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diff --git a/14735-h/14735-h.htm b/14735-h/14735-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c37f172 --- /dev/null +++ b/14735-h/14735-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6590 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> +<head> +<meta name="generator" content= +"HTML Tidy for Windows (vers 1st March 2004), see www.w3.org" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content= +"text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of "Political Thought in England +From Locke to Bentham", by Harold J. Laski.</title> + +<style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ + +body { margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; max-width: 40em; } + +h1,h2,h3,h4 { text-align: center; } +h3,h4 {font-weight: normal; } +h4 { font-size: 1.2em; } + +a:link { text-decoration: none; } +a:visited { text-decoration: none; } +a:active { text-decoration: underline; } +a:link:hover { text-decoration: underline; } + +hr.long { width: 100%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; } + +p { margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: justify; + text-indent: 1em; } + +p.noindent { text-indent: 0em; } + +#titlepages p { margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-indent: 0; } +#titlepages p.small { font-size: 90%; } +#titlepages div.editors { margin-left: 14em; } + +#preface p { margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-right: 12%; margin-left: 12%; + text-align: justify; text-indent: 0; } +#preface p.right { text-align: right; text-indent: 0; } +#preface p.indent { text-indent: 1em; } + +#toc { margin-top: 5em; } + +#content { margin-top: 5em; margin-bottom: 2em; } +#content h2 { margin-top: 5em; } + +.fnref { font-size: 90%; } + +.fn { border-top: .1em dashed gray; border-bottom: .1em dashed gray; + padding: 1em 1em 1em 2em; font-size: 90%; text-align: justify; + margin-right: 10%; margin-left: 10%; } + +.fn span.fnnum { position: absolute; left: 17.5%; text-align: left; } + +#index h3 { text-align: center; margin-top: 3em; } +#index ul { padding-left: 0; } +#index li { list-style-type: none; } + +#bibliography p { text-indent: 0; } +#bibliography ul { padding-left: 0; } +#bibliography li { list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 1em; } +#bibliography li.sub { list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0; } + +.small { font-size: 90%; } +.center { text-align: center; } +.right { text-align: right; } +p.title { font-size: 1.5em; text-align: center; } +.in2 { margin-left: 2em; } +.small span.in14 { margin-left: 14em; } + +table { margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 2em; } +td { vertical-align: top; text-align: left; } +td.right { text-align: right; } +td.center { text-align: center; } +td.small { font-size: 90%; } +td.tiny { font-size: 80%; } +td.center8 { width: 8%; } +td span.tiny { font-size: 80%; } + + /* XML end ]]>*/ +</style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14735 ***</div> + +<div id="titlepages"><br /> +<h2>HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY<br /> +OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE</h2> +<h3>No. 103</h3> +<p class="center"><i>Editors:</i></p> +<div class="editors"> +<p class="small">HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A.<br /> +PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, LITT.D. LL.D., F.B.A.<br /> +PROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A.<br /> +PROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.</p> +</div> +<hr class="long" /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="page1" id="page1"></a> +<h1>POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND<br /> +<br /> +FROM<br /> +LOCKE TO BENTHAM</h1> +<br /> +<p class="center">BY</p> +<h2>HAROLD J. LASKI</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="small">SOMETIME EXHIBITIONER OF NEW +COLLEGE, OXFORD, OF THE<br /> +DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY,<br /> +AUTHOR OF STUDIES IN THE PROBLEM OF<br /> +SOVEREIGNTY AND AUTHORITY IN<br /> +THE MODERN STATE</span></p> +<br /> +<br /> +<p class="center"><img src="images/image01.png" width="96" height= +"126" alt="" /></p> +<br /> +<br /> +<p class="center">NEW YORK<br /> +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY<br /> +<span class="small">LONDON</span><br /> +WILLIAMS AND NORGATE</p> +<hr class="long" /> +<br /> +<a name="page2" id="page2"></a> +<p class="center">1920</p> +<br /> +<hr class="long" /></div> +<div id="preface"><a name="page3" id="page3"></a> +<h2>NOTE</h2> +<p class="indent">It is impossible for me to publish this book +without some expression of the debt it owes to Leslie Stephen's +<i>History of the English Thought in the Eighteenth Century</i>. It +is almost insolent to praise such work; but I may be permitted to +say that no one can fully appreciate either its wisdom or its +knowledge who has not had to dig among the original texts.</p> +<p class="indent">Were so small a volume worthy to bear a +dedication, I should associate it with the name of my friend Walter +Lippmann. He and I have so often discussed the substance of its +problems that I am certain a good deal of what I feel to be my own +is, where it has merit, really his. This volume is thus in great +part a tribute to him; though there is little that can repay such +friendship as he gives.</p> +<p class="right">H.J.L.</p> +<p class="small">HARVARD UNIVERSITY<br /> +<span class="in2">Sept. 15, 1919</span></p> +<hr class="long" /></div> +<div id="toc"><a name="page5" id="page5"></a> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<br /> +<div class="center"> +<table width="100%" summary="Table of Contents"> +<tr> +<td class="right"><span class="tiny">CHAPTER</span></td> +<td class="center8"> </td> +<td> </td> +<td class="right"><span class="tiny">PAGE</span></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="right">I.</td> +<td> </td> +<td>INTRODUCTION</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#page7">7</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="right">II.</td> +<td> </td> +<td>THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REVOLUTION</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#page24">24</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="right">III.</td> +<td> </td> +<td>CHURCH AND STATE</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#page77">77</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="right">IV.</td> +<td> </td> +<td>THE ERA OF STAGNATION</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#page127">127</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="right">V.</td> +<td> </td> +<td>SIGNS OF CHANGE</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#page159">159</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="right">VI.</td> +<td> </td> +<td>BURKE</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#page213">213</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="right">VII.</td> +<td> </td> +<td>THE FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMIC LIBERALISM</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#page281">281</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="3">BIBLIOGRAPHY</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#page317">317</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="3">INDEX</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#page321">321</a></td> +</tr> +</table> +</div> +<br /></div> +<hr class="long" /> +<div id="content"><a name="page7" id="page7"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> +<h3>INTRODUCTION</h3> +<p>The eighteenth century may be said to begin with the Revolution +of 1688; for, with its completion, the dogma of Divine Right +disappeared for ever from English politics. Its place was but +partially filled until Hume and Burke supplied the outlines of a +new philosophy. For the observer of this age can hardly fail, as he +notes its relative barrenness of abstract ideas, to be impressed by +the large part Divine Right must have played in the politics of the +succeeding century. Its very absoluteness made for keen +partisanship on the one side and the other. It could produce at +once the longwinded rhapsodies of Filmer and, by repulsion, the +wearisome reiterations of Algernon Sidney. Once the foundations of +Divine Right had been destroyed by Locke, the basis of passionate +controversy was <a name="page8" id="page8"></a>absent. The theory +of a social contract never produced in England the enthusiasm it +evoked in France, for the simple reason that the main objective of +Rousseau and his disciples had already been secured there by other +weapons. And this has perhaps given to the eighteenth century an +urbaneness from which its predecessor was largely free. Sermons are +perhaps the best test of such a change; and it is a relief to move +from the addresses bristling with Suarez and Bellarmine to the +noble exhortations of Bishop Butler. Not until the French +Revolution were ultimate dogmas again called into question; and it +is about them only that political speculation provokes deep +feeling. The urbanity, indeed, is not entirely new. The Restoration +had heralded its coming, and the tone of Halifax has more in common +with Bolingbroke and Hume than with Hobbes and Filmer. Nor has the +eighteenth century an historical profundity to compare with that of +the zealous pamphleteers in the seventeenth. Heroic archivists like +Prynne find very different substitutes in brilliant journalists +like Defoe, and if Dalrymple and Blackstone are <a name="page9" id= +"page9"></a>respectable, they bear no comparison with masters like +Selden and Sir Henry Spelman.</p> +<p>Yet urbanity must not deceive us. The eighteenth century has an +importance in English politics which the comparative absence of +systematic speculation can not conceal. If its large constitutional +outlines had been traced by a preceding age, its administrative +detail had still to be secured. The process was very gradual; and +the attempt of George III to arrest it produced the splendid effort +of Edmund Burke. Locke's work may have been not seldom confused and +stumbling; but it gave to the principle of consent a permanent +place in English politics. It is the age which saw the +crystallization of the party-system, and therein it may perhaps lay +claim to have recognized what Bagehot called the vital principle of +representative government. Few discussions of the sphere of +government have been so productive as that in which Adam Smith gave +a new basis to economic science. Few controversies have, despite +its dullness, so carefully investigated the eternal problem of +Church and State as that to which Hoadly's bishopric contributed +its name. <a name="page10" id="page10"></a>De Lolme is the real +parent of that interpretative analysis which has, in Bagehot's +hands, become not the least fruitful type of political method. +Blackstone, in a real sense, may be called the ancestor of +Professor Dicey. The very calmness of the atmosphere only the more +surely paved the way for the surprising novelties of Godwin and the +revolutionists.</p> +<p>Nor must we neglect the relation between its ethics and its +politics. The eighteenth century school of British moralists has +suffered somewhat beside the greater glories of Berkeley and Hume. +Yet it was a great work to which they bent their effort, and they +knew its greatness. The deistic controversy involved a fresh +investigation of the basis of morals; and it is to the credit of +the investigators that they attempted to provide it in social +terms. It is, indeed, one of the primary characteristics of the +British mind to be interested in problems of conduct rather than of +thought. The seventeenth century had, for the most part, been +interested in theology and government; and its preoccupation, in +both domains, with supernatural sanctions, made its <a name= +"page11" id="page11"></a>conclusions unfitted for a period +dominated by rationalism. Locke regarded his <i>Human +Understanding</i> as the preliminary to an ethical enquiry; and +Hume seems to have considered his <i>Principles of Morals</i> the +most vital of his works. It may be true, as the mordant insight of +Mark Pattison suggested, that "those periods in which morals have +been represented as the proper study of man, and his only business, +have been periods of spiritual abasement and poverty." Certainly no +one will be inclined to claim for the eighteenth century the +spiritual idealism of the seventeenth, though Law and Bishop Wilson +and the Wesleyan revival will make us generalize with caution. But +the truth was that theological ethics had become empty and +inadequate, and the problem was therefore urgent. That is why +Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume and Adam Smith—to take only men +of the first eminence—were thinking not less for politics +than for ethics when they sought to justify the ways of man to man. +For all of them saw that a theory of society is impossible without +the provision of psychological foundations; and those <a name= +"page12" id="page12"></a>must, above all, result in a theory of +conduct if the social bond is to be maintained. That sure insight +is, of course, one current only in a greater English stream which +reaches back to Hobbes at its source and forward to T.H. Green at +perhaps its fullest. Its value is its denial of politics as a +science distinct from other human relations; and that is why Adam +Smith can write of moral sentiments no less than of the wealth of +nations. The eighteenth century saw clearly that each aspect of +social life must find its place in the political equation.</p> +<p>Yet it is undoubtedly an age of methods rather than of +principles; and, as such its peaceful prosperity was well suited to +its questions. Problems of technique, such as the cabinet and the +Bank of England required the absence of passionate debate if they +were in any fruitful fashion to be solved. Nor must the achievement +of the age in politics be minimized. It was, of course, a +complacent time; but we ought to note that foreigners of +distinction did not wonder at its complacency. Voltaire and +Montesquieu look back to England in the eighteenth century for the +substance <a name="page13" id="page13"></a>of political truths. The +American colonies took alike their methods and their arguments from +English ancestors; and Burke provided them with the main elements +of justification. The very quietness, indeed, of the time was the +natural outcome of a century of storm; and England surely had some +right to be contented when her political system was compared with +the governments of France and Germany. Not, indeed, that the full +fruit of the Revolution was gathered. The principle of consent +came, in practice and till 1760, to mean the government of the Whig +Oligarchy; and the <i>Extraordinary Black Book</i> remains to tell +us what happened when George III gave the Tory party a new lease of +power. There is throughout the time an over-emphasis upon the value +of order, and a not unnatural tendency to confound the private good +of the governing class with the general welfare of the state. It +became the fixed policy of Walpole to make prosperity the mask for +political stagnation. He turned political debate from principles to +personalities, and a sterile generation was the outcome of his +cunning.</p> +<a name="page14" id="page14"></a> +<p>Not that this barrenness is without its compensations. The +theories of the Revolution had exhausted their fruitfulness within +a generation. The constitutional ideas of the seventeenth century +had no substance for an England where Anglicanism and agriculture +were beginning to lose the rigid outlines of overwhelming +predominance. What was needed was the assurance of safety for the +Church that her virtue might be tested in the light of +nonconformist practice on the one hand, and the new rationalism on +the other. What was needed also was the expansion of English +commerce into the new channels opened for it by the victories of +Chatham. Mr. Chief Justice Holt had given it the legal categories +it would require; and Hume and Adam Smith were to explain that +commerce might grow with small danger to agricultural prosperity. +Beneath the apparent calm of Walpole's rule new forces were fast +stirring. That can be seen on every side. The sturdy morality of +Johnson, the new literary forms of Richardson and Fielding, the +theatre which Garrick founded upon the ruins produced by Collier's +indignation, <a name="page15" id="page15"></a>the revival of which +Law and Wesley are the great symbols, show that the stagnation was +sleep rather than death. The needed events of shock were close at +hand. The people of England would never have discovered the real +meaning of 1688 if George III had not denied its principles. When +he enforced the resignation of the elder Pitt the theories at once +of Edmund Burke and English radicalism were born; for the +<i>Present Discontents</i> and the <i>Society for the Support of +the Bill of Rights</i> are the dawn of a splendid recovery. And +they made possible the speculative ferment which showed that +England was at last awake to the meaning of Montesquieu and +Rousseau. Just as the shock of the Lancastrian wars produced the +Tudor despotism, so did the turmoil of civil strife produce the +complacency of the eighteenth century. But the peace of the Tudors +was the death-bed of the Stuarts; and it was the stagnant optimism +of the early eighteenth century which made possible the birth of +democratic England.</p> +<p>The atmosphere of the time, in fact, is deep-rooted in the +conditions of the past. Locke could not have written had not +<a name="page16" id="page16"></a>Hobbes and Filmer defended in set +terms the ideal of despotic government. He announced the advent of +the modern system of parliamentary government; and from his time +the debate has been rather of the conditions under which it is to +work, than of the foundations upon which it is based. Burke, for +example, wrote what constitutes the supreme analysis of the +statesman's art. Adam Smith discussed in what fashion the +prosperity of peoples could be best advanced. From Locke, that is +to say, the subject of discussion is rather <i>politik</i> than +<i>staatslehre</i>. The great debate inaugurated by the Reformation +ceased when Locke had outlined an intelligible basis for +parliamentary government. Hume, Bolingbroke, Burke, are all of them +concerned with the detail of political arrangement in a fashion +which presupposes the acceptance of a basis previously known. +Burke, indeed, toward the latter part of his life, awoke to the +realization that men were dissatisfied with the traditional +substance of the State. But he met the new desires with hate +instead of understanding, and the Napoleonic wars drove the current +of democratic opinion <a name="page17" id="page17"></a>underground. +Hall and Owen and Hodgskin inherited the thoughts of Ogilvie and +Spence and Paine; and if they did not give them substance, at least +they gave them form for a later time.