Pericles could
have been Pericles only in Athens; and in a
tribe of barbarians he would perhaps have
been inferior to many a man who was simply
three inches taller or three stones heavier than
himself. Nor was such general cultivation as
enabled his auditors to attach meaning to his
words sufficient to ensure his influence on the
public spirit. The prevalence of his opinions
depended far more on the interpreters who
263
stood between him and the general under-
standing of his age, than on his own personal
contact with it. Had he been the sole disciple
of Anaxagoras, or the solitary instance of an
Athenian who made music a pretext for stu-
dying politics under Damon, he and his mas-
ters would have stood in isolated grandeur,
inoperative on the age in which they lived,
however important might have been their in-
fluence on civilization at large, and on men
in other stages of developement. As it was,
their strength consisted in their being sur-
rounded on all sides by a class of persons
whom kindred modes of thinking and common
culture had made not ready recipients alone,
but precise systematisers and clear and pos-
sibly eloquent expositors of what the greater
gifts of those whom nature had more rarely
endowed enabled them to originate; and this
class of persons it is fortunately in the power
of every civilized state to call into existence.
The office which we here contemplate for
the leaders of thought is very closely analogous
to that which Plato assigned to the (pvAa%,
which Coleridge ascribed to the "Lay Pastor",
and of which Fichte treated in his admirable
lectures on the "Nature of the Scholar; " and as it
264
is to persons holding this position, by what-
ever name we may choose to call them, that
in our opinion the state must look as the
instruments by which alone the public spirit
can be consciously and designedly modified, we
shall endeavour very briefly to trace the out-
line of their function, more especially in its
relation to political progress.
There are two capacities, in one or other,
but rarely in both, of which, such individuals
are in a condition to be serviceable to the
general community. If they are genuine spe-
cimens of the class at all, they are fitted by
nature, and by that last and best part of edu-
cation , that self education which invariably
takes its colour from nature, to play the part
either of scientific or of popular leaders of
thought, in those directions which thought has
already received from the more suggestive and
progressive spirits either of the present or of
former times, or it may be from those turns
of external events which sometimes assume the
character almost of a revelation. In neither
case is the exercise of those inventive facul-
ties of which nature is so chary requisite to
the most efficient discharge of their duties;
and when these forces are at work the appro-
265
priate attitude of both of the classes of per-
sons whom we have mentioned will be that
of the Commons at the Council of Toledo, "to
see, to hear and to praise God". But, humble
though it may seem in such a contrast, the
office of the leaders of existing thought is
nevertheless the most important and most dig-
nified which ordinary men can exercise to-
wards their fellow men.
We shall speak first of the scientific leader
of thought, not in consequence of the preemi-
nent importance of his office , but because he
occupies, as it were, a middle position between
the inventor and the expositor. The inventive
mincl is rarely scientific, and its results are
consequently given to the world for the most
part in a form which sacrifices accuracy and
completeness to depth and originality. Work-
ing by means rather of the reason than the
understanding, it is besides almost necessarily
uncritical, and its results consequently for the
most part are a mixture of truth and error.
If the process has been genuine, the out-come
will be not only truth but new truth; gold
which no human eye has seen will be unmis-
takeably present, but gold in combination
with much base alloy. To suppose the case
266
otherwise would be to attribute to the man of
inventive mind the character of a very prophet,
an error which, not without detriment , has
been committed rather too frequently of late.
Now here the scientific leader of thought conies
into play. His office is to test, and verify or
refute, whatever pretended result may be pre-
sented to him, and this not only by the ab-
stract processes of the understanding, but by
actual comparison with the results of previous
experience or of preceding thought. He must
be conversant not alone with the occurrences
which history has transmitted, but with the
theories and principles in which she is not
less rich. In one word he must be a man of
learning in the highest and manliest sense, not
a pedantic word-critic, or an indiscriminate
searcher for the curious (though such persons
are not without their uses), but one who can
see in words the vehicles of thought and dis-
tinguish between what is novel in form and
what is new in substance.
From what we have said it is clear that the
scientific leader of thought will by no means
contribute to popularise the materials on which
he works ; on the contrary his labours will very
often have an opposite tendency. These ma-
267
terials, as they come from the mind of the dis-
coverer, often possess elements of popularity
of which it will be his duty to strip them;
they partake, for example, of the colouring of
that imaginative faculty which almost invaria-
bly forms a large ingredient in the composition
of an original mind, and which more than any
other quality commends itself to the common
human heart, or they are mingled with that
element of falsehood which forms the staple
of all spontaneous human thinking and conse-
quently presents no element of strangeness to
the common mind. From both of these in-
gredients it will manifestly be the first duty
of the scientific labourer to free the subject
with which he deals. The results which he
gives forth will be far more clear, far more
precise, and consequently far safer for appli-
cation than those of the discoverer, but on this
very account they will be far less attractive.
The subject, be it what it may, when thus
arrived at the stage at which it may be popu-
larised with safety and advantage, will be pre-
cisely at the stage at which it is least popular,
and the person who has carried it through this
indispensable ordeal will be precisely the least
popular individual of all who have had to do
268
with it from its first germination as a theory
till its final application to life and practice.
For these reasons, then, it is obvious that, if
the scientific labourer is to devote himself to
our service, to him above all is it necessary
that the helping hand of state endowment, or
of some provision which is independent of the
immediate popular will, should be held out. His
labours, in order to be unfettered must be ir-
respective of popular prejudices; in order to
be fruitful and trustworthy they must be pro-
secuted in that tranquillity which freedom from
external anxiety alone can secure. It is in the
nature of things impossible that these condi-
tions can be supplied by popular sympathy,
however unquestionable or even unquestioned
may be the obligation under which the scien-
tific labourer lays his fellow men; and hence
the necessity that every community which aims
at combining progress with safety should shut
the door against its own caprices by placing
him beyond the reach either of its admiration,
its antipathy, or its indifference.
Next in the order of their labours, though
scarcely second in importance, at least for po-
litical purposes, comes the popular leader of
thought. His office is to present to the gene-
269
ral understanding, in a form at least partially
consistent with existing modes of thought,
truths which, where error has been prevalent on
the subject to which they relate, must necessa-
rily be strange; and to modify views which a
rigorous logic has almost necessarily presented
in a form too undiluted for practical purposes,
by bringing them in contact with existing re-
lations. The efficiency with which his task is
performed will of course depend, on the one
hand, on the completeness with which he him-
self grasps the new idea , and, on the other, on
the clearness and fulness of his appreciation
of the circumstances in which it is called into
action.
But though he follows in the track of the
scientific labourer, and profits by what he has
accomplished, it must not be supposed that the
duties of the popular leader, even in their poli-
tical bearings are confined to the exposition,
adaptation, and inculcation of such truths or
principles as his contemporaries have discovered
or elaborated. His task is the same in kind,
and if possible more important , as regards the
great leading human truths which inventive
genius or scientific labour has thought out in
former times, or which the rude teaching of
270
experience has forced upon them. To him, not
less than to others, the state confides the great
book of the past, and entrusts the office of
keeping the attention of living men fixed on the
wisdom which it reveals. The present purport
of this teaching he will of course expound ac-
cording to the measure of insight which has
been given to the generation to which he be-
longs. If he outstrips the thinking of his time
he throws aside the character which we assign
to him here, and claims a higher one; if he
falls behind the foremost rank of his contem-
poraries, he relinquishes his claim to be re-
garded as a leader altogether.
In speaking of the man of inventive mind
we said that he commonly is genial, and that
his character commends itself to the popular
heart by wide human sympathy. We believe
the fact to be as we have stated it because
his nature has a character of completeness
which belongs to no other. Still when viewed
as a discoverer simply this is an accident.
As regards the populariser, again, these qua-
lities belong to the essentials of his character.
Without geniality he cannot discharge his
function at all; and it is highly desirable that
he should possess other external qualities the
271
presence or absence of which as regards the
other labourers in the field of progress is
matter of comparative indifference. In conse-
quence of the presence of these qualities, and
the absence of others which in the scientific
labourer particularly have so often the effect
of scaring and alienating the generality of men,
the popular leader will stand least of all in
need of support from sources independent of
immediate sympathy. But then, precisely as
the subject which he treats rises in importance,
and the style of his exposition assumes that
scientific accuracy which, though not its pri-
mary object, is indispensable to its usefulness,
does his claim for such support also emerge.
If he is to do anything for progress in the abs-
truser departments of human effort, he must
go beyond a clever dressing up of opinions
which have already taken hold of the public
mind; and the moment he does so he comes
in contact with the very dangers which we
have seen to beset his fellow workers.
But it may be said that persons holding
these various characters, and discharging these
various functions, will spontaneously arise in
every generation of civilized men; the ne-
cessity which is felt for their services will call
272
them forth, the demand, which is a conse-
quence of civilization, will create the supply,
and we need therefore occupy ourselves with
the matter no farther than thankfully to re-
flect that we have such a guarantee as their
services afford, for the healthy progress of the
public spirit. By many the freedom and activ-
ity of the press in all directions in this coun-
try will be taken as a decisive proof of the
correctness of this view and consequently as
an argument for inactivity. A very little
reflection however will show that the view it-
self involves a begging of the whole question
which has been at issue in these discussions.
To suppose that the public spirit will thus
spontaneously provide for its own guidance, is
neither more nor less than to suppose that it
requires no guidance at all, and consequently
will continue to generate healthy political in-
stitutions ; a supposition which we have en-
deavoured to show is inconsistent with the
teaching of history, and in so far as we can
judge, with existing social tendencies. That a
class of persons ostensibly discharging the func-
tions which we have mentioned will spontan-
eously arise is unquestionable; but it is not
less certain that, so long as they are the spon-
273
taneous products of the general spirit , they will
be its followers, not its guides. They will not
be exponents of the views of the leading spi-
rits of this or of former ages, but stirring and
loquacious advocates of prevalent opinions..