</p> +<p>Nor is the reason for this preoccupation far to seek. The +advance of English politics in the preceding two centuries was +mainly an advance of structure; yet relative at least to +continental fact, it appeared liberal enough to hide the +disharmonies of its inner content. The King was still a mighty +influence. The power of the aristocracy was hardly broken until the +Reform Bill of 1867. The Church continued to dominate the political +aspect of English religious life until, after 1832, new elements +alien from her ideals were introduced into the House of Commons. +The conditions of change lay implicit in the Industrial Revolution, +when a new class of men attained control of the nation's economic +power. Only then was a realignment of political forces essential. +Only then, that is to say, had the time arrived for a new theory of +the State.</p> +<p>The political ideas of the eighteenth <a name="page18" id= +"page18"></a>century are thus in some sort a comment upon the +system established by the Revolution; and that is, in its turn, the +product of the struggle between Parliament and Crown in the +preceding age. But we cannot understand the eighteenth century, or +its theories, unless we realize that its temper was still +dominantly aristocratic. From no accusation were its statesmen more +anxious to be free than from that of a belief in democratic +government. Whether Whigs or Tories were in power, it was always +the great families who ruled. For them the Church, at least in its +higher branches, existed; and the difference between nobleman and +commoner at Oxford is as striking as it is hideous to this +generation. For them also literature and the theatre made their +display; and if Dr. Johnson could heap an immortal contumely upon +the name of patron, we all know of the reverence he felt in the +presence of the king. Divine Right and non-resistance were dead, +but they had not died without a struggle. Freedom of the press and +legal equality may have been obtained; but it was not until the +passage of Fox's Libel Act that the first became <a name="page19" +id="page19"></a>secure, and Mr. and Mrs. Hammond have recently +illumined for us the inward meaning of the second. The populace +might, on occasion, be strong enough to force the elder Pitt upon +an unwilling king, or to shout for Wilkes and liberty against the +unconstitutional usurpation of the monarch-ridden House of Commons. +Such outbursts are yet the exception to the prevailing temper. The +deliberations of Parliament were still, at least technically, a +secret; and membership therein, save for one or two anomalies like +Westminster and Bristol, was still the private possession of a +privileged class. The Revolution, in fact, meant less an abstract +and general freedom, than a special release from the arbitrary will +of a stupid monarch who aroused against himself every deep-seated +prejudice of his generation. The England which sent James II upon +his travels may be, as Hume pointed out, reduced to a pathetic +fragment even of its electorate. The masses were unknown and +undiscovered, or, where they emerged, it was either to protest +against some wise reform like Walpole's Excise Scheme, or to +become, as in Goldsmith <a name="page20" id="page20"></a>and Cowper +and Crabbe, the object of half-pitying poetic sentiment. How +deep-rooted was the notion of aristocratic control was to be shown +when France turned into substantial fact Rousseau's demand for +freedom. The protest of Burke against its supposed anarchy swept +England like a flame; and only a courageous handful could be found +to protest against Pitt's prostitution of her freedom.</p> +<p>Such an age could make but little pretence to discovery; and, +indeed, it is most largely absent from its speculation. In its +political ideas this is necessarily and especially the case. For +the State is at no time an unchanging organization; it reflects +with singular exactness the dominating ideas of its environment. +That division into government and subjects which is its main +characteristic is here noteworthy for the narrowness of the class +from which the government is derived, and the consistent inertia of +those over whom it rules. There is curiously little controversy +over the seat of sovereign power. That is with most men +acknowledged to reside in the king in Parliament. What balance of +forces is necessary to its most <a name="page21" id= +"page21"></a>perfect equilibrium may arouse dissension when George +III forgets the result of half a century's evolution. Junius may +have to explain in invective what Burke magistrally demonstrated in +terms of political philosophy. But the deeper problems of the state +lay hidden until Bentham and the revolutionists came to insist upon +their presence. That did not mean that the eighteenth century was a +soulless failure. Rather did it mean that a period of transition +had been successfully bridged. The stage was set for a new effort +simply because the theories of the older philosophy no longer +represented the facts at issue.</p> +<p>It was thus Locke only in this period who confronted the general +problems of the modern State. Other thinkers assumed his structure +and dealt with the details he left undetermined. The main problems, +the Church apart, arose when a foreigner occupied the English +throne and left the methods of government to those who were +acquainted with them. That most happy of all the happy accidents in +English history made Walpole the fundamental statesman of the time. +He used his opportunity to the full. Inheriting the <a name= +"page22" id="page22"></a>possibilities of the cabinet system he +gave it its modern expression by creating the office of Prime +Minister. The party-system was already inevitable; and with his +advent to full power in 1727 we have the characteristic outlines of +English representative government. Thenceforward, there are, on the +whole, but three large questions with which the age concerned +itself. Toleration had already been won by the persistent +necessities of two generations, and the noble determination of +William III; but the place of the Church in the Revolution State +and the nature of that State were still undetermined. Hoadly had +one solution, Law another; and the genial rationalism of the time, +coupled with the political affiliations of the High Church party, +combined to give Hoadly the victory; but his opponents, and Law +especially, remained to be the parents of a movement for +ecclesiastical freedom of which it has been the good fortune of +Oxford to supply in each succeeding century the leaders. America +presented again the problem of consent in the special perspective +of the imperial relation; and the decision which grew out of +<a name="page23" id="page23"></a>the blundering obscurantism of the +King enabled Burke nobly to restate and amply to revivify the +principles of 1688. Chatham meanwhile had stumbled upon a vaster +empire; and the industrial system which his effort quickened could +not live under an economic régime which still bore traces of +the narrow nationalism of the Tudors. No man was so emphatically +representative of his epoch as Adam Smith; and no thinker has ever +stated in such generous terms the answer of his time to the most +vital of its questions. The answer, indeed, like all good answers, +revealed rather the difficulty of the problem than the prospect of +its solution; though nothing so clearly heralded the new age that +was coming than his repudiation of the past in terms of a real +appreciation of it. The American War and the two great revolutions +brought a new race of thinkers into being. The French seed at last +produced its harvest. Bentham absorbed the purpose of Rousseau even +while he rejected his methods. For a time, indeed, the heat and +dust of war obscured the issue that Bentham raised. But the +certainties of the future lay on his side.</p> +<hr class="long" /> +<a name="page24" id="page24"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> +<h3>THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REVOLUTION</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p>The English Revolution was in the main a protest against the +attempt of James II to establish a despotism in alliance with +France and Rome. It was almost entirely a movement of the +aristocracy, and, for the most part, it was aristocratic opposition +that it encountered. What it did was to make for ever impossible +the thought of reunion with Rome and the theory that the throne +could be established on any other basis than the consent of +Parliament. For no one could pretend that William of Orange ruled +by Divine Right. The scrupulous shrank from proclaiming the +deposition of James; and the fiction that he had abdicated was not +calculated to deceive even the warmest of William's adherents. An +unconstitutional Parliament thereupon declared the throne <a name= +"page25" id="page25"></a>vacant; and after much negotiation William +and Mary were invited to occupy it. To William the invitation was +irresistible. It gave him the assistance of the first maritime +power in Europe against the imperialism of Louis XIV. It ensured +the survival of Protestantism against the encroachments of an enemy +who never slumbered. Nor did England find the new régime +unwelcome. Every widespread conviction of her people had been +wantonly outraged by the blundering stupidity of James. If a large +fraction of the English Church held aloof from the new order on +technical grounds, the commercial classes gave it their warm +support; and many who doubted in theory submitted in practice. All +at least were conscious that a new era had dawned.</p> +<p>For William had come over with a definite purpose in view. James +had wrought havoc with what the Civil Wars had made the essence of +the English constitution; and it had become important to define in +set terms the conditions upon which the life of kings must in the +future be regulated. The reign of William is nothing so much as the +period of that definition; <a name="page26" id="page26"></a>and the +fortunate discovery was made of the mechanisms whereby its +translation into practice might be secured. The Bill of Rights +(1689) and the Act of Settlement (1701) are the foundation-stones +of the modern constitutional system.</p> +<p>What, broadly, was established was the dependence of the crown +upon Parliament. Finance and the army were brought under +Parliamentary control by the simple expedient of making its annual +summons essential. The right of petition was re-affirmed; and the +independence of the judges and ministerial responsibility were +secured by the same act which forever excluded the legitimate heirs +from their royal inheritance. It is difficult not to be amazed at +the almost casual fashion in which so striking a revolution was +effected. Not, indeed, that the solution worked easily at the +outset. William remained to the end a foreigner, who could not +understand the inwardness of English politics. It was the +necessities of foreign policy which drove him to admit the immense +possibilities of the party-system as also to accept his own best +safeguard in the foundation of the Bank of England. <a name= +"page27" id="page27"></a>The Cabinet, towards the close of his +reign, had already become the fundamental administrative +instrument. Originally a committee of the Privy Council, it had no +party basis until the ingenious Sunderland atoned for a score of +dishonesties by insisting that the root of its efficiency would be +found in its selection from a single party. William acquiesced but +doubtfully; for, until the end of his life, he never understood why +his ministers should not be a group of able counsellors chosen +without reference to their political affiliations. Sunderland knew +better for the simple reason that he belonged to that period when +the Whigs and Tories had gambled against each other for their +heads. He knew that no council-board could with comfort contain +both himself and Halifax; just as William himself was to learn +quite early that neither honor nor confidence could win unswerving +support from John Churchill. There is a certain feverishness in the +atmosphere of the reign which shows how many kept an anxious eye on +St. Germain even while they attended the morning levee at +Whitehall.</p> +<p>What secured the permanence of the <a name="page28" id= +"page28"></a>settlement was less the policy of William than the +blunder of the French monarch. Patience, foresight and generosity +had not availed to win for William more than a grudging recognition +of his kingship. He had received only a half-hearted support for +his foreign policy. The army, despite his protests, had been +reduced; and the enforced return of his own Dutch Guards to Holland +was deliberately conceived to cause him pain. But at the very +moment when his strength seemed weakest James II died; and Louis +XIV, despite written obligation, sought to comfort the last moments +of his tragic exile by the falsely chivalrous recognition of the +Old Pretender as the rightful English king. It was a terrible +mistake. It did for William what no action of his own could ever +have achieved. It suggested that England must receive its ruler at +the hands of a foreign sovereign. The national pride of the people +rallied to the cause for which William stood. He was king—so, +at least in contrast to Louis' decision, it appeared—by their +deliberate choice and the settlement of which he was the symbol +would be maintained. Parliament granted <a name="page29" id= +"page29"></a>to William all that his foreign policy could have +demanded. His own death was only the prelude to the victories of +Marlborough. Those victories seemed to seal the solution of 1688. A +moment came when sentiment and intrigue combined to throw in +jeopardy the Act of Settlement. But Death held the stakes against +the gambler's throw of Bolingbroke; and the accession of George I +assured the permanence of Revolution principles.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p>The theorist of the Revolution is Locke; and it was his +conscious effort to justify the innovations of 1688. He sought, as +he said, "to establish the throne of our great Restorer, our +present King William, and make good his title in the consent of the +people." In the debate which followed his argument remained +unanswered, for the sufficient reason that it had the common sense +of the generation on his side. Yet Locke has suffered not a little +at the hands of succeeding thinkers. Though his influence upon his +own time was immense; though Montesquieu owed <a name="page30" id= +"page30"></a>to him the acutest of his insights; though the +principles of the American Revolution are in large part an +acknowledged adoption of his own; he has become one of the +political classics who are taken for granted rather than read. It +is a profound and regrettable error. Locke may not possess the +clarity and ruthless logic of Hobbes, or the genius for compressing +into a phrase the experience of a lifetime which makes Burke the +first of English political thinkers. He yet stated more clearly +than either the general problem of the modern State. Hobbes, after +all, worked with an impossible psychology and sought no more than +the prescription against disorder. Burke wrote rather a text-book +for the cautious administrator than a guide for the liberal +statesman. But Locke saw that the main problem of the State is the +conquest of freedom and it was for its definition in terms of +individual good that he above all strove.</p> +<p>Much, doubtless, of his neglect is due to the medium in which he +worked. He wrote at a time when the social contract seemed the only +possible retort to the theory of Divine Right. He so <a name= +"page31" id="page31"></a>emphasized the principle of consent that +when contractualism came in its turn to be discarded, it was +discovered that Locke suffered far more than Hobbes by the change +so made. For Hobbes cared nothing for the contract so long as +strong government could be shown to be implicit in the natural +badness of men, while Locke assumed their goodness and made his +contract essential to their opportunity for moral expression. Nor +did he, like Rousseau, seize upon the organic nature of the State. +To him the State was always a mere aggregate, and the convenient +simplicity of majority-rule solved, for him, the vital political +problems. But Rousseau was translated into the complex dialectic of +Hegel and lived to become the parent of theories he would have +doubtless been the first to disown. Nor was Locke aided by his +philosophic outlook. Few great thinkers have so little perceived +the psychological foundations of politics. What he did was rather +to fasten upon the great institutional necessity of his +time—the provision of channels of assent—and emphasize +its importance to the exclusion of all other factors. The problem +is in fact <a name="page32" id="page32"></a>more complex; and the +solution he indicated became so natural a part of the political +fabric that the value of his emphasis upon its import was largely +forgotten when men again took up the study of foundations.</p> +<p>John Locke was born at Wrington in Somerset on the 29th of +August, 1632. His father was clerk to the county justices and acted +as a captain in a cavalry regiment during the Civil War. Though he +suffered heavy losses, he was able to give his son as good an +education as the time afforded. Westminster under Dr. Busby may not +have been the gentlest of academies, but at least it provided Locke +with an admirable training in the classics. He himself, indeed, in +the <i>Thoughts on Education</i> doubted the value of such +exercises; nor does he seem to have conceived any affection for +Oxford whither he proceeded in 1652 as a junior student of Christ +Church. The university was then under the Puritan control of Dr. +John Owen; but not even his effort to redeem the university from +its reputation for intellectual laxity rescued it from the +"wrangling and ostentation" of the <a name="page33" id= +"page33"></a>peripatetic philosophy. Yet it was at Oxford that he +encountered the work of Descartes which first attracted him to +metaphysics. There, too, he met Pocock, the Arabic scholar, and +Wallis the mathematician, who must at least have commanded his +respect. In 1659 he accepted a Senior Studentship of his college, +which he retained until he was deemed politically undesirable in +1684. After toying with his father's desire that he should enter +the Church, he began the study of medicine. Scientific interest won +for him the friendship of Boyle; and while he was administering +physic to the patients of Dr. Thomas, he was making the +observations recorded in Boyle's <i>History of the Air</i> which +Locke himself edited after the death of his friend.