Here then is the point at which interposition
on the part of the state, i. e. conscious politi-
cal action on the part of those who see reason
to distrust the workings of an unguided public
spirit, is called for. We have shown that it
is impossible to exclude its influence or modify
its character by means of a representative sys-
tem, the very name of which shows that its
object is to give political expression to this
spirit as it exists. No such impossibility how-
ever stands in the way of setting apart a por-
tion of the middle class for occupations and
duties the effect of which will be to prevent
the growth of evils with which when matured
we cannot cope.
As regards the endowment of a learned class
the public spirit is, 110 doubt, as omnipotent
as it is with reference to any other measure,
and if we once allow it to go so far in the op-
posite direction, in which it is at present tend-
ing, as to pronounce against such endowment,
it will then be as impossible to carry it, as
274
directly to resist the inroads of democracy.
Such however is by no means the present state
of matters. We believe that the public spirit
would not only tolerate, but would gladly
acquiesce in the propriety of making provision
for the permanent existence of a class whose
office should be to remind it of its truest in-
terests, not less by admonition and warning
than by approval and encouragement. If we
are right in our assertion that a class of con-
scious labourers is required to watch over the
development of the public spirit, it is scarcely
consistent with the character of our age, cer-
tainly distinguished for a wide diffusion of ge-
neral intelligence, to suppose that it will refuse
to them the support which it bestows on those
who protect it from external injury or from
internal disorder. The reality of his function
once recognised and acknowledged, the leader
of thought immediately becomes, to all intelli-
gent and prudent men, an object of equal so-
licitude with the soldier, the sailor, or the ma-
gistrate.
Nor need it be objected that in many coun-
tries a learned class, numerous and important,
has existed, whilst the social and political be-
nefits which we anticipate from its interposition
275
have not been realized. Wherever such a class
has existed hitherto, it has invariably been so
far removed from the ordinary external occu-
pations and interests of the cititizen, as to
render its influence on him, in his citizen ca-
pacity, well-Iigh impossible. In Germany it
has come in contact with him only in periods
of political excitement, and it is not strange
that inexperienced officers have failed to lead an
undisciplined army to victory. In Roman Ca-
tholic countries it has been confined within the
walls of monasteries, and Jesuit colleges 5 and
in England, where, though now flagrantly in-
adequate to the duties which manifestly lie at
its door, it has existed in a healthier form than
elsewhere, it has all along possessed so much
of an ecclesiastical* character as to prevent it
from acting otherwise than indirectly through
means of that religion of the influences of which
we have already spoken.
* "Clergymen understand the least and take the
worst measure of human affairs, of all mankind that
can write and read," Clarendon, Vol. II. p. 48.
S2
CHAP. XX.
OF THE UNIVERSAL DUTY OP ACTIVE-MINDEDNESS.
Important as we believe the considerations
to be to which we have called attention in the
immediately preceding chapters, and guarded
as has been our expression of them, we feel
that we should incur the risk of not unmerited
reproach if we permitted them to go forth
without an additional caveat.
No class of professional thinkers, however
numerous and efficient, can supply the place
of thoughtfulness on the part of the general com-
munity; or exculpate one individual, however
humble in station, for neglecting the highest
function of an intelligent being, the search
after truth. Nay farther it is impossible to
conceal from ourselves that, in calling into ex-
istence such a class as we have indicated,
there does exist a risk, more or less great ac-
cording to the temperament or circumstances
of a people, that the natural disinclination and
frequent inaptitude of mankind for mental
277
labour will induce them to hand over to their
recognised guides the duty of thinking for them.
Now, if it be true of an individual that pro-
found and original thoughts will not drop into
his mouth like ripe fruit from a tree, it is
equally true of a community that, if such
thoughts waved before them like the richest and
yellowest harvest, no hired reapers could ever
gather them for their use without their own
active cooperation. If we take no part in the
reaping, the harvest, however abundant will
not be ours, and experience tells us that, but
for the countenance and encouragement of the
age of which they are the servants, the activ-
ity of the most numerous, and in point of ex-
ternal position the most favoured, class of pro-
fessional labourers will soon change to listless
inaction or to formal and lifeless pedantry.
The Buddhists of Thibet are amongst the least
active, and the Chinese amongst the least pro-
gressive of Orientals, and yet both possess a
very large class of persons exclusively devoted
to the interests of mind, or at least freed from
care for the body, whilst the latter have ri-
gorously adhered for ages to the system of in-
tellectual examinations which we are but now
inaugurating, and from which we hope so much.
278
Turning to Europe, we are reminded that the
schools of Athens in the period of her deepest
degradation, and of Alexandria under the Pto-
lemies, were better manned and equipped with
all the appliances of learned labour, than were
those of Greece in the days of Anaxagoras and
Plato. In Byzantium, under the grammarians,
rhetoricians, and sophists, there was more formal
learning than there ever was either in Athens
or Rome during the most active period of either.
During the whole period indeed which we are
accustomed to call the dark ages, there is reason
to believe that there existed, in the capital of
the Eastern Empire, learned labourers and
learned labour, perhaps even accurate know-
ledge of facts and opinions , which might, with-
out prejudice, compare with what is at present
possessed by many of the states of modern
Europe. There were popularisers of science
too, and learned ladies who had gone through
the Quadrivium. Still, neither there, nor in the
West of Europe, where the monastic life afford-
ed at least one of the most indispensable requi-
sites of intellectual activity, that of physical re-
pose and wellbeing, was there either progress or
life. The Sursum corda on the part of the whole
community, the great object of all learning, for
279
political purposes at any rate ; was unattained;
and ; even scientifically considered, there pro-
bably was less productive mental effort in the
refined and pedantic Byzantium than in many
a half savage state.
Now these things are not written for the
discouragement but for the warning of men
of future times , not to show that the reduction
of truth to scientific forms is unimportant (for
without that there is no test whereby we may
distinguish truth from error) ; but to prove to
us that we may waste in learned trifling ener-
gies which were given for far nobler puposes,
till in the end truth escapes us in our very
efforts to bind her in our systems*. The best
guarantee for life and progress consists, at all
times , in the mutual action of practice upon
theory, and theory upon practice. Whilst theo-
ry is tested by a contact with reality, it will
* Surely, like as many substances in nature, which
are solid , do putrify and corrupt into worms ; so it is
the property of good and sound knowledge to putrify
and dissolve into numbers of subtle, idle, unwholesome,
and, as I may term them, vermicular questions, which
have indeed a kind of quickness and life of spirit, but
no soundness of matter, or goodness of quality. Bacon,
Advancement of Learning.
280
scarcely degenerate into objectless and unpro-
ductive subtility; and practice from being led
back to principle will have within itself a per-
petual germ of life and growth. But where, on
the contrary, a separation has taken place, and
the learned class has become a separate caste,
it is a rule which admits of fewer exceptions
than almost any other which we derive from
human experience, that, though by no means
suspended, or even diminished in apparent in-
tensity, mental effort is stricken with barrenness.
So far then it is a hopeful sign of the present
time that the general community, far from lag-
ging behind, seems positively to have outrun
its leaders. But let us not plume ourselves too
greatly on this aspect, of our affairs. It is but
a very negative and sterile consolation which
will be afforded us by the reflection that we
do not hand over the duty of thinking to others,
unless we have well grounded reasons for be-
lieving that we discharge this duty satisfactor-
ily ourselves. The absence of an isolated learn-
ed caste may pretty wfll protect us, it is true,
against the evils of unfruitful theory, but does
it follow that, whilst we congratulate ourselves
on our escape from this form of misfortune,
w r e are not exposing ourselves to another of
281
at least equal magnitude in a lifeless and irra-
tional practice. The most hopeless of all so-
cieties is surely that in which no one thinks,
i. e. in which no one exhibits anything beyond
that amount of active - mindedness which the
immediate necessities of his position force upon
him. Let us take an illustration from the sub-
ject with which we are here mainly concerned.
There is no way in which the vessel of the
state is more likely to deviate from its course
than by creeping on from day to day in what
seems to the steerrnan's eye to be the course
of yesterday. The deviation may be gradual,
but if no reference is made to principle, if no
reliable observation is taken, with the inevi-
table changes of wind and current, it is not
on that account the less certain. But it is un-
deniable that in this country there is a ten-
dency (which unhappily is not confined to the
vulgar in position), to regard theory not as the
guide, but as the antagonist of practice; and
to receive every attempt to call in its aid with
feelings little short of indignation. In the eyes
of Englishmen such a proceeding is too often
regarded as equivalent to an appeal from the
known, the safe, and the sane, to the un-
known, the dangerous, and the crazy; or at
282
the very least as a transition from the easy to
the irksome. They affect to be scared and
frightened by the novelty, and their love of
ease is in truth rudely broken in upon by the
unwonted effort which it imposes. "We are
an industrious people'', they cry, "and we have
no objection to labour of our own kind. We
are an intelligent people and we have no
objection to the acquisition of positive know-
ledge. But, we are not a speculative people,
and so we hate to theorise ; and farther" (they
pretty unmistakeably insinuate) "we hate those
whose theorising imposes on us a task so
distasteful!* Now this is a frame of mind
which is not hopeful for the future of a great
people. It is the every opposite of the temper
which, either in an individual or a community,
marks the period of progress, the invariable
accompaniment of senility and mental decre-
pitude. We know that the development of
that exclusively practical character of which
we boast so loudly has sunk our neighbours
* <&i\oGoyov [isv CCQCC, TfV d' f'yeo,
fivcci. 'ASvvarov. Keel rovs (pihoGocpovvrccs KQCC avccy-
v.r\ ipfysG&tti vn Kvraiv. 'Ava.yv.Ti. -^^ ^ no rovrcav
dr) taiv ldi(OT<nv , oaoi nQOGo^L^ov
. Plato , Republ. Lib. VI. Cap. 8.