</p> +<p>Meanwhile accident had turned his life into far different paths. +An appointment as secretary to a special ambassador opened up to +him a diplomatic career; but his sturdy commonsense showed him his +unfitness for such labors. After his visit to Prussia he returned +to Oxford, and there, in 1667, in the course of his medical work, +he met Anthony Ashley, the later <a name="page34" id= +"page34"></a>Lord Shaftesbury and the Ahitophel of Dryden's great +satire. The two men were warmly attracted to each other, and Locke +accepted an appointment as physician to Lord Ashley's household. +But he was also much more than this. The tutor of Ashley's +philosophic grandson, he became also his patron's confidential +counsellor. In 1663 he became part author of a constitutional +scheme for Carolina which is noteworthy for its emphasis, thus +early, upon the importance of religious toleration. In 1672, when +Ashley became Lord Chancellor, he became Secretary of Presentations +and, until 1675, Secretary to the Council of Trade and Foreign +Plantations. Meanwhile he carried on his medical work and must have +obtained some reputation in it; for he is honorably mentioned by +Sydenham, in his <i>Method of Curing Fevers</i> (1676), and had +been elected to the Royal Society in 1668. But his real genius lay +in other directions.</p> +<p>Locke himself has told us how a few friends began to meet at his +chamber for the discussions of questions which soon passed into +metaphysical enquiry; and a page from a commonplace book of 1671 +<a name="page35" id="page35"></a>is the first beginning of his +systematic work. Relieved of his administrative duties in 1675, he +spent the next four years in France, mainly occupied with medical +observation. He returned to England in 1679 to assist Lord +Shaftesbury in the passionate debates upon the Exclusion Bill. +Locke followed his patron into exile, remaining abroad from 1683 +until the Revolution. Deprived of his fellowship in 1684 through +the malice of Charles II, he would have been without means of +support had not Shaftesbury bequeathed him a pension. As it was, he +had no easy time. His extradition was demanded by James II after +the Monmouth rebellion; and though he was later pardoned he refused +to return to England until William of Orange had procured his +freedom. A year after his return he made his appearance as a +writer. The <i>Essay Concerning Human Understanding</i> and the +<i>Two Treatises of Government</i> were both published in 1690. +Five years earlier the <i>Letter Concerning Toleration</i> was +published in its Latin dress; and four years afterwards an English +translation appeared. This last, however, perhaps on <a name= +"page36" id="page36"></a>grounds of expediency, Locke never +acknowledged until his will was published; for the time was not yet +suited to such generous speculations. Locke was thus in his +fifty-eighth year when his first admitted work appeared. But the +rough attempts at the essay date from 1671, and hints towards the +<i>Letter on Toleration</i> can be found in fragments of various +dates between the twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years of his life. +Of the <i>Two Treatises</i> the first seems to have been written +between 1680 and 1685, the second in the last year of his Dutch +exile.<span class="fnref"><a name="fnref1" id="fnref1" href= +"#fn1">[1]</a></span></p> +<div class="fn"><span class="fnnum"><a name="fn1" id="fn1" href= +"#fnref1">[1]</a></span> On the evidence for these dates see the +convincing argument of Mr. Fox-Bourne in his <i>Life of Locke</i>, +Vol. II, pp. 165-7.</div> +<p>The remaining fourteen years of Locke's life were passed in +semi-retirement in East Anglia. Though he held public office, first +as Commissioner of Appeals, and later of Trade, for twelve years, +he could not stand the pressure of London writers, and his public +work was only intermittent. His counsel, nevertheless, was highly +valued; and he seems to have won no small confidence from William +in diplomatic matters. Somers and Charles Montagu held him in high +respect, and he <a name="page37" id="page37"></a>had the warm +friendship of Sir Isaac Newton. He published some short discussions +on economic matters, and in 1695 gave valuable assistance in the +destruction of the censorship of the press. Two years earlier he +had published his <i>Thoughts on Education</i>, in which the +observant reader may find the germ of most of Emile's ideas. He did +not fail to revise the <i>Essay</i> from time to time; and his +<i>Reasonableness of Christianity</i>, which, through Toland, +provoked a reply from Stillingfleet and showed Locke in retort a +master of the controversial art, was in some sort the foundation of +the deistic debate in the next epoch. But his chief work had +already been done, and he spent his energies in rewarding the +affection of his friends. Locke died on October 28, 1704, amid +circumstances of singular majesty. He had lived a full life, and +few have so completely realized the medieval ideal of specializing +in omniscience. He left warm friends behind him; and Lady Masham +has said of him that beyond which no man may dare to +aspire.<span class="fnref"><a name="fnref2" id="fnref2" href= +"#fn2">[2]</a></span></p> +<div class="fn"><span class="fnnum"><a name="fn2" id="fn2" href= +"#fnref2">[2]</a></span> Fox-Bourne, <i>op. cit</i>. Letter from +Lady Masham to Jean le Clerc.</div> +<a name="page38" id="page38"></a> +<h4>III</h4> +<p>Locke's <i>Two Treatises of Government</i> are different both in +object and in value. The first is a detailed and tiresome response +to the historic imagination of Sir Robert Filmer. In his +<i>Patriarcha</i>, which first saw the light in 1680, though it had +been written long before, the latter had sought to reach the +ultimate conclusion of Hobbes without the element of contract upon +which the great thinker depended. "I consent with him," said Filmer +of Hobbes, "about the Rights of <i>exercising</i> Government, but I +cannot agree to his means of acquiring it." That power must be +absolute, Filmer, like Hobbes, has no manner of doubt; but his +method of proof is to derive the title of Charles I from Adam. +Little difficulties like the origin of primogeniture, or whence, as +Locke points out, the universal monarchy of Shem can be derived, +the good Sir Robert does not satisfactorily determine. Locke takes +him up point by point, and there is little enough left, save a +sense that history is the root of institutions, when he has done. +What troubles us is rather why <a name="page39" id= +"page39"></a>Locke should have wasted the resources of his +intelligence upon so feeble an opponent. The book of Hobbes lay +ready to his hand; yet he almost ostentatiously refused to grapple +with it. The answer doubtless lies in Hobbes' unsavory fame. The +man who made the Church a mere department of the State and +justified not less the title of Cromwell than of the Stuarts was +not the opponent for one who had a very practical problem in hand. +And Locke could answer that he was answering Hobbes implicitly in +the second <i>Treatise</i>. And though Filmer might never have been +known had not Locke thus honored him by retort, he doubtless +symbolized what many a nobleman's chaplain preached to his master's +dependents at family prayers.</p> +<p>The <i>Second Treatise</i> goes to the root of the matter. Why +does political power, "a Right of making Laws and Penalties of +Death and consequently all less Penalties," exist? It can only be +for the public benefit, and our enquiry is thus a study of the +grounds of political obedience. Locke thus traverses the ground +Hobbes had covered in his <i>Leviathan</i> though he rejects +<a name="page40" id="page40"></a>every premise of the earlier +thinker. To Hobbes the state of nature which precedes political +organization had been a state of war. Neither peace nor reason +could prevail where every man was his neighbor's enemy; and the +establishment of absolute power, with the consequent surrender by +men of all their natural liberties, was the only means of escape +from so brutal a régime. That the state of nature was so +distinguished Locke at the outset denies. The state of nature is +governed by the law of nature. The law of nature is not, as Hobbes +had made it, the antithesis of real law, but rather its condition +antecedent. It is a body of rules which governs, at all times and +all places, the conduct of men. Its arbiter is reason and, in the +natural state, reason shows us that men are equal. From this +equality are born men's natural rights which Locke, like the +Independents in the Puritan Revolution, identifies with life, +liberty and property. Obviously enough, as Hobbes had also granted, +the instinct to self-preservation is the deepest of human impulses. +By liberty Locke means the right of the individual to follow his +own <a name="page41" id="page41"></a>bent granted only his +observance of the law of nature. Law, in such an aspect, is clearly +a means to the realization of freedom in the same way that the rule +of the road will, by its common acceptance, save its observers from +accident. It promotes the initiative of men by defining in terms +which by their very statement obtain acknowledgment the conditions +upon which individual caprice may have its play. Property Locke +derives from a primitive communism which becomes transmuted into +individual ownership whenever a man has mingled his labor with some +object. This labor theory of ownership lived, it may be remarked, +to become, in the hands of Hodgskin and Thompson, the parent of +modern socialism.</p> +<p>The state of nature is thus, in contrast to the argument of +Hobbes, pre-eminently social in character. There may be war or +violence; but that is only when men have abandoned the rule of +reason which is integral to their character. But the state of +nature is not a civil State. There is no common superior to enforce +the law of nature. Each man, as best he may, works out his own +interpretation of it. But <a name="page42" id="page42"></a>because +the intelligences of men are different there is an inconvenient +variety in the conceptions of justice. The result is uncertainty +and chaos; and means of escape must be found from a condition which +the weakness of men must ultimately make intolerable. It is here +that the social contract emerges. But just as Locke's natural state +implies a natural man utterly distinct from Hobbes' gloomy picture, +so does Locke's social contract represent rather the triumph of +reason than of hard necessity. It is a contract of each with all, a +surrender by the individual of his personal right to fulfil the +commands of the law of nature in return for the guarantee that his +rights as nature ordains them—life and liberty and +property—will be preserved. The contract is thus not general +as with Hobbes but limited and specific in character. Nor is it, as +Hobbes made it, the resignation of power into the hands of some +single man or group. On the contrary, it is a contract with the +community as a whole which thus becomes that common political +superior—the State—which is to enforce the law of +nature and punish infractions of it. Nor <a name="page43" id= +"page43"></a>is Locke's state a sovereign State: the very word +"sovereignty" does not occur, significantly enough, throughout the +treatise. The State has power only for the protection of natural +law. Its province ends when it passes beyond those boundaries.</p> +<p>Such a contract, in Locke's view, involves the pre-eminent +necessity of majority-rule. Unless the minority is content to be +bound by the will of superior numbers the law of nature has no more +protection than it had before the institution of political society. +And it is further to be assumed that the individual has surrendered +to the community his individual right of carrying out the judgment +involved in natural law. Whether Locke conceived the contract so +formulated to be historical, it is no easy matter to determine. +That no evidence of its early existence can be adduced he ascribes +to its origin in the infancy of the race; and the histories of Rome +and Sparta and Venice seem to him proof that the theory is somehow +demonstrable by facts. More important than origins, he seems to +deem its implications. He has placed consent in the foreground of +the argument; and he <a name="page44" id="page44"></a>was anxious +to establish the grounds for its continuance. Can the makers of the +original contract, that is to say, bind their successors? If +legitimate government is based upon the consent of its subjects, +may they withdraw their consent? And what of a child born into the +community? Locke is at least logical in his consent. The contract +of obedience must be free or else, as Hooker had previously +insisted, it is not a contract. Yet Locke urged that the primitive +members of a State are bound to its perpetuation simply because +unless the majority had power to enforce obedience government, in +any satisfactory sense, would be impossible. With children the case +is different. They are born subjects of no government or country; +and their consent to its laws must either be derived from express +acknowledgment, or by the tacit implication of the fact that the +protection of the State has been accepted. But no one is bound +until he has shown by the rule of his mature conduct that he +considers himself a common subject with his fellows. Consent +implies an act of will and we must have evidence to infer its +presence before the rule of subjection can be applied.</p> +<a name="page45" id="page45"></a> +<p>We have thus the State, though the method of its organization is +not yet outlined. For Locke there is a difference, though he did +not explicitly describe its nature, between State and Government. +Indeed he sometimes approximates, without ever formally adopting, +the attitude of Pufendorf, his great German contemporary, where +government is derived from a secondary contract dependent upon the +original institution of civil society. The distinction is made in +the light of what is to follow. For Locke was above all anxious to +leave supreme power in a community whose single will, as manifested +by majority-verdict, could not be challenged by any lesser organ +than itself. Government there must be if political society is to +endure; but its form and substance are dependent upon popular +institution.</p> +<p>Locke follows in the great Aristotelian tradition of dividing +the types of government into three. Where the power of making laws +is in a single hand we have a monarchy; where it is exercised by a +few or all we have alternatively oligarchy and democracy. The +disposition of the legislative power is the fundamental test of +<a name="page46" id="page46"></a>type; for executive and judiciary +are clearly dependent on it. Nor, as Hobbes argued, is the form of +government permanent in character; the supreme community is as +capable of making temporary as of registering irrevocable +decisions. And though Locke admits that monarchy, from its likeness +to the family, is the most primitive type of government, he denies +Hobbes' assertion that it is the best. It seems, in his view, +always to degenerate into the hands of lesser men who betray the +contract they were appointed to observe. Nor is oligarchy much +better off since it emphasizes the interest of a group against the +superior interest of the community as a whole. Democracy alone +proffers adequate safeguards of an enduring good rule; a democracy, +that is to say, which is in the hands of delegates controlled by +popular election. Not that Locke is anxious for the abolition of +kingship. His letters show that he disliked the Cromwellian system +and the republicanism which Harrington and Milton had based upon +it. He was content to have a kingship divested of legislative power +so long as hereditary succession was <a name="page47" id= +"page47"></a>acknowledged to be dependent upon popular consent. The +main thing was to be rid of the Divine Right of kings.</p> +<p>We have thus an organ for the interpretation of natural law free +from the shifting variety of individual judgment. We have a means +for securing impartial justice between members of civil society, +and to that means the force of men has been surrendered. The +formulation of the rules by which life, liberty and property are to +be secured is legislation and this, from the terms of the original +contract, is the supreme function of the State. But, in Locke's +view, two other functions still remain. Law has not only to be +declared. It must be enforced; and the business of the executive is +to secure obedience to the command of law. But Locke here makes a +third distinction. The State must live with other States, both as +regards its individual members, and as a collective body; and the +power which deals with this aspect of its relationships, Locke +termed "federative." This last distinction, indeed, has no special +value; and its author's own defence of it is far from clear. More +important, especially, for future history, <a name="page48" id= +"page48"></a>was his emphasis of the distinction between +legislature and executive. The making of laws is for Locke a +relatively simple and rapid task; the legislature may do its work +and be gone. But those who attend to their execution must be +ceaseless in their vigilance. It is better, therefore, to separate +the two both as to powers and persons. Otherwise legislators "may +exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit +the law, both in its making and its execution, to their own private +wish, and thereby come to have a distinct interest from the rest of +the community, contrary to the end of society and government." The +legislator must therefore be bound by his own laws; and he must be +chosen in such fashion that the representative assembly may fairly +represent its constituencies. It was the patent anomalies of the +existent scheme of distribution which made Locke here proffer his +famous suggestion that the rotten boroughs should be abolished by +executive act. One hundred and forty years were still to pass +before this wise suggestion was translated into statute.</p> +<p>Though Locke thus insisted upon the <a name="page49" id= +"page49"></a>separation of powers, he realized that emergencies are +the parent of special need; and he recognized that not only may the +executive, as in England, share in the task of legislation, but +also may issue ordinances when the legislature is not in session, +or act contrary to law in case of grave danger. Nor can the +executive be forced to summon the legislature. Here, clearly +enough, Locke is generalizing from the English constitution; and +its sense of compromise is implicit in his remarks. Nor is his +surrender here of consent sufficient to be inconsistent with his +general outlook. For at the back of each governmental act, there +is, in his own mind, an active citizen body occupied in judging it +with single-minded reference to the law of nature and their own +natural rights. There is thus a standard of right and wrong +superior to all powers within the State. "A government," as he +says, "is not free to do as it pleases ... the law of nature stands +as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others." The +social contract is secreted in the interstices of public +statutes.</p> +<p>Its corollary is the right of revolution. <a name="page50" id= +"page50"></a>It is interesting that he should have adopted this +position; for in 1676 he had uttered the thought that not even the +demands of conscience<span class="fnref"><a name="fnref3" id= +"fnref3" href="#fn3">[3]</a></span> can justify rebellion. That +was, however, before the tyranny of Charles had driven him into +exile with his patron, and before James had attempted the +subversion of all constitutional government. To deny the right of +revolution was to justify the worst demands of James, and it is in +its favor that he exerts his ablest controversial power. "The true +remedy," he says, "of force without authority is to oppose force to +it." Let the sovereign but step outside the powers derived from the +social contract and resistance becomes a natural right. But how +define such invasion of powers? The instances Locke chose show how +closely, here at least, he was following the events of 1688. The +substitution of arbitrary will for law, the corruption of +Parliament by packing it with the prince's instruments, betrayal to +a foreign prince, prevention of the due assemblage of +Parliament—all these are a perversion of the trust imposed +and operate to effect the <a name="page51" id= +"page51"></a>dissolution of the contract. The state of nature again +supervenes, and a new contract may be made with one more fitted to +observe it. Here, also, Locke takes occasion to deny the central +position of Hobbes' thesis. Power, the latter had argued, must be +absolute and there cannot, therefore, be usurpation. But Locke +retorts that an absolute government is no government at all since +it proceeds by caprice instead of reason; and it is comparable only +to a state of war since it implies the absence of judgment upon the +character of power. It lacks the essential element of consent +without which the binding force of law is absent. All government is +a moral trust, and the idea of limitation is therein implied. But a +limitation without the means of enforcement would be worthless, and +revolution remains as the reserve power in society. The only +hindrance to its exertion that Locke suggests is that of number. +Revolution should not, he urges, be the act of a minority; for the +contract is the action of the major portion of the people and its +consent should likewise obtain to the dissolution of the +covenant.</p> +<div class="fn"><span class="fnnum"><a name="fn3" id="fn3" href= +"#fnref3">[3]</a></span> King, <i>Life of Locke</i>, pp. 62, +63.</div> +<a name="page52" id="page52"></a> +<p>The problem of Church and State demanded a separate discussion; +and it is difficult not to feel that the great <i>Letter on +Toleration</i> is the noblest of all his utterances. It came as the +climax to a long evolution of opinion; and, in the light of +William's own conviction, it may be said to have marked a decisive +epoch of thought. Already in the sixteenth century Robert Brown and +William the Silent had denounced the persecution of sincere belief. +Early Baptists like Busher and Richardson had finely denied its +validity. Roger Williams in America, Milton in England had attacked +its moral rightness and political adequacy; while churchmen like +Hales and Taylor and the noble Chillingworth had shown the +incompatibility between a religion of love and a spirit of hate. +Nor had example been wanting. The religious freedom of Holland was +narrow, as Spinoza had found, but it was still freedom. Rhode +Island, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Massachusetts had all +embarked upon admirable experiment; and Penn himself had aptly said +that a man may go to chapel instead of church, even while he +remains <a name="page53" id="page53"></a>a good constable. And in +1687, in the preface to his translation of Lactantius, Burnet had +not merely attacked the moral viciousness of persecution, but had +drawn a distinction between the spheres of Church and State which +is a remarkable anticipation of Locke's own theory.</p> +<p>Locke himself covers the whole ground; and since his opinions on +the problem were at least twenty years old, it is clear that he was +consistent in a worthy outlook. He proceeds by a denial that any +element of theocratic government can claim political validity. The +magistrate is concerned only with the preservation of social peace +and does not deal with the problem of men's souls. Where, indeed, +opinions destructive of the State are entertained or a party +subversive of peace makes its appearance, the magistrate has the +right of suppression; though in the latter case force is the worst +and last of remedies. In the English situation, it follows that all +men are to be tolerated save Catholics, Mahomedans and atheists. +The first are themselves deniers of the rights they would seek, and +they find the centre of their political allegiance in a foreign +<a name="page54" id="page54"></a>power. Mahomedan morals are +incompatible with European civil systems; and the central factor in +atheism is the absence of the only ultimately satisfactory sanction +of good conduct. Though Church and State are thus distinct, they +act for a reciprocal benefit; and it is thus important to see why +Locke insists on the invalidity of persecution. For such an end as +the cure of souls, he argues, the magistrate has no divine +legation. He cannot, on other grounds, use force for the simple +reason that it does not produce internal conviction. But even if +that were possible, force would still be mistaken; for the majority +of the world is not Christian, yet it would have the right to +persecute in the belief that it was possessed of truth. Nor can the +implication that the magistrate has the keys of heaven be accepted. +"No religion," says Locke finely, "which I believe not to be true +can be either true or profitable to me." He thus makes of the +Church an institution radically different from the ruling +conceptions of his time. It becomes merely a voluntary society, +which can exert no power save over its members. It may use its own +ceremonies, <a name="page55" id="page55"></a>but it cannot impose +them on the unwilling; and since persecution is alien from the +spirit of Christ, exclusion from membership must be the limit of +ecclesiastical disciplinary power. Nor must we forget the +advantages of toleration. Its eldest child is charity, and without +it there can be no honesty of opinion. Later controversy did not +make him modify these principles; and they lived, in Macaulay's +hands, to be a vital weapon in the political method of the +nineteenth century.</p> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p>Any survey of earlier political theory would show how little of +novelty there is in the specific elements of Locke's general +doctrine. He is at all points the offspring of a great and unbroken +tradition; and that not the least when he seems unconscious of it. +Definite teachers, indeed, he can hardly be said to have had; no +one can read his book without perceiving how much of it is rooted +in the problems of his own day. He himself has expressed his sense +of Hooker's greatness, and he elsewhere had recommended the works +of <a name="page56" id="page56"></a>Grotius and Pufendorf as an +essential element in education. But his was a nature which learned +more from men than books; and he more than once insisted that his +philosophy was woven of his own "coarse thoughts." What, doubtless, +he therein meant was to emphasize the freshness of his contact with +contemporary fact in contrast with the technical jargon of the +earlier thinkers. At least his work is free from the mountains of +allusion which Prynne rolled into the bottom of his pages; and if +the first Whig was the devil, he is singularly free from the +irritating pedantry of biblical citation. Yet even with these +novelties, no estimate of his work would be complete which failed +to take account of the foundations upon which he builded.</p> +<p>Herein, perhaps, the danger is lest we exaggerate Locke's +dependence upon the earlier current of thought. The social contract +is at least as old as when Glaucon debated with Socrates in the +market-place at Athens. The theory of a state of nature, with the +rights therein implied, is the contribution, through Stoicism, of +the Roman lawyers, and the great medieval <a name="page57" id= +"page57"></a>contrast to Aristotle's experimentalism. To the +latter, also, may be traced the separation of powers; and it was +then but little more than a hundred years since Bodin had been +taken to make the doctrine an integral part of scientific politics. +Nor is the theory of a right to revolution in any sense his +specific creation. So soon as the Reformation had given a new +perspective to the problem of Church and State every element of +Locke's doctrine had become a commonplace of debate. Goodman and +Knox among Presbyterians, Suarez and Mariana among Catholics, the +author of the <i>Vindiciæ</i> and Francis Hotman among the +Huguenots, had all of them emphasized the concept of public power +as a trust; with, of course, the necessary corollary that its abuse +entails resistance. Algernon Sydney was at least his acquaintance; +and he must have been acquainted with the tradition, even if +tragedy spared him the details, of the <i>Discourses on +Government</i>. Even his theory of toleration had in every detail +been anticipated by one or other of a hundred controversialists; +and his argument can hardly claim either the lofty eloquence +<a name="page58" id="page58"></a>of Jeremy Taylor or the cogent +simplicity of William Penn.</p> +<p>What differentiates Locke from all his predecessors is the +manner of his writing on the one hand, and the fact of the +Revolution on the other. Every previous thinker save +Sydney—the latter's work was not published until +1689—was writing with the Church hardly less in mind than the +purely political problems of the State; even the secular Hobbes had +devoted much thought and space to that "kingdom of darkness" which +is Rome. And, Sydney apart, the resistance they had justified was +always resistance to a religious tyrant; and Cartwright was as +careful to exclude political oppression from the grounds of +revolution as Locke was to insist upon it as the fundamental +excuse. Locke is, in fact, the first of English thinkers the basis +of whose argument is mainly secular. Not, indeed, that he can +wholly escape the trammels of ecclesiasticism; not until the +sceptical intelligence of Hume was such freedom possible. But it is +clear enough that Locke was shifting to very different ground from +that which arrested the attention of his predecessors. <a name= +"page59" id="page59"></a>He is attempting, that is to say, a +separation between Church and State not merely in that Scoto-Jesuit +sense which aimed at ecclesiastical independence, but in order to +assert the pre-eminence of the State as such. The central problem +is with him political, and all other questions are subsidiary to +it. Therein we have a sense, less clear in any previous writer save +Machiavelli, of the real result of the decay of medieval ideals. +Church and State have become transposed in their significance. The +way, as a consequence, lies open to new dogmas.</p> +<p>The historical research of the nineteenth century has long since +made an end of the social contract as an explanation of +state-origins; and with it, of necessity, has gone the conception +of natural rights as anterior to organized society. The problem, as +we now know, is far more complex than the older thinkers imagined. +Yet Locke's insistence on consent and natural rights has received +new meaning from each critical period of history since he wrote. +The theory of consent is vital because without the provision of +channels for its administrative expression, men tend to <a name= +"page60" id="page60"></a>become the creatures of a power ignorant +at once and careless of their will. Active consent on the part of +the mass of men emphasizes the contingent nature of all power and +is essential to the full realization of freedom; and the purpose of +the State, in any sense save the mere satisfaction of material +appetite, remains, without it, unfulfilled. The concept of natural +right is most closely related to this position. For so long as we +regard rights as no more than the creatures of law, there is at no +point adequate safeguard against their usurpation. A merely legal +theory of the State can never, therefore, exhaust the problems of +political philosophy.</p> +<p>No thinker has seen this fact more clearly than Locke; and if +his effort to make rights something more than interests under +juridical protection can not be accepted in the form he made it, +the underlying purpose remains. A State, that is to say, which aims +at giving to men the full capacity their trained initiative would +permit is compelled to regard certain things as beyond the action +of an ordinary legislature. What Stammler calls a <a name="page61" +id="page61"></a>"natural law with changing content"<span class= +"fnref"><a name="fnref4" id="fnref4" href= +"#fn4">[4]</a></span>—a content which changes with our +increasing power to satisfy demand—is essential if the state +is to live the life of law. For here was the head and centre of +Locke's enquiry. "What he was really concerned about," said T.H. +Green, "was to dispute 'the right divine of kings to govern +wrong.'" The method, as he conceived, by which this could be +accomplished was the limitation of power. This he effected by two +distinct methods, the one external, the other internal, in +character.</p> +<div class="fn"><span class="fnnum"><a name="fn4" id="fn4" href= +"#fnref4">[4]</a></span> Cf. my <i>Authority in the Modern +State</i>, p. 64., and the references there cited.</div> +<p>The external method has, at bottom, two sides. It is, in the +first place, achieved by a narrow definition of the purpose of the +state. To Locke the State is little more than a negative +institution, a kind of gigantic limited liability company; and if +we are inclined to cavil at such restraint, we may perhaps remember +that even to neo-Hegelians like Green and Bosanquet this negative +sense is rarely absent, in the interest of individual exertion. But +for Locke the real guarantee of right lies in another direction. +What his whole work <a name="page62" id="page62"></a>amounts to in +substance—it is a significant anticipation of +Rousseau—is a denial that sovereignty can exist anywhere save +in the community as a whole. A common political superior there +doubtless must be; but government is an organ to which omnipotence +is wanting. So far as there is a sovereign at all in Locke's book, +it is the will of that majority which Rousseau tried to disguise +under the name of the general will; but obviously the conception +lacks precision enough to give the notion of sovereignty the means +of operation. The denial is natural enough to a man who had seen, +under three sovereigns, the evils of unlimited power; and if there +is lacking to his doctrine the well-rounded logic of Hobbes' proof +that an unlimited sovereign is unavoidable, it is well to remember +that the shift of opinion is, in our own time, more and more in the +direction of Locke's attitude. That omnicompetence of Parliament +which Bentham and Austin crystallized into the retort to Locke +admits, in later hands, of exactly the amelioration he had in mind; +and its ethical inadequacy becomes the more obvious the more +closely it is studied.<span class="fnref"><a name="fnref5" id= +"fnref5" href="#fn5">[5]</a></span></p> +<div class="fn"><span class="fnnum"><a name="fn5" id="fn5" href= +"#fnref5">[5]</a></span> Cf. my <i>Problem of Sovereignty</i>, +Chap. I.</div> +<a name="page63" id="page63"></a> +<p>The internal limitation Locke suggested is of more doubtful +value. Government, he says, in substance, is a trustee and trustees +abuse their power; let us therefore divide it as to parts and +persons that the temptation to usurp may be diminished. There is a +long history to this doctrine in its more obvious form, and it is a +lamentable history. It tied men down to a tyrannous classification +which had no root in the material it was supposed to distinguish. +Montesquieu took it for the root of liberty; Blackstone, who should +have known better, repeated the pious phrases of the Frenchman; and +they went in company to America to persuade Madison and the Supreme +Court of the United States that only the separation of powers can +prevent the approach of tyranny. The facts do not bear out such +assumption. The division of powers means in the event not less than +their confusion. None can differentiate between the judge's +declaration of law and his making of it.<span class= +"fnref"><a name="fnref6" id="fnref6" href="#fn6">[6]</a></span> +Every government department is compelled to legislate, and, often +enough, to undertake <a name="page64" id="page64"></a>judicial +functions. The American history of the separation of powers has +most largely been an attempt to bridge them; and all that has been +gained is to drive the best talent, save on rare occasion, from its +public life. In France the separation of powers meant, until recent +times, the excessive subordination of the judiciary to the cabinet. +Nor must we forget, as Locke should have remembered, the plain +lesson of the Cromwellian constitutional experiments. That the +dispersion of power is one of the great needs of the modern State +at no point justifies the rigid categories into which Locke sought +its division.<span class="fnref"><a name="fnref7" id="fnref7" href= +"#fn7">[7]</a></span></p> +<div class="fn"><span class="fnnum"><a name="fn6" id="fn6" href= +"#fnref6">[6]</a></span> Cf. Mr. Justice Holmes' remarks in +<i>Jensen</i> v. <i>Southern Pacific</i>, 244 U.S. 221.