283
the Dutch from the position of a first to that
of a third rate state, and there is but too good
reason to fear that it has recently brought on
our practic itself the contempt of still nearer
neighbours and allies. Whether it has not some-
thing to do with the little reverence in which
we and our representatives are held by the bol-
der and more entriprising portion of our trans-
atlantic offspring might be a farther question.
We fear it is not less true than humiliating
that since the Russian war an impression has
very generally got abroad that in everything
nobler than mere animal courage and brute
force we are a nation of old women; and, if
we obstinately refuse to be warned in time,
that impression, sooner than we think for, may
ripen into a well authenticated fact.
But how is this state of matters to be recti-
fied? We must not trust, it seems, to a learned
class even if we could form one, because that
will degenerate into a caste. Neither must we
trust to the activity of the general community,
unaided by scientific labourers, because that
has already 'well nigh played us false. Our
answer is, we must trust to both. We must
have a learned class, in living communion and
In actual contact with the affairs of every day
284
life, which shall have for its function to bring
theory to bear upon practice; and to a wide-
spread and earnest activity on the part of the
whole community, which shall bring practice
in contact with theory. Both must be actuated
by a spirit which is peculiar to neither. In
each we must have that thoroughness which
can come only from the influences of the other,
and which in place of mutual contempt shall
engender mutual reverence. We must have
"a division of labour 7 ', but of such a kind that
the man who schemes out the order of the
future battle shall not be regarded as the an-
togonist, but as the elder brother of him who
is to serve in the trenches.
Nor must we hope, as has lately become the
fashion, that by means of a few examination
papers every practitioner is to be converted
into a pundit in his proper person. The two
characters, with their appropriate spheres of
action, though continually approaching each
other, and always mutually dependent, are,
and must continue to be essentially distinct;
and our object will have attained the com-
pletest fulfilment of which it admits, when we
shall have brought the man of practice the
length of valuing the man of principle in his
285
own place, and so bound the latter to reality
as that he shall appreciate the aid which, even
for purposes of speculation, he receives from
the former. Among the great Englishmen who,
in the 16 lh and 17 th centuries raised England
to the position which she has since occupied,
we find nothing of that ignorant and narrow-
minded railing against theory and speculation
which characterises our countrymen at present ;
and Bacon had the theorisers rather than the
practitioners of his time in view when he said,
"This is that which will indeed dignify and
exalt knowledge, if contemplation and action
may be more straitly conjoined and united
together than they have been"*. The saying
cuts in both directions with equal sharpness ;
but, in whichsoever sense it be taken, one thing
is certain, viz. that Bacon did not intend that
if should be understood as expressing a desire
either that the office of him whom we have
characterised as the leader of thought should
be sunk in that of the man of practice, or that
this latter should think it necessary to take
on his shoulders the peculiar duties of the
leader of thought.
* Advancement of Learning.
CHAP. XXI.
OF POLITICAL EDUCATION.
The educational institutions of a people are
an artificial organization for the purpose of
bringing each new generation, at starting, up
to the point at which the labours of thought
were abandoned by the preceding one. The
leaders of thought to one generation are thus
the leaders of education to the next; and, the
function of the former being fixed , that of
the latter is also in some degree determined.
The object of both is to elevate the individual
by bringing him in contact with truth and
reality. There is this difference between them,
however, that the instructor works on a far
more pliable material. When the originator
has given full and clear expression to his
thought, when the scientific elaborator has
reduced it to form and consistency, when the
populariser has illustrated and enforced it, the
leaders of thought, in their various capacities,
have exhausted their means of influencing the
287
public spirit. " Intelligibilia baud intellectum
adfero", is the only farther sentiment by which
either of the classes of which we have spoken
in the preceding chapter need to be actuated.
The teacher, on the contrary, is bound, in a
certain sense, by the means of discipline which
are confided to him, to find both ears and in-
telligence for his auditors. He must do more
than simply to place within their reach the
possibilities of knowledge. He must not let
them go until they bless both themselves and
others by accepting the truth which it is his
mission to proclaim.
This distinction explains to us the fact, so
common in the history of human progress, that
discoveries which were altogether inoperative
on the generation to which they were audibly
proclaimed bear the richest fruit to the suceed-
ing one, on which they have been in a mea-
sure forced by the educational machinery of
the state. It is when we view education as a
means of thus enforcing the perception and
reception of truth, that we at once perceive
how just was the opinion of the publicists of
antiquity when they pronounced it to be the
most efficient, nay almost the only efficient,
organ of conscious political action. Nor is
288
this character peculiar either to the education
of a class or to any special department of that
education. In every form in which it strength-
ens and elevates the individual ; education
widens the range of political possibilities, and
thus, in a certain sense, may by termed poli-
tical education: whilst, conversely, the perfection
of the individual being possible only in the
state, political education may be said to em-
brace all education.
But though political education, in its widest
sense , may be coextensive with education in
general , and the consideration of the latter
may thus fall within the legitimate scope of
a treatise on politics , it by no means follows
that there is not a stricter kind of political
education, the range and objects of which we,
as speculative politicians,* are more especially
called upon to indicate.
Now the primary and central doctrine which,
as it seems to us, this citizen training has to
inculcate is the u Suum cuique". In the just
appreciation of this doctrine, as we have al-
* UorsQcos S' KV, ffpi] , 03 'dvricpiav , fjuxMov roc no-
AtTtXa 7tQKTTOl(Jil , Si JlOVOg KVTK TtQUTTOlfll , 7? si S7tL(l-
A.Ol[ir]V TOV (Off 7ttel6TOV$ IKKVOVS slvttl 7CQKTTSIV CCVTCC ;
Xenophon's Memorab. Lib. I. cap. 6.
289
ready seen , is involved at once the pride
which vindicates that equality of private rights,
without which the citizen character degenerates
into that of the subject or the slave; and that
humility which ungrudgingly recognises such
inequality of public rights as springs from an
inequality of social importance. The first is
the lesson of good -manhood, the second of
good-citizenship ; and the function of the poli-
tical teacher will not be accomplished until
this double lesson has been apprehended by
each of his pupils.
Now the stage to which the progress of so-
ciety in Europe has at present attained (if we
have rightly appreciated it in the preceding
pages) is that of having seized the first, but
missed, or at the very most but fitfully and
insecurely laid hold of the second branch of.
this political lesson. Manhood, with its con-
sequent rights to private equality, has been
vindicated ; but citizenship has hitherto been
placed on so insecure. a basis, and marked by
limits so evanescent, as constantly to endanger
not only the public rights which it involves,
but by no means unfrequently also the private
rights of manhood itself.
It is with the latter half of his problem
290
therefore that the political teacher of our day
is almost exclusively concerned, and our pre-
sent task must be to offer such contribution
as we may towards supplying the means by
which its solution may be attained.
We have already seen that the political po-
sition of the citizen is, in the strictest sense r
dependent on the social position of the in-
dividual. The first step then towards a
just appreciation of the former must be an
accurate perception of the latter; and thus
a species of political (not economical) socio-
logy must lie at the root of all political edu-
cation. It is quite true that in tranquil times,
a passive and unreasoning acquiescence in the
established order of society, on the part of the
many, will serve very nearly the same purpose
as an intelligent and conscious recognition of
the fact that this order is founded on perma-
nent laws. But this is true in the state, just
as it is true in the family that animal good
temper, the result of good health and easy
circumstances, will often very fairly supply the
place of principle and a sense of duty. So
long as temptation is absent, or as immediate
and ultimate selfinterest are coincident, the
guidance of reason is rendered almost super-
291
fluous , and the criminal and foolish, under a
happy star, arrive at the same results as the
virtuous and the wise. But the absence of
temptation and the coincidence of immediate
and ultimate selfinterest are not the rule but
the exception in human affairs; and thus the
citizen of the temporal, just like the citizen
of the eternal kingdom, not unfrequently is
driven back for support to the "reason of the
faith that is in him". Now as it is by en-
lightening his reason that we are to strengthen
his faith, nothing manifestly will contribute
so powerfully to this result as the knowledge
that the organic social structure of which he
forms a part belongs, not to the time or coun-
try in which he lives ; but to every time and
country; that the gradations of social import-
ance on which .political inequality is founded,
and which in moments of frenzy mankind have
attempted to abrogate, are as universally human
as is youth and manhood and age. The rea-
diest practical means by which knowledge can
be enforced will be a well directed study, first,
of the past history of society, and, second, of
its present condition as exhibited by nations
differing from each other in external circum-
stances. But, in order that these studies may
T2
292
serve the purposes of political discipline, the
political teacher must furnish his pupils with
such absolute tests as shall enable them to
distinguish between accidents which give their
special form to social institutions, and the ne-
cessary ingredients which give them their only
abiding hold on organic social life. Here then
is the most special lesson which the politician
has to teach ; the element which distinguishes
his treatment of the same subjects from that
of the constitutional antiquarian ; the statis-
tician, the political geographer., and all those
whose object is simply to communicate facts
of external experience, on the one hand; and,
on the other, from the moralist and the meta-
physician, who deal with facts of internal
experience. To both of these classes of in-
vestigators the extent to which the laws which
their investigations bring to light may or may
not bear on practice, is a subject of secondary
concern; with the politician, on the contrary,
the application of his principles is the primary
object of their evolution, and his teaching
consequently, whilst it expounds the laws of
society which he or others have discovered,
must not rest till it brings them, in their conse-
quences, again in contact witn society either
293
actual or possible. His philosophy, in its very
nature and essence, is an applied philosophy;
and he must never lose sight of the fact that
between him and the actual leaders of events
there is no class of intermediate expositors
upon whom he may shift the responsibility of
bringing theory and practice face to face.
Lastly, though it be true that all who are
citizens of a free state are bound to take some
part, not only in that general education, one
of the objects of which is to widen the sphere
of political possibilities, but also in that special
education, which has for its object to direct
the current of political events, still it is not
less certain that, in the latter training more
especially, all are not bound, nor enabled,
scarcely perhaps entitled, to take an equal part.