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="fnnum"><a name="fn7" id="fn7" href= +"#fnref7">[7]</a></span> Cf. my <i>Authority in the Modern +State</i>, pp. 70 f.</div> +<p>Nor must we belittle the criticism, in its clearest form the +work of Fitz James Stephen,<span class="fnref"><a name="fnref8" id= +"fnref8" href="#fn8">[8]</a></span> that has been levelled at +Locke's theory of toleration. For the larger part of the modern +world, his argument is acceptable enough; and its ingenious +compromises have made it especially representative of the English +temper. Yet much of it hardly meets the argument that some of his +opponents, as Proast for example, <a name="page65" id= +"page65"></a>had made. His conception of the visible church as no +part of the essence of religion could win no assent from even a +moderate Anglican; and, once the visible church is admitted, +Locke's facile distinction between Church and State falls to the +ground. Nor can it be doubted that he underestimated the power of +coercion to produce assent; the policy of Louis XIV to the +Huguenots may have been brutal, but its efficacy must be +unquestionable. And it is at least doubtful whether his theory has +any validity for a man who held, as Roman Catholics of his +generation were bound to hold, that the communication of his +particular brand of truth outweighed in value all other questions. +"Every Church," he wrote, "is orthodox to itself; to others, +erroneous or heretical"; but to any earnest believer this would +approximate to blasphemy. Nor could any serious Christian accept +the view that "under the gospel '...there is no such thing as a +Christian commonwealth'"; to Catholics and Presbyterians this must +have appeared the merest travesty of their faith.</p> +<div class="fn"><span class="fnnum"><a name="fn8" id="fn8" href= +"#fnref8">[8]</a></span> Cf. also Coleridge's apt remark. <i>Table +Talk</i>, Jan. 3, 1834.</div> +<p>Here, indeed, as elsewhere Locke is the <a name="page66" id= +"page66"></a>true progenitor of Benthamism, and his work can hardly +be understood save in this context. Just as in his ethical +enquiries it was always the happiness of the individual that he +sought, so in his politics it was the happiness of the subject he +had in view. In each case it was to immediate experience that he +made his appeal; and this perhaps explains the clear sense of a +contempt for past tradition which pervades all his work. "That +which is for the public welfare," he said, "is God's will"; and +therein we have the root of that utilitarianism which, as Maine +pointed out, is the real parent of all nineteenth century change. +And with Locke, as with the Benthamites, his clear sense of what +utilitarianism demanded led to an over-emphasis of human +rationalism. No one can read the <i>Second Treatise</i> without +perceiving that Locke looked upon the State as a machine which can +be built and taken to pieces in very simple fashion. Herein, +undoubtedly, he over-simplified the problem; and that made him miss +some of the cardinal points a true psychology of the State must +seize. His very contractualism, indeed, is part of this affection +for the <a name="page67" id="page67"></a>rational. It resulted in +his failure to perceive how complex is the mass of motives imbedded +in the political act. The significance of herd instinct and the +vast primitive deeps of the unconscious were alike hidden from him. +All this is of defect; and yet excusably. For it needed the +demonstration by Darwin of the kinship of man and beast for us to +see the real substance of Aristotle's vision that man is embedded +in political society.</p> +<h4>V</h4> +<p>Once Locke's work had become known, its reputation was secure. +Not, indeed, that it was entirely welcome to his generation. Men +were not wanting who shrank from his thoroughgoing rationalism and +felt that anything but reason must be the test of truth. Those who +stood by the ancient ways found it easy to discover republicanism +and the roots of atheistic doctrine in his work; and even the +theories of Filmer could find defenders against him in the Indian +summer of prerogative under Queen Anne. John Hutton informed a +friend that he was not less dangerous <a name="page68" id= +"page68"></a>than Spinoza; and the opinion found an echo from the +nonjuring sect. But these, after all, were but the eddies of a +stream fast burying itself in the sands. For most, the Revolution +was a final settlement, and Locke was welcome as a writer who had +discovered the true source of political comfort. So it was that +William Molyneux could embody the ideas of the "incomparable +treatise" in his demand for Irish freedom; a book which, even in +those days, occasioned some controversy. Nor is it uninteresting to +discover that the translation of Hotman's <i>Franco-Gallia</i> +should have been embellished with a preface from one who, as +Molyneux wrote to Locke,<span class="fnref"><a name="fnref9" id= +"fnref9" href="#fn9">[9]</a></span> never met the Irish writer +without conversing of their common master. How rapidly the doctrine +spread we learn from a letter of Bayle's in which, as early as +1693, Locke has already became "the gospel of the Protestants." Nor +was his immediate influence confined to England. French Huguenots +and the Dutch drew naturally upon so happy a defender; and +Barbeyrac, in the translation of Pufendorf which he published in +1706, cites no <a name="page69" id="page69"></a>writer so often as +Locke. The speeches for the prosecution in the trial of Sacheverell +were almost wholesale adaptations of his teaching; and even the +accused counsel admitted the legality of James' deposition in his +speech for the defence.</p> +<div class="fn"><span class="fnnum"><a name="fn9" id="fn9" href= +"#fnref9">[9]</a></span> Locke, Works (ed. of 1812), IX. 435.</div> +<p>More valuable testimony is not wanting. In the <i>Spectator</i>, +on six separate occasions, Addison speaks of him as one whose +possession is a national glory. Defoe in his <i>Original Power of +the People of England</i> made Locke the common possession of the +average man, and offered his acknowledgments to his master. Even +the malignant genius of Swift softened his hate to find the epithet +"judicious" for one in whose doctrines he can have found no +comfort. Pope summarized his teaching in the form that Bolingbroke +chose to give it. Hoadly, in his <i>Original and Institution of +Civil Government</i>, not only dismisses Filmer in a first part +each page of which is modelled upon Locke, but adds a second +section in which a defence of Hooker serves rather clumsily to +conceal the care with which the <i>Second Treatise</i> had also +been pillaged. Even Warburton ceased for a moment his habit of +belittling <a name="page70" id="page70"></a>all rivals in the field +he considered his own to call him, in that <i>Divine Legation</i> +which he considered his masterpiece, "the honor of this age and the +instructor of the future"; but since Warburton's attack on the High +Church theory is at every point Locke's argument, he may have +considered this self-eulogy instead of tribute. Sir Thomas Hollis, +on the eve of English Radicalism, published a noble edition of his +book. And there is perhaps a certain humor in the remembrance that +it was to Locke's economic tracts that Bolingbroke went for the +arguments with which, in the <i>Craftsman</i>, he attacked the +excise scheme of Walpole. That is irrefutable evidence of the +position he had attained.</p> +<p>Yet the tide was already on the ebb, and for cogent reasons. +There still remained the tribute to be paid by Montesquieu when he +made Locke's separation of powers the keystone of his own more +splendid arch. The most splendid of all sciolists was still to use +his book for the outline of a social contract more daring even than +his own. The authors of the <i>Declaration of Independence</i> had +still, in words taken from Locke, to reassert the <a name="page71" +id="page71"></a>state of nature and his rights; and Mr. Martin of +North Carolina was to find him quotable in the debates of the +Philadelphia Convention. Yet Locke's own weapons were being turned +against him and what was permanent in his work was being cast into +the new form required by the time. A few sentences of Hume were +sufficient to make the social contract as worthless as the Divine +Right of kings, and when Blackstone came to sum up the result of +the Revolution, if he wrote in contractual terms it was with a full +admission that he was making use of fiction so far as he went +behind the settlement of 1688. Nor is the work of Dean Tucker +without significance. The failure of England in the American war +was already evident; and it was not without justice that he looked +to Locke as the author of their principles. "The Americans," he +wrote, "have made the maxims of Locke the ground of the present +war"; and in his <i>Treatise Concerning Civil Government</i> and +his <i>Four Letters</i> he declares himself unable to understand on +what Locke's reputation was based. Meanwhile the English disciples +of Rousseau in the persons of Price <a name="page72" id= +"page72"></a>and Priestley suggested to him that Locke, "the idol +of the levellers of England," was the parent also of French +destructiveness. Burke took up the work thus begun; and after he +had dealt with the contract theory it ceased to influence political +speculation in England. Its place was taken by the utilitarian +doctrine which Hume had outlined; and once Bentham's +<i>Fragment</i> had begun to make its way, a new epoch opened in +the history of political ideas.</p> +<p>Locke might, indeed, claim that he had a part in this +renaissance; but, once the influence of Burke had passed, it was to +other gods men turned. For Bentham made an end of natural rights; +and his contempt for the past was even more unsparing than Locke's +own. It is more instructive to compare his work with Hobbes and +Rousseau than with later thinkers; for after Hume English +speculation works in a medium Locke would not have understood. +Clearly enough, he has nothing of the relentless logic which made +Hobbes' mind the clearest instrument in the history of English +philosophy. Nor has he Hobbes' sense of style or <a name="page73" +id="page73"></a>pungent grasp of the grimness of facts about him. +Yet he need not fear the comparison with the earlier thinker. If +Hobbes' theory of sovereignty is today one of the commonplaces of +jurisprudence, ethically and politically we occupy ourselves with +erecting about it a system of limitations each one of which is in +some sort due to Locke's perception. If we reject Locke's view of +the natural goodness of men, Hobbes' sense of their evil character +is not less remote from our speculations. Nor can we accept Hobbes' +Erastianism. Locke's view of Church and State became, indeed, a +kind of stepchild to it in the stagnant days of the later Georges; +but Wesleyanism, on the one hand, and the Oxford movement on the +other, pointed the inevitable moral of even an approximation to the +Hobbesian view. And anyone who surveys the history of Church and +State in America will be tempted to assert that in the last hundred +years the separateness for which Locke contended is not without its +justification. Locke's theory is a means of preserving the humanity +of men; Hobbes makes their reason and conscience the subjects of a +power he forbids <a name="page74" id="page74"></a>them to judge. +Locke saw that vigilance is the sister of liberty, where Hobbes +dismissed the one as faction and the other as disorder. At every +point, that is to say, where Hobbes and Locke are at variance, the +future has been on Locke's side. He may have defended his cause +less splendidly than his rival; but it will at least be admitted by +most that he had a more splendid cause to defend.</p> +<p>With Rousseau there is no contrast, for the simple reason that +his teaching is only a broadening of the channel dug by Locke. No +element integral to the <i>Two Treatises</i> is absent from the +<i>Social Contract</i>. Rousseau, indeed, in many aspects saw +deeper than his predecessor. The form into which he threw his +questions gave them an eternal significance Locke can perhaps +hardly claim. He understood the organic character of the State, +where Locke was still trammelled by the bonds of his narrow +individualism. It is yet difficult to see that the contribution +upon which Rousseau's fame has mainly rested is at any point a real +advance upon Locke. The general will, in practical instead of +semi-mystic terms, <a name="page75" id="page75"></a>really means +the welfare of the community as a whole; and when we enquire how +that general will is to be known, we come, after much shuffling, +upon the will of that majority in which Locke also put his trust. +Rousseau's general will, indeed, is at bottom no more than an +assertion that right and truth should prevail; and for this also +Locke was anxious. But he did not think an infallible criterion +existed for its detection; and he was satisfied with the +convenience of a simple numerical test. Nor would it be difficult +to show that Locke's state has more real room for individuality +than Rousseau's. The latter made much show of an impartible and +inalienable sovereignty eternally vested in the people; but in +practice its exercise is impossible outside the confines of a +city-state. Once, that is to say, we deal with modern problems our +real enquiry is still the question of Locke—what limits shall +we place upon the power of government? Rousseau has only emphasized +the urgency of the debate.</p> +<p>Wherein, perhaps, the most profound distinction between Locke's +teaching and our own time may be discovered is in our <a name= +"page76" id="page76"></a>sense of the impossibility that a final +answer can be found to political questions. Each age has new +materials at its command; and, today, a static philosophy would +condemn itself before completion. We do not build Utopias; and the +attempt to discover the eternal principles of political right +invites disaster at the outset. Yet that does not render useless, +even for our own day, the kind of work Locke did. In the largest +sense, his questions are still our own. In the largest sense, also, +we are near enough to his time to profit at each step of our own +efforts by the hints he proffers. The point at which he stood in +English history bears not a little resemblance to our own. The +emphasis, now as then, is upon the problem of freedom. The problem, +now as then, was its translation into institutional terms. It is +the glory of Locke that he brought a generous patience and a +searching wisdom to the solution he proffered to his +generation.</p> +<hr class="long" /> +<a name="page77" id="page77"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> +<h3>CHURCH AND STATE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p>The Revolution of 1688 drew its main source of strength from the +traditional dislike of Rome, and the eager desire to place the +Church of England beyond the reach of James' aggression. Yet it was +not until a generation had passed that the lines of ecclesiastical +settlement were, in any full sense clear. The difficulties involved +were mostly governmental, and it can hardly even yet be said that +they have been solved. The nature of the relation between Church +and State, the affiliation between the Church and Nonconformist +bodies, the character of its internal government—all these +had still to be defined. Nor was this all. The problem of +definition was made more complex by schism and disloyalty. An +important fraction of <a name="page78" id="page78"></a>the Church +could not accept at all the fact of William's kingship; and if the +larger part submitted, it cannot be said to have been +enthusiastic.</p> +<p>Nor did the Church make easy the situation of the +Nonconformists. Toleration of some kind was rapidly becoming +inevitable; and with a Calvinist upon the throne persecution of, at +any rate, the Presbyterians became finally impossible. Yet the +definition of what limits were to be set to toleration was far from +easy. The Church seemed like a fortress beleaguered when Nonjurors, +Deists, Nonconformists, all alike assaulted her foundations. To +loosen her hold upon political privilege seemed to be akin to +self-destruction. And, after all, if Church and State were to stand +in some connection, the former must have some benefit from the +alliance. Did such partnership imply exclusion from its privilege +for all who could not accept the special brand of religious +doctrine? Locke, at least, denied the assumption, and argued that +since Churches are voluntary societies, they cannot and ought not +to have reciprocal relation with the State. But Locke's theory was +meat <a name="page79" id="page79"></a>too strong for the digestion +of his time; and no statesman would then have argued that a +government could forego the advantage of religious support. And +William, after all, had come to free the church from her oppressor. +Freedom implied protection, and protection in that age involved +establishment. It was thus taken for granted by most members of the +Church of England that her adoption by the State meant her +superiority to every other form of religious organization. +Superiority is, by its nature exclusive, the more especially when +it is united to a certainty of truth and a kinship with the +dominant political interest of the time. Long years were thus to +pass before the real meaning of the Toleration Act secured +translation into more generous statutes.</p> +<p>The problem of the Church's government was hardly less complex. +The very acerbity with which it was discussed proclaims that we are +in an age of settlement. Much of the dispute, indeed, is doubtless +due to the dislike of all High Churchmen for William; with their +consequent unwillingness to admit the full meaning of <a name= +"page80" id="page80"></a>his ecclesiastical supremacy. Much also is +due to the fact that the bench of bishops, despite great figures +like Tillotson and Wake, was necessarily chosen for political +aptitude rather than for religious value. Nor did men like Burnet +and Hoadly, for all their learning, make easy the path for brethren +of more tender consciences. The Church, moreover, must have felt +its powers the more valuable from the very strength of the assault +to which she was subjected. And the direct interference with her +governance implied by the Oaths of Allegiance and of Abjuration +raised questions we have not yet solved. It suggested the +subordination of Church to State; and men like Hickes and Leslie +were quick to point out the Erastianism of the age. It is a fact +inevitable in the situation of the English Church that the charge +of subjection to the State should rouse a deep and quick +resentment. She cannot be a church unless she is a <i>societas +perfecta</i>; she cannot have within herself the elements of +perfect fellowship if what seem the plain commands of Christ are to +be at the mercy of the king in Parliament. That is the difficulty +which lies at <a name="page81" id="page81"></a>the bottom of the +debate with Wake in one age and with Hoadly in the next. In some +sort, it is the problem of sovereignty that is here at issue; and +it is in this sense that the problems of the Revolution are linked +with the Oxford Movement. But Newman and his followers are the +unconscious sponsors of a debate which grows in volume; and to +discuss the thoughts of Wake and Hoadly and Law is thus, in a vital +aspect, the study of contemporary ideas.