If Plato and Aristotle committed an error in
saying that all citizenship ought to be confined
to the classes of leisure, they certainly would
have committed no error if they had restricted
their saying to the effect that the higher duties
of citizenship involved a training which leisure
alone rendered possible.
The main object of this treatise has been
to show that political influence ought as
nearly as possible to correspond to social
294
weight and importance; and out of this prin-
ciple a very simple rule arises for determining
the extent of the political training of which
the respective classes of the community ought
to be recipients. In proportion as the social im-
portance, and consequent political influence, of the
individual rises, ought his citizen training to he-
come wider in its range, and more scientific in
its character. Any rule more precise than this
would involve us in discussions as to actual,
or in suggestions as to possible educational
institutions, wholly beyond the object of the
present work.
But to whomsoever he imparts it or in what-
ever form, from the highest rules of duty to
the lowest maxims of expediency, the teacher
of politics must never forget that his science
is the science of sovereignty, and that every
man whom he addresses is addressed in his
sovereign capacity. It is by this constant sense
of the dignity of his own function that he will
best communicate to his pupils the best lesson
which he has to teach, a sense of the dignity
of theirs.
CHAP. XXII.
THE CHURCH IN ITS POLITICAL RELATIONS.
If we adopt Mr. Coleridge's distinction be-
tween the national church and the church of
Christ (the enclesia and the ecclesia), it will
be apparent that in treating of the leaders of
thought (whose office corresponds very nearly
to that of his lay pastors), we have already
spoken of the function of the first; whilst the
influences of the latter were referred to in the
observations which we made on the social, and
consequent political, effects of Christianity*.
As regards both, conscious political action is
not only legitimate, but is a necessary and in-
evitable consequence of their efficient existence.
There is this difference between them, however,
that whereas the national church as such, -
that is, in so far as it is represented by the
lay clergy, and the clergy in their lay capacity,
may blamelessly enforce its maxims by ap-
* Chap. VIII.
296
pealing to no higher source than an enlight-
ened temporal self-interest,* the latter must
superadd the far loftier motives which arise from
our relations to the Deity and the whole scheme
of his providence. Whilst the one says, do
this and thou shalt escape the misfortunes
which in former times have fallen on those
who have neglected it, the other says, do it
in order that you may conform yourself to the
eternal laws which God has written in your
hearts , which He has revealed in His word and
which He enforces in His government of the
universe. Do it and live in the fulfilment of
your own highest destiny, in the perfecting of
your nature after the image in which it was
formecl. It is in the higher motive which i&
thus given to duty, and in the greater clear-
ness and constancy with which what the an-
cients obscurely and fitfully saw as the beauti-
ful and the good is presented to, and pre^
served before, the national mind, that the
* Nor need we fear that the practical effect of such
teaching will be to diminish the humility with which
we ought to regard the whole scheme of the Universe,
The same Socrates who inculcated the duty of political
speculation taught his friends to pray simply for what
was good, leaving the selection to the Gods.
297
chief advantage of Christian over heathen so-
ciety consists , and of this advantage it primar-
ily belongs to the Christian church to avail it-
self. If the political action of the minister of
religion, then, is less direct, and less definite
than that of the secular leader of thought, it
is not on that account either less important,
or less fruitful in immediate practical results.
It is with the spiritual interests of the la-
bouring masses of the community, more espe-
cially, that the church, as an institution, is
concerned. To the classes whose position en-
ables them to command leisure, even Christian
influences come from many other quarters,
and their spiritual life is fed by a thousand
rills. But to the children of toil the church
and its ministers are the only incentives to
reflection. Of the small measure of leisure
which is theirs, a very large portion is spent
in immediate contact with the influences
which she wields, and for good or evil these
exercise a very important effect on their char-
acters and lives. Any t one who considers how
different is the role which the Sunday plays in
the life of the man of labour, and the man of
leisure, and who knows how much more ex-
clusively the views and opinions of the former
298
are the result of pulpit teaching than those of
the latter, will have a practical illustration of
what we mean. Now that such teaching should
deal directly with political interests , even when
these are seen from the most all-embracing
point of view, is of course neither possible nor
desirable. Still to set the current of popular
thinking in the direction in which sound po-
litical results are to be found does seem to
us to be entirely within its province, and we
see no reason why this should not at times
be done a little more specially than by simply
enforcing those moral and religious principles
which form the basis of all citizen life, and
are the postulates of all trustworthy political
speculation. There are habits of mind to-
wards the formation of which the clergy , even
in their strictly clerical capacity, may very
well contribute, out of which spring directly
and almost inevitably the distinctions which set
limits to citizen pride and citizen humility,
and mark off to each class the great outlines
of its duties and its rights. There are inevit-
able relations, such for example as those be-
tween duties and rights, which in their abstract
form can nowhere be so well or so easily in-
culcated into the popular mind as from the
299
pulpit, and which if once apprehended, and ap-
plied by way of illustration to one class of
subjects, will, without any special application at
all, very surely and very soon influence others.