</p> +<p>We are not here concerned with the wisdom of those of William's +advisers who exacted an oath of allegiance from the clergy. It +raised in acute form the validity of a doctrine which had, for more +than a century, been the main foundation of the alliance between +throne and altar in England. The demand precipitated a schism which +lingered on, though fitfully, until the threshold of the nineteenth +century. The men who could not take the oath were, many of them, +among the most distinguished churchmen of the time. Great +ecclesiastics like Sancroft, the archbishop of Canterbury and one +of the seven who had gained immortality by his <a name="page82" id= +"page82"></a>resistance to James, saints like Ken, the bishop of +Bath and Wells, scholars like George Hickes and Henry Dodwell, men +like Charles Leslie, born with a genius for recrimination; much, it +is clear, of what was best in the Church of England was to be found +amongst them. There is not a little of beauty, and much of pathos +in their history. Most, after their deprivation, were condemned to +poverty; few of them recanted. The lives of men like Sancroft and +Ken and the younger Ambrose Bonwicke are part of the great Anglican +tradition of earnest simplicity which later John Keble was to +illustrate for the nineteenth century. The Nonjurors, as they were +called, were not free from bitterness; and the history of their +effort, after the consecration of Hilkiah Bedford and Ralph Taylor, +to perpetuate the schism is a lamentable one. Not, indeed, that the +history even of their decline is without its interest; and the +study, alike of their liturgy and their attempt at reunion with the +Eastern Church, must always possess a singular interest for +students of ecclesiastical history.</p> +<p>Yet the real interest of the Nonjuring <a name="page83" id= +"page83"></a>schism was political rather than religious; and its +roots go out to vital events of the past. At the bottom it is the +obverse side of the Divine Right of kings that they represent. That +theory, which was the main weapon of the early secular state +against the pretensions of Rome, must naturally have commanded the +allegiance of members of a church which James I, its main exponent, +had declared of vital import to his very existence. Its main +opponents, moreover, were Catholics and Dissenters; so that men +like Andrewes must have felt that when they answered Bellarmine +they were in substance also defenders of their Church. After the +great controversy of James I's reign resistance as a duty had come +to be regarded as a main element in Jesuit and Nonconformist +teaching; with the result that its antithesis became, as a +consequence of the political situation, no less integral a part of +Church of England doctrine. For it was upon the monarchy that the +Church had come to depend for its existence; and if resistance to +the king were made, as Knox and Bellarmine had in substance made +it, the main weapon of the <a name="page84" id= +"page84"></a>dissenting churches there was little hope that it +would continue to exist once the monarchy was overthrown. And it is +this, unquestionably, which explains why stout ecclesiastics like +Barrow and Jackson can write in what seems so Erastian a temper. +When they urge the sovereignty of the State, their thesis is in +truth the sovereignty of the Church; and that means the triumph of +men who looked with contemptuous hatred upon Nonconformists of +every sect. The Church of England taught non-resistance as the +condition of its own survival.</p> +<p>How deep-rooted this doctrine had become in the course of the +seventeenth century the writings of men like Mainwaring and +Sanderson sufficiently show; yet nothing so completely demonstrates +its widespread acceptance as the result of the Revolution. Four +hundred clergy abandoned their preferment because James ruled by +Divine Right; and they could not in conscience resist even his +iniquities. An able tract of 1689<span class="fnref"><a name= +"fnref10" id="fnref10" href="#fn10">[10]</a></span> had collected +much material to show how <a name="page85" id="page85"></a>integral +the doctrine was to the beliefs of the Church. Had William's +government, indeed, refrained from the imposition of the oath, it +is possible that there might have been no schism at all; for the +early Nonjurors at least—perhaps Hickes and Turner are +exceptions—would probably have welcomed anything which +enabled the avoidance of schism. Once, however, the oath was +imposed three vital questions were raised. Deprivation obviously +involved the problem of the power of the State over the Church. If +the act of a convention whose own legality was at best doubtful +could deprive the consecrated of their position, was the Church a +Church at all, or was it the mere creature of the secular power? +And what, moreover, of conscience? It could not be an inherent part +of the Church's belief that men should betray their faith for the +sake of peace. Later thinkers added the purely secular argument +that resistance in one case made for resistance in all. Admit, it +was argued by Leslie, the right to disobey, and the fabric of +society is at a stroke dissolved. The attitude is characteristic of +that able controversialist; and <a name="page86" id="page86"></a>it +shows how hardly the earlier notions of Divine Right were to +die.</p> +<div class="fn"><span class="fnnum"><a name="fn10" id="fn10" href= +"#fnref10">[10]</a></span> <i>The History of Passive Obedience</i>. +Its author was Jeremy Collier.</div> +<p>These theories merit a further examination. Williams, later the +Bishop of Chichester, had argued that separation on the basis of +the oath was unreasonable. "All that the civil power here pretends +to," he wrote "is to secure itself against the practices of +dissatisfied persons." The Nonjurors, in this view, were making an +ecclesiastical matter of a purely secular issue. He was answered, +among others, by Samuel Grascom, in an argument which found high +favor among the stricter of his sect. "The matter and substance of +these Oaths," he said, "is put into the prayers of the Church, and +so far it becomes a matter of communion. What people are enjoined +in the solemn worship to pray for, is made a matter of communion; +and if it be simple, will not only justify, but require a +separation." Here is the pith of the matter. For if the form and +substance of Church affairs is thus to be left to governmental +will, then those who obey have left the Church and it is the +faithful remnant only who constitute the true fellowship. The +schism, in this <a name="page87" id="page87"></a>view, was the +fault of those who remained subject to William's dominion. The +Nonjurors had not changed; and they were preserving the Church in +its integrity from men who strove to betray it to the civil +power.</p> +<p>This matter of integrity is important. The glamour of Macaulay +has somewhat softened the situation of those who took the oaths; +and in his pages the Nonjurors appear as stupid men unworthily +defending a dead cause. It is worth while to note that this is the +merest travesty. Tillotson, who succeeded Sancroft on the latter's +deprivation, and Burnet himself had urged passive resistance upon +Lord William Russell as essential to salvation; Tenison had done +likewise at the execution of Monmouth. Stillingfleet, Patrick, +White Kennett, had all written in its favor; and to William +Sherlock belongs the privilege of having defended and attacked it +in two pamphlets each of which challenges the pithy brilliance of +the other. Clearly, so far as consistency is in question, the +Nonjurors might with justice contend that they had right on their +side. And even if it is said that the policy of <a name="page88" +id="page88"></a>James introduced a new situation the answer surely +is that Divine Right and non-resistance can, by their very nature, +make no allowance for novelty.</p> +<p>The root, then, of this ecclesiastical contention is the +argument later advanced by Leslie in his "Case of the Regale and +the Pontificate" in which he summarized the Convocation dispute. +The State, he argues, has no power over bishops whose relationship +to their flock is purely spiritual and derived from Christ. The +Church is independent of all civil institution, and must have +therefore within herself the powers necessary to her life as a +society. Leslie repudiates Erastianism in the strongest terms. Not +only is it, for him, an encroachment upon the rights of Christ, but +it leads to deism in the gentry and to dissent among the common +people. The Church of England comes to be regarded as no more than +the creature of Parliamentary enactment; and thus to leave it as +the creature of human votes, is to destroy its divinity.</p> +<p>It is easy enough to see that men who felt in this fashion could +hardly have decided otherwise than as they did. The <a name= +"page89" id="page89"></a>matter of conscience, indeed, was +fundamental to their position. "I think," said the Bishop of +Worcester on his death-bed, "I could suffer at a stake rather than +take this oath." That, indeed, represents the general temper. Many +of them did not doubt that James had done grievous wrong; but they +had taken the oath of allegiance to him, and they saw in their +conscience no means of escape from their vow. "Their Majesties," +writes the author of the account of Bishop Lake's death, "are the +two persons in the world whose reign over them, their interest and +inclination oblige them most to desire, and nothing but conscience +could restrain them from being as forward as any in all expressions +of loyalty." In such an aspect, even those who believe their +attitude to have been wrong, can hardly doubt that they acted +rightly in their expression of it. For, after all, experience has +shown that the State is built upon the consciences of men. And the +protest they made stands out in the next generation in vivid +contrast to a worldly-minded and politically-corrupt Church which +only internal revolution could awaken from its slumbers.</p> +<a name="page90" id="page90"></a> +<p>No one represents so admirably as Charles Leslie the political +argument of the case. At bottom it is an argument against anarchy +that he constructs, and much of what he said is medieval enough in +tone to suggest de Maistre's great defence of papalism as the +secret of world-order. He stands four square upon divine right and +passive obedience. "What man is he who can by his own natural +authority bend the conscience of another? That would be far more +than the power of life, liberty or prosperity. Therefore they saw +the necessity of a divine original." Such a foundation, he argued +elsewhere, is necessary to order, for "if the last resort be in the +people, there is no end of controversy at all, but endless and +unremediable confusion." Nor had he sympathy for the Whig attack on +monarchy. "The reasons against Kings," he wrote, "are as strong +against all powers, for men of any titles are subject to err, and +numbers more than fewer." And nothing can unloose the chain. +"Obedience," he said in the <i>Best of All</i>, "is due to +commonwealths by their subjects even for conscience' sake, where +<a name="page91" id="page91"></a>the princes from whom they have +revolted have given up their claim."</p> +<p>The argument has a wider history than its controversial +statement might seem to warrant. At bottom, clearly enough, it is +an attack upon the new tradition which Locke had brought into +being. What seems to impress it most is the impossibility of +founding society upon other than a divine origin. Anything less +will not command the assent of men sufficiently to be immune from +their evil passions. Let their minds but once turn to resistance, +and the bonds of social order will be broken. Complete submission +is the only safeguard against anarchy. So, a century later, de +Maistre could argue that unless the whole world became the subject +of Rome, the complete dissolution of Christian society must follow. +So, too, fifty years before, Hobbes had argued for an absolute +dominion lest the ambitions and desires of men break through the +fragile boundaries of the social estate.</p> +<p>The answer is clear enough; and, indeed, the case against the +Nonjurors is nowhere so strong as on its political side. Men cannot +be confined within the limits <a name="page92" id="page92"></a>of +so narrow a logic. They will not, with Bishop Ken, rejoice in +suffering as a doctrine of the Cross. Rather will oppression in its +turn arouse a sense of wrong and that be parent of a conscience +which provokes to action. Here was the root of Locke's doctrine of +consent; for unless the government, as Hume was later to point out, +has on its side the opinion of men, it cannot hope to endure. The +fall of James was caused, not as the Nonjurors were tempted to +think, by popular disregard of Divine personality, but by his own +misunderstanding of the limits to which misgovernment may go. Here +their opponents had a strong case to present; for, as Stillingfleet +remarked, if William had not come over there might have been no +Church of England for the Nonjurors to preserve. And other +ingenious compromises were suggested. Non-resistance, it was argued +by Sherlock, applied to government in general; and the oath, as a +passage in the <i>Convocation Book</i> of Overall seemed to +suggest, might be taken not less to a <i>de facto</i> monarch than +to one <i>de jure</i>. Few, indeed would have taken the ground of +Bishop Burnet, and allotted the <a name="page93" id= +"page93"></a>throne to William and Mary as conquerors of the +Kingdom; at least the pamphlet in which this uncomfortable doctrine +was put forward the House of Commons had burned by the common +hangman.</p> +<p>What really defeated the Nonjurors' claims was commonsense. Much +the ablest attack upon their position was Stillingfleet's defence +of the policy employed in filling up the sees vacated by +deprivation; and it is remarkable that the theory he employs is to +insist that unless the lawfulness of what had been done is +admitted, the Nonjuror's position is inevitable. "If it be unlawful +to succeed a deprived bishop," he wrote,<span class= +"fnref"><a name="fnref11" id="fnref11" href="#fn11">[11]</a></span> +"then he is the bishop of the diocese still: and then the law that +deprives him is no law, and consequently the king and Parliament +that made that law no king and Parliament: and how can this be +reconciled with the Oath of Allegiance, unless the Doctor can swear +allegiance to him who is no King and hath no authority to govern." +All this the Nonjurors would have admitted, and the <a name= +"page94" id="page94"></a>mere fact that it could be used as +argument against them is proof that they were out of touch with the +national temper. What they wanted was a legal revolution which is +in the nature of things impossible. We may regret that the oath was +deemed essential, and feel that it might not have been so stoutly +pressed. But the leaders of a revolution "tread a path of fire"; +and the fault lay less at the door of the civil government than in +the fact that this was an age when men acted on their principles. +William and his advisers, with the condition of Ireland and +Scotland a cause for agitation, with France hostile, with treason +and plot not absent from the episcopate itself, had no easy task; +what, in the temper of the time, gives most cause for +consideration, is the moderate spirit in which they accomplished +it.</p> +<div class="fn"><span class="fnnum"><a name="fn11" id="fn11" href= +"#fnref11">[11]</a></span> <i>A Vindication of their Majesties' +Authority to fill the Sees of the Deprived Bishops</i> +(1691).</div> +<h4>III</h4> +<p>The Nonjuring schism was by no means the only difficulty which +the Church of England had to confront in these troubled years. The +definition of her relationship with State and nation, if at the +moment it <a name="page95" id="page95"></a>aroused less bitterness, +was in the long run more intricate in its nature. That some sort of +toleration was inevitable few, save a group of prejudiced +irreconcilables, would have denied. But greater things were in the +air, and there were still many who dreamed of a grand scheme of +Comprehension, by which all save the more extreme Dissenters would +have been admitted to the Church. It is this which explains the +acrimonious debates of the next two years. The hatred of the Church +for dissent can only be understood by those who study with care the +insults heaped upon her by the sectaries during the Civil Wars. +That men who had striven for her dissolution should be admitted to +her privileges seemed to Churchmen as tragic as ironical. Nor must +we miss the political aspect of the matter. William had received an +eager, if natural, support from Nonconformists; and since the vast +majority of them was Whig in temper, the greater the degree of +toleration, the greater likelihood there was of an attack upon the +Church. Exclusion thus became a fundamental article of the Tory +creed; and it was the more valued <a name="page96" id= +"page96"></a>because it enabled them to strike at their opponents +through an institution which at the trial of Sacheverell, in 1710, +still showed an overwhelming hold upon the mass of the people.</p> +<p>The attitude of mind herein implied is in large part the +reaction from the Erastian temper of the government. Under William, +that temper is intelligible enough; for unless he held the Church +in strict control, he must have felt that he was giving a large +handle to his enemies. Under Anne, the essence of the situation +remained unchanged, even though her eager sympathy with the Church +was beyond all question. William had relieved Nonconformists from +the burden of penal statute; the Occasional Conformity Act of 1713 +broadly continued the exclusion of all save the more yielding of +them from political office. When the Hanoverians succeeded they +were willing to repeal its more rigid intolerance; but the Test Act +remained as evidence that the Dissenters were not yet regarded as +in a full sense part of the national life.