In many passages of our own history we have
examples of the happiest and most important
political results, which are referable directly
to pulpit exhortations and to the more private
influences of the ministers of religion. It was
the teaching of their pastors (narrow and un-
genial as it now appears to us) which supported
Independents and Presbyterians in their poli-
tical as well as in their religious struggles;
and which by the hands of the Puritan Fathers
of New England laid the foundation of the
soundest and most fruitful colonial life which
the world has ever seen.
Looking in another direction , it is impossible
to say to how great an extent that reverence for
existing institutions, which, breathing through
the whole of the liturgy of the church of Eng-
land, reminds one continually of Queen Eliza-
beth's days, may have tended to communicate
to the English* people those conservative in-
* We believe that both conservative and monarchical
feelings are stronger in England than in Scotland, and
300
stincts which so remarkably characterise them,
and which have so often been the safeguards
both of order and liberty. Even in Roman
Catholic countries how often have the influ-
ences of the Church formed the only check
upon despotism on the one hand, or ochlocracy
on the other.
But in order that these political fruits may
be reaped, there is one principle which it is
above all indispensable to keep in view, and
which we in this country, and at this time, as
it seems to us, are peculiarly apt to forget.
Christianity must be regarded as inculcating,
not what is negative simply, but still more
prominently what is positive in human con-
duct*. We feel certain that the womanish
the fact is probably, in some degree at least, to be
ascribed to the influence to which we have here referred.
* T^S KQrr t <S y&Q (ICtUoJ TO V nOlSlV 77 TO 8V 7CCtG%flV,
Hal ret tid'ka, TCQarreiv iiccMov, 77 TK al6%Qu ju-r) TTQCCTTBLV.
Aristot. Ethic. Lib. IV. c. 1. Xenophon tells us that
one of the facts brought forward by the accusers of So-
crates was that he was in the habit of quoting this line
from Hesiod, "Egyov d' ovtisv ovsiSos, aSQysir) <? r ovsi-
Sog. Socrates was far from repudiating the imputation,
and no one who feels like him the dignity which belongs
to a teacher of active virtue will shrink from bearing
it along with him.
301
view that is so often taken of Christianity by
those who profess to expound it, and that the
disposition to regard it as a mere string of
prohibitions against vices, to many of which
it is even doubtful if the character of mala in
se really belongs, not only tends to enfeeble the
characters of those who accept it as the true
exposition, hut has the farther and greater evil
of driving the manlier characters who reject
it to seek their exemplars, and rules of con-
duct elsewhere than in holy writ. If the doing
of important and noble duties, not the abstain-
ing from petty and ignoble vices were insisted
on, even the latter object would be attained
far more effectually ; and if the motive were made
not the hope of escaping punishment, but the
certainty of attaining the love and favour of the
Most High, Christianity would be placed in a
truer, and to many in a far more attractive
light. In place of limping after us like a
well-meaning but superannuated and narrow-
minded monitor, in whose eyes the small and
the formal is of greater importance than
the great and the substantial, Christianity
would become, as it was intended to be, a
fresh and ever youthful leader wherever our
effort was to do God's will on the greatest
302
scale, and our abiding support and consolation
when, in order to do so, the tangled maze of
human circumstances imposed upon us the ne-
cessity of violating on a small scale the appar-
ent dictates of humanity or the promptings of
instinct.
Nowhere more than in their citizen capacity
do men stand in need of this positive view of
Christian duty. Not only to those who guide,
but to those who execute the volitions of a
whole people the place of providence, on a li-
mited field, is assigned, 1 ; and he who with
merely passive Christianity to support him is
called upon to draw the sword, to erect the
scaffold, or to perform any of the sterner du-
ties of citizenship, must do so either without*
reference to Christianity at all, or, what is
worse, in violation of what alone he has been
used to regard as its dictates. The moment
we are called to deal actively with public re-
lations our Christianity must be of such a kind
as to raise us above all minor anxieties, and
in the most trying circumstances to be "victory
and law". Where the voice of duty pronounces
unmistakeably for vigorous and unsparing ac-
tion, he who represents the word of God as
prescribing only childish inactivity or feminine
303
submission, however harmless may be his in-
tentions , will in his deeds be at once a traitor
and a false prophet. Nor on the other hand
Avill he be a truer interpreter, who, recognis-
ing the paramount claims of duty, represents
these as incapable of any genuine recognition
which is not accompanied by a perpetual aus-
terity, and in constant conflict with all that is
humane and genial in the ordinary relations of
life. Whilst our divine Master has told us that
he brought into the world "not peace but the
sword", we know that the very first object for
which he interrupted the ordinary laws of na-
ture was to provide more abundantly, not for
the wants, but for the convivial enjoyments of
those who for the time were his companions
in mirth. Had nothing else to the same effect
been recorded of him (and we hold that there
is much) in this one saying, and this one act,
we should have had abundant proof how little
his notions of Christian duty were either sickly
or sour.
THE END.
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