</p> +<p>The reasons for the hatred of dissent go back in part <a name= +"page97" id="page97"></a>to the Civil War and in part also to the +feeling of common ground between the dissenting interest and Rome +which was born of the struggle under Elizabeth and James. The +pamphlets are innumerable; and most of them deserve the complete +obliquity into which they have fallen. We are told, in the +eighteenth as in the seventeenth century, that the Presbyterian +theory of government is inconsistent with the existence of the +civil power. "They claim," said Leslie, "power to abrogate the laws +of the land touching ecclesiastical matters, if they judge them +hurtful or unprofitable... They require the civil magistrate to be +subject to their power." Of Knox or Cartwright this is no unfair +account; but of the later Presbyterians it is the merest travesty. +It supposes that they would be willing to push to the utmost limit +the implications of the theory of the two kingdoms—a +supposition which their passive submission to the Act of 1712 +restoring lay patronage decisively refutes. Bramhall had no doubt +that their discipline was "the very quintessence of refined +popery," and the argument is repeated by a hundred less learned +pamphleteers. Neither the grim irony of <a name="page98" id= +"page98"></a>Defoe nor the proven facts of the case could wean +either the majority of Churchmen or the masses of the people from +the belief that the Revolution endangered the very existence of the +Church and that concession would be fatal. So stoutly did the +Church resist it that the accession of George I alone, in Lecky's +view, prevented the repeal of the Toleration Act and the +destruction of the political benefits of the Revolution.</p> +<p>But nowhere was the temper of the time more clearly displayed +than in the disputes over Convocation. To William's advisers, +perhaps, more than to the Church itself their precipitation is due; +for had they not, at the outset of the reign, suggested large +changes in the liturgy suspicions then aroused might well have +slumbered. As it was, the question of the royal supremacy +immediately came into view and the clergy spared no effort to meet +the issue so raised. And this they felt the more bitterly because +the upper house of Convocation, two-thirds of which were William's +nominees, naturally inclined to his side. Both under William and +Anne the dispute continued, <a name="page99" id="page99"></a>and +the lower clergy shrank from no opportunity of conflict. They +fought the king, the archbishop, the upper house. They attacked the +writings of Toland and Burnet, the latter's book since recognized +as one of the great treasures of Anglican literature. In the main, +of course, the struggle was part of the perennial conflict between +High Church doctrine and latitudinarianism. But that was only a +fragment of the issue. What really was in question was the nature +of the State's power over the Church. That could be left unanswered +so long, as with James I and Charles, the two powers had but a +single thought. The situation changed only when State and Church +had different policies to fulfil and different means for their +attainment.</p> +<p>The controversy had begun on the threshold of William's +accession; but its real commencement dates from 1697. In that year +was published the <i>Letter to a Convocation Man</i>, probably +written by Sir Bartholomew Shower, an able if unscrupulous Jacobite +lawyer, which maliciously, though with abounding skill, raised +every question that peaceful <a name="page100" id= +"page100"></a>churchmen must have been anxious to avoid. The +<i>Letter</i> pointed out the growth of infidelity and the +increasing suspicion that the Church was becoming tainted with +Socinian doctrine. Only the assembly of Convocation could arrest +these evils. The author did not deny that the king's assent was +necessary to its summons. But he argued that once the Convocation +had met, it could, like Parliament, debate all questions relevant +to its purpose. "The one of these courts," said Shower, "is of the +same power and use with regard to the Church as the other is in +respect to the State," and he insisted that the writ of summons +could not at any point confine debate. And since the Convocation +was an ecclesiastical Parliament, it followed that it could +legislate and thus make any canons "provided they do not impugn +common law, statutes, customs or prerogative." "To confer, debate +and resolve," said Shower, "without the king's license, is at +common law the undoubted right of convocation."</p> +<p>Here was a clear challenge which was at once answered, in <i>The +Authority of Christian Princes</i>, by William Wake, who <a name= +"page101" id="page101"></a>was by far the most learned of the +latitudinarian clergy, and the successor of Tenison in the see of +Canterbury. His argument was purely historical. He endeavored to +show that the right to summon ecclesiastical synods was always the +prerogative of the early Christian princes until the aggression of +the popes had won church independence. The Reformation resumed the +primitive practice; and the Act of Submission of 1532 had made it +legally impossible for the clergy to discuss ecclesiastical matters +without royal permission. Historically, the argument of Wake was +irrefutable; but what mostly impressed the Church was the +uncompromising Erastianism of his tone. Princes, he said, "may make +what laws or constitutions they think fit for the Church.... a +canon is but as matter prepared for the royal stamp." In this view, +obviously, the Church is more than a department of the State. But +Wake went even farther, "I cannot see why the Supreme Magistrate," +he wrote, "who confessedly has a power to confirm or reject their +(Convocation's) decrees, may not also make such other use of them +as he pleases, and <a name="page102" id="page102"></a>correct, +improve, or otherwise alter their resolutions, according to his own +liking, before he gives his authority to them."</p> +<p>So defined no Church could claim in any true sense the headship +of Christ; for it was clearly left at the mercy of the governmental +view of expedient conduct. Wake's answer aroused a sensation almost +as acute as the original <i>Letter</i> of Shower. But by far the +ablest criticism it provoked was that of Francis Atterbury, then a +young student of Christ Church and on the threshold of his +turbulent career. His <i>Rights, Powers and Privileges of an +English Convocation Stated and Vindicated</i> not only showed a +masterly historic sense in its effort to traverse the unanswerable +induction of Wake, but challenged his position more securely on the +ground of right. The historical argument, indeed, was not a safe +position for the Church, and Wake's rejoinder in his <i>State of +the Church</i> (1703) is generally conceded to have proved his +point, so far as the claim of prescription is concerned. But when +Atterbury moves to the deeper problem of what is involved in the +nature of a church, he has a powerful plea to <a name="page103" id= +"page103"></a>make. It is unnecessary now to deal with his +contention that Wake's defence of the Royal Supremacy undermines +the rights of Parliament; for Wake could clearly reply that the +seat of that power had changed with the advent of the Revolution. +Where the avoidance of sympathy is difficult is in his insistence +that no Church can live without an assembly to debate its problems, +and that no assembly can be real which is subject to external +control. "Their body," as he remarks, "will be useless to the State +and by consequence contemptible"; for its opinions will not be born +of that free deliberation which can alone ensure respect. Like all +High Churchmen, Atterbury has a clear sense that Church and State +can no longer be equated, and he is anxious to preserve the +personality of the Church from the invasions of an alien body. To +be real, it must be independent, and to be independent, it must +have organs of self-expression. But neither William nor Anne could +afford to forego the political capital involved in ecclesiastical +control and Erastian principles proceeded to their triumph.</p> +<p>Here, as elsewhere, it was Charles <a name="page104" id= +"page104"></a>Leslie who best summed up the feeling of High +Churchmen. His <i>Case of the Regale</i> (1701) is by far the +ablest of his many able performances. He saw at the outset that the +real issue was defined by the Church's claim to be a divine +society, with rights thus consecrated by the conditions of its +origin. If it was divine, invasion did not touch its <i>de jure</i> +rights. "How," he asked, "can rights that are divine be given up? +If they are divine, no human authority can either supersede or +limit them.... How can rights that are inherent be given up? If +they are inherent, they are inseparable. The right to meet, to +consult, to make rules or canons for the regulation of the society, +is essential to every society as such ... can she then part with +what is essential to her?" Nor could it be denied that "where the +choice of the governors of one society is in the hands of another +society, that society must be dependent and subject to the other." +The Church, in the Latitudinarian view was thus either the creature +of the state or an <i>imperium in imperio</i>; but Leslie would not +admit that fruitful stumbling block to the debate. "The <a name= +"page105" id="page105"></a>sacred and civil powers were like two +parallel lines which could never meet or interfere ... the +confusion arises ... when the civil power will take upon them to +control or give laws to the Church, in the exercise of her +spiritual authority." He did not doubt that the Church should give +securities for its loyalty to the king, and renounce any effort at +the coercion of the civil magistrate. But the Church was entitled +to a similar privilege, and kings should not "have their +beneficence and protection to the Church of Christ understood as a +bribe to her, to betray and deliver up into their hands the powers +committed into her charge by Christ." Nor did he fail to point out +the suicidal nature of Erastianism. For the church's hold upon men +is dependent upon their faith in the independence of her +principles. "When they see bishops," he wrote wisely, "made by the +Court, they are apt to imagine that they speak to them the court +language; and lay no further stress upon it than the charge of a +judge at an assizes, who has received his instructions beforehand +from the Court; and by this means the state has lost the greatest +security of her government."</p> +<a name="page106" id="page106"></a> +<p>The argument is powerful enough; though it should be noted that +some of its implications remain undetermined. Leslie does not say +how the spheres of Church and State are to be differentiated. He +does not explain the methods whereby an establishment is to be made +compatible with freedom. For it is obvious that the partnership of +Church and State must be upon conditions; and once the State had +permitted the existence of creeds other than that of its official +adoption, it could not maintain the exclusive power for which the +Church contended. And when the Church not only complained of +State-betrayal, but attempted the use of political means to enforce +remedial measures it was inevitable that statesmen would use the +weapons ready to their hand to coerce it to their will. The real +remedy for the High Churchmen was not exclusiveness but +disestablishment.</p> +<p>That this is the meaning of the struggle did not appear until +the reign of George I. What is known as the Bangorian controversy +was due to the posthumous publication, in 1716, of the papers of +George Hickes, the most celebrated of the <a name="page107" id= +"page107"></a>Nonjurors in his generation. The papers are of no +special import; but taken in connection with the Jacobite rising of +1715 they seemed to imply a new attack upon the Revolution +settlement. So, at least, they were interpreted by Benjamin Hoadly, +then Bishop of Bangor, and a stout upholder of the Latitudinarian +school. The conflict today has turned to dust and ashes; and few +who read the multitude of pamphlets it evoked, or stand amazed at +their personal bitterness, can understand why more than a hundred +writers should have thought it necessary to inform the world of +their opinions, or why the London Stock Exchange should have felt +so passionate an interest in the debate as to cease for a day the +hubbub of its transactions. Nor can any one make heroes from the +personalities of its protagonists. Hoadly himself was a typical +bishop of the political school, who rose from humble circumstances +to the wealthy bishopric of Winchester through a remarkable series +of translations. Before the debate of 1716, he was chiefly known by +two political tracts in which he had rewritten, in less cogent +form, and <a name="page108" id="page108"></a>without adequate +acknowledgment, the two treatises of Locke. He clearly realized how +worthless the dogma of Divine Right had become, without being +certain of the principles by which it was to be replaced. Probably, +as Leslie Stephen has pointed out, his theorizing is the result of +a cloudy sense of the bearing of the Deist controversy. If God is +to be banished from direct connection with earthly affairs, we must +seek a human explanation of political facts. And he became +convinced that this attitude applies not less completely to +ecclesiastical than to secular politics. Of his opponents, by far +the ablest was William Law, the only theologian whom Gibbon may be +said to have respected, and the parent, through his mystical +writings, of the Wesleyan movement. Snape, then Provost of Eton, +was always incisive; and his pamphlet went through seventeen +editions in a single year and provoked seven replies within three +months. Thomas Sherlock would not be either himself or his father's +son, were he not caustic, logical and direct. But Hoadly and Law +between them exhaust the controversy, so far as it has <a name= +"page109" id="page109"></a>meaning for our own day. The less +essential questions like Hoadly's choice of friends, his attitude +to prayer, the accuracy of the details in his account of the Test +Act, the cause of his refusal to answer Law directly, are hardly +now germane to the substance of the debate. Hoadly's position is +most fully stated in his <i>Preservative against the Principles and +Practice of Nonjurors</i> which he published in 1716 as a +counterblast to the papers of Hickes; and they are briefly +summarized in the sermon preached before the King on March 31, +1717, on the text "My Kingdom is not of this world," and published +by royal command. Amid a vast wilderness of quibbles and +qualifications, some simple points emerge. What he was doing was to +deprive the priesthood of claims to supernatural authority that he +might vindicate for civil government the right to preserve itself +not less against persons in ecclesiastical office than against +civil assailants. To do so he is forced to deny that the miraculous +powers of Christ and the Apostles descended to their successors. +For if that assumption is made we grant to fallible <a name= +"page110" id="page110"></a>men privileges which confessedly belong +to persons outside the category of fallibility. And, exactly in the +fashion of Leslie in the <i>Regale</i> he goes on to show that if a +Church is a supernatural institution, it cannot surrender one jot +or tittle of its prerogative. It is, in fact, an <i>imperium in +imperio</i> and its conflict with the state is inevitable. But if +the Church is not a supernatural institution, what is its nature? +Hoadly here attacks the doctrine which lies at the basis of all +ecclesiastical debate. The Church, he claims, is not a visible +society, presided over by men who have authority directly +transmitted by Christ. There are not within it "viceregents who can +be said properly to supply his place; no interpreters upon whom his +subjects are absolutely to depend; no judges over the conscience or +religion of his people. For if this were so that any such absolute +viceregent authority, either for the making of new laws, or +interpreting old ones, or judging his subjects, in religious +matters, were lodged in any men upon earth, the consequence would +be that what still retains the name of the Church of Christ would +not be the kingdom of <a name="page111" id="page111"></a>Christ, +but the kingdom of those men invested with such authority. For +whoever hath such an authority of making laws is so far a king, and +whoever can add new laws to those of Christ, equally obligatory, is +as truly a king as Christ himself. Nay, whosoever hath an absolute +authority to interpret any written or spoken laws, it is he who is +truly the lawgiver to all intents and purposes, and not the person +who first wrote and spoke them."</p> +<p>The meaning is clear enough. What Hoadly is attacking is the +theory of a visible Church of Christ on earth, with the immense +superstructure of miracle and infallibility erected thereon. The +true Church of Christ is in heaven; and the members of the earthly +society can but try in a human, blundering way, to act with decency +and justice. Apostolic succession, the power of excommunication, +the dealing out of forgiveness for men's sins, the determination of +true doctrine, insofar as the Church claims these powers, it is +usurping an authority that is not its own. The relation of man to +God is his private affair, and God will ask from him sincerity and +honesty, rather than judge <a name="page112" id="page112"></a>him +for his possession of some special set of dogmas. Clearly, +therefore, if the Church is no more than this, it has no +supernatural pretensions to oppose to the human claims of the +State. And since the State must have within itself all the means of +sufficient life, it has the right to resist the ecclesiastical +onslaught as based upon the usurpation of power assumed without +right. And in later treatises Hoadly did for ceremonial exactly +what he had done for church government. The eucharist became a +piece of symbolism and excommunication nothing more than an +announcement—"a mere external thing"—that the rules of +the fellowship have been broken. It at no point is related to the +sinner's opportunity of salvation.</p> +<p>In such an aspect, it would clearly follow that the Church has +no monopoly of truth. It can, indeed, judge its own beliefs; but +reason alone can demonstrate the inadequacy of other attitudes. Nor +does its judgment preclude the individual duty to examine into the +truth of things. The real root of faith is not the possession of an +infallible dogma, but the arriving honestly at the dogma in which +you <a name="page113" id="page113"></a>happen to believe. For the +magistrate, he urges, what is important is not the table of your +springs of action, but the conduct itself which is based upon that +table; from which it follows that things like the Test and +Corporation Acts have no real political validity. They have been +imposed upon the State by the narrow interpretations of an usurping +power; and the Nonconformist claim to citizenship would thus seem +as valid as that of a member of the Church of England.</p> +<p>All this sounds sensible enough; though it is curious doctrine +in the mouth of a bishop of that church. And this, in fact, is the +starting-point of Law's analysis of Hoadly. No one who reads the +unsparing vigor of his criticism can doubt that Law must have been +thoroughly happy in the composition of his defence; and, indeed, +his is the only contribution to the debate which may claim a +permanent place in political literature. In one sense, indeed, the +whole of Law's answer is an <i>ignoratio elenchi</i>, for he +assumes the truth of that which Hoadly sets out to examine, with +the inevitable result that each writer is, for the most part, +arguing from different <a name="page114" id="page114"></a>premises. +But on the assumption that Hoadly is a Christian, Law's argument is +an attack of great power. He shows conclusively that if the Church +of England is no more than Hoadly imagines it to be, it cannot, in +any proper historic sense, be called the Church of England at all. +For every one of the institutions which Hoadly calls an usurpation, +is believed by Churchmen to be integral to its nature. And if +sincerity alone is to count as the test, then there cannot, for the +existing world, be any such thing as objective religious truth. It +subverted not merely absolute authority—which the Church of +England did not claim—but any authority in the Church. It +impugned the authority of the Crown to enforce religious belief by +civil penalties. Hoadly's rejection of authority, moreover, is in +Law's view fatal to government of any kind. For all lawful +authority must affect eternal salvation insofar as to disobey it is +to sin. The authority the Church possesses is inherent in the very +nature of the Church; for the obligation to a belief in +Christianity is the same thing as to a belief in that Church which +can be shown to represent Christ's teaching.</p> +<a name="page115" id="page115"></a> +<p>From Law's own point of view, the logic of his position is +undeniable; and in his third letter to Hoadly, the real heart of +his attack, he touches the centre of the latter's argument. For if +it is sincerity which is alone important it would follow that +things false and wrong are as acceptable to God as things true and +right, which is patently absurd. Nor has Hoadly given us means for +the detection of sincerity. He seemed to think that anyone was +sincere who so thought himself; but, says Law, "it is also possible +and as likely for a man to be mistaken in those things which +constitute true sincerity as in those things which constitute true +religion." Clearly, sincerity cannot be the pith of the matter; for +it may be mistaken and directed to wrong ends. The State, in fact, +may respect conscience, but Hoadly is no more entitled to assume +the infallibility of private belief than he is to deny the +infallibility of the Church's teaching. That way lies anarchy.</p> +<p>Here, indeed, the antagonists were on common ground. Both had +denied the absolute character of any authority; but while Hoadly +virtually postulates a <a name="page116" id="page116"></a>Church +which logically is no more than those who accept the moral law as +Christ described it, Law restricts the Church to that society which +bears the traditional marks of the historic institution. On +Hoadly's principles, there was no reason why anyone not hostile to +the civil power should not enjoy political privilege; on Law's +there was every reason simply because those who denied the +doctrines of the High Church refused a truth open for their +acceptance. Law, indeed, goes so far as to argue that in the light +of his principles Hoadly should be a Deist; and there is ground for +what, in that age, was a valuable point to make. The sum total of +it all is that for the bishop the outward actions of men alone +concern the State; while Law insists that the root of action and +the test of fitness is whether men have seen a certain aspect of +the truth and grasped it.</p> +<p>The result, to say the least, was calamitous. In May of 1717, +convocation met and the Lower House immediately adopted an +unanimous report condemning the "Preservative" and the sermon. But +Hoadly had the government behind him <a name="page117" id= +"page117"></a>and the convocation was prorogued before further +action could be taken. Snape, Hare, Mosse and Sherlock, all of whom +were chaplains royal, and had been drawn into the conflict, were +dismissed from their office; and for more than one hundred and +thirty-five years convocation was not again summoned. It was a +striking triumph for Erastianism, though the more liberal +principles of Hoadly were less successful. Robert Walpole was on +the threshold of his power, and, as a manager of Sacheverell's +impeachment, he had seen the hold of the Church upon the common +people, may even, indeed, have remembered that Hoadly's own +dwelling had been threatened with destruction in the popular +excitement. <i>Quieta non movere</i> was his motto; and he was not +interested in the niceties of ecclesiastic metaphysic. So the Test +Act remained immovable until 1828; while the annual Act of +Indemnity for its infractions represented that English genius for +illogical mitigation which solves the deeper problems of principle +while avoiding the consideration of their substance.</p> +<p>In the hundred and twenty years which <a name="page118" id= +"page118"></a>passed between the Bangorian Controversy and the +Oxford Movement, there is only one volume upon the problem of +Church and State which deserves more than passing notice. Bishop +Warburton was the Lord Brougham of his age; and as its +self-constituted universal provider of intellectual fare, he deemed +it his duty to settle this, amongst others of the eternal +questions. The effort excited only the contempt of Leslie +Stephen—"the peculiar Warburton mixture," he says "of sham +logic and bluster." Yet that is hardly fair to the total result of +Warburton's remarks. He tried to steer a middle path between the +logical result of such Erastianism as that of the <i>Independent +Whig</i>, on the one hand, and the excessive claim of High +Churchmanship on the other. Naturally enough, or the writer would +not be Warburton, the book is full of tawdry rhetoric and stupid +quibbles. But the <i>Alliance between Church and State</i> (1736) +set the temper of speculation until the advent of Newman, and is +therefore material for something more than contempt. It acutely +points out that societies generate a <a name="page119" id= +"page119"></a>personality distinct from that of their members in +words reminiscent of an historic legal pronouncement.<span class= +"fnref"><a name="fnref12" id="fnref12" href="#fn12">[12]</a></span> +"When any number of men," he says, "form themselves into a society, +whether civil or religious, this society becomes a body different +from that aggregate which the number of individuals composed before +the society was formed.... But a body must have its proper +personality and will, which without these is no more than a shadow +or a name."</p> +<div class="fn"><span class="fnnum"><a name="fn12" id="fn12" href= +"#fnref12">[12]</a></span> Dicey, <i>Law and Opinion in England</i> +(2nd edition), p. 165.</div> +<p>And that is the root of Warburton's pronouncement. The Church is +a society distinct from the State, but lending to that body its +assistance because without the sanction of religion the full +achievement of the social purpose is impossible. There is thus an +alliance between them, each lending its support to the other for +their common benefit. The two remain distinct; the union between +them is of a federal kind. But they interchange their powers, and +this it is which explains at once the royal supremacy and the right +of Churchmen to a share in the legislature. <a name="page120" id= +"page120"></a>This also it is which explains the existence of a +Test Act, whereby those who might injure that which the State has +undertaken to protect are deprived of their power to evil. And, in +return, the Church engages to "apply its utmost endeavors in the +service of the State." It becomes attached to its benefactor from +the privilege it receives; and the dangers which might arise from +its natural independence are thus obviated. For a federal union +precludes the grave problem of an <i>imperium in imperio</i>, and +the "mischiefs which so terrified Hobbes" are met by the terms upon +which it is founded.</p> +<p>It is easy enough to discover the loopholes in the theory. The +contract does not exist, or, at least, it is placed by Warburton +"in the same archive with the famous original compact between +monarch and people" which has been the object of vast but fruitless +searches. Nor does the Act of Submission bear upon its face the +marks of that tender care of the protection of an independent +society which Warburton declared a vital tenet of the Union. Yet +such criticisms miss the real significance of the theory. It is +really the <a name="page121" id="page121"></a>introduction into +English politics of that notion of the two societies which, a +century before, Melville and Bellarmine had made so fruitful. With +neither Presbyterian nor Jesuit was the separation complete, for +the simple reason that each had a secret conviction that the +ecclesiastical society was at bottom the superior. Yet the theory +was the parent of liberty, if only because it pointed the way to a +balance of power between claims which, before, had seemed mutually +exclusive.</p> +<p>Until the Toleration Act, the theory was worthless to the +English Church because its temper, under the ægis of Laudian +views, had been in substance theocratic. But after 1692 it aptly +expressed the compromise the dominant party of the Church had then +in mind. They did, indeed, mistake the power of the Church, or, +rather, they submitted to the State so fully that what they had +intended for a partnership became an absorption. So that the +Erastianism of the eighteenth century goes deep enough to make the +Church no more than a moral police department of the State. Saints +like Ken and preachers like South are <a name="page122" id= +"page122"></a>replaced by fashionable prelates like Cornwallis, who +made Lambeth Palace an adjunct to Ranelagh Gardens, and +self-seeking pluralists like Bishop Watson. The Church could not +even perceive the meaning of the Wesleyan revolt; and its charity +was the irritating and complacent patronage of the obstrusive +Hannah More. Its learning decayed, its intelligence slumbered; and +the main function it fulfilled until Newman's advent was the +provision of rich preferment to the younger sons of the nobility. +It is a far cry from Lake of Chichester and Bishop Ken to a church +which was merely an annex to the iniquities of the civil list.</p> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p>No one can mistake the significance of this conflict. The +opponents of Erastianism had a deep sense of their corporate +Church, and it was a plea for ecclesiastical freedom that they were +making. They saw that a Church whose patronage and discipline and +debates were under the control of an alien body could not with +honesty claim that Christ was in truth <a name="page123" id= +"page123"></a>their head. If the Church was to be at the mercy of +private judgment and political expediency, the notion of a dogmatic +basis would have to be abandoned. Here, indeed, is the root of the +condemnation of Tindal and of Hoadly; for they made it, by their +teaching, impossible for the Church to possess an ethos of her own. +It was thus against the sovereignty of the State that they +protested. Somewhere, a line must be drawn about its functions that +the independence of the Church might be safeguarded. For its +supporters could not be true to their divine mission if the +accidental vote of a secular authority was by right to impose its +will upon the Church. The view of it as simply a religious body to +which the State had conceded certain rights and dignities, they +repudiated with passion. The life of the Church was not derived +from the State; and for the latter to attempt its circumscription +was to usurp an authority not rightly its own.</p> +<p>The real difficulty of this attitude lay in the establishment. +For here the Church was, at bottom, declaring that the State life +must be lived upon terms of her own <a name="page124" id= +"page124"></a>definition. That was possible before the Reformation; +but with the advent of Nonconformity and the growth of rationalism +the exclusive character of the Church's solution had become +unacceptable. If the Church was to become so intimately involved +with the State as an establishment implied, it had no right to +complain, if statesmen with a genius for expediency were willing to +sacrifice it to the attainment of that ideal. For the real secret +of independence is, after all, no more than independence. The +Church sought it without being willing to pay the price. And this +it is which enabled Hoadly to emerge triumphant from an ordeal +where logically he should have failed. The State, by definition is +an absorptive animal; and the Church had no right to complain if +the price of its privileges was royal supremacy. A century so +self-satisfied as the eighteenth would not have faced the +difficulties involved in giving political expression to the High +Church theory.</p> +<p>Yet the protest remained, and it bore a noble fruit in the next +century. The Oxford movement is usually regarded as a return to the +seventeenth century, to <a name="page125" id="page125"></a>the +ideals, that is to say, of Laud and Andrewes.<span class= +"fnref"><a name="fnref13" id="fnref13" href="#fn13">[13]</a></span> +In fact, its real kinship is with Atterbury and Law. Like them, it +was searching the secret of ecclesiastical independence, and like +them it discovered that connection with the State means, in the +end, the sacrifice of the church to the needs of each political +situation. "The State has deserted us," wrote Newman; and the words +might have been written of the earlier time. The Oxford movement, +indeed, like its predecessor, built upon foundations of sand; and +when Lord Brougham told the House of Lords that the idea of the +Church possessing "absolute and unalienable rights" was a "gross +and monstrous anomaly" because it would make impossible the +supremacy of Parliament, he simply announced the result of a +doctrine which, implicit in the Act of Submission, was first +completely defined by Wake and Hoadly. Nor has the history of this +controversy ended. "Thoughtful men," the Archbishop of Canterbury +has told the House of Lords,<span class="fnref"><a name="fnref14" +id="fnref14" href="#fn14">[14]</a></span> <a name="page126" id= +"page126"></a>"... see the absolute need, if a Church is to be +strong and vigorous, for the Church, <i>qua</i> church, to be able +to say what it can do as a church." "The rule of the sovereign, the +rule of Parliament," replied Lord Haldane,<span class= +"fnref"><a name="fnref15" id="fnref15" href="#fn15">[15]</a></span> +"extend as far as the rule of the Church. They are not to be +distinguished or differentiated, and that was the condition under +which ecclesiastical power was transmitted to the Church of +England." Today, that is to say, as in the past, antithetic +theories of the nature of the State hinge, in essence, upon the +problem of its sovereignty. "A free church in a free state," now, +as then, may be our ideal; but we still seek the means wherewith to +build it.</p> +<div class="fn"><span class="fnnum"><a name="fn13" id="fn13" href= +"#fnref13">[13]</a></span> Cf. my <i>Problem of Sovereignty</i>, +Chapter III.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="fnnum"><a name="fn14" id="fn14" href= +"#fnref14">[14]</a></span> <i>Parliamentary Debates</i>. Fifth +Series, Vol. 34, p. 992 (June 3, 1919).<br /> +<br /> +<span class="fnnum"><a name="fn15" id="fn15" href= +"#fnref15">[15]</a></span> <i>Parliamentary Debates</i>. Fifth +Series, Vol. 34, p 1002. The quotation does not fully represent +Lord Haldane's views.</div> +<hr class="long" /> +<a name="page127" id="page127"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> +<h3>THE ERA OF STAGNATION</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p>With the accession of George I, there ensued an era of +unexampled calm in English politics, which lasted until the +expulsion of Walpole from power in 1742. No vital questions were +debated, nor did problems of principle force themselves into view; +and if the Jacobites remained in the background as an element +invincibly hostile to absorption, the failure of their effort in +1715 showed how feeble was their hold on English opinion. Not, +indeed, that the new dynasty was popular. It had nothing of that +romantic glamour of a lost cause so imperishably recorded in +Scott's pages. The first Georges were heavy and foreign and +meagre-souled; but at least they were Protestant, and, until the +reign of George III, they were amenable to management. In the +result, <a name="page128" id="page128"></a>an opposition in the +classic sense was hardly needed; for the only question to be +considered was the personalities who were to share in power. The +dominating temper of Walpole decided that issue; and he gave +thereby to the political struggle the outlines in which it was +encased for a generation.</p> +<p>It is a dull period, but complacent; for it was not an +unprosperous time. Agriculture and commerce both were abundant; and +the increasing development of towns shows us that the Industrial +Revolution loomed in the near distance. The eager continuance of +the deistic controversy suggests that there was something of +novelty beneath the calm; for Tindal and Woolston and Chubb struck +at the root of religious belief, and Shaftesbury's exaltation of +Hellenism not only contributed to the <i>Aufklarung</i> in +Scotland, but suggested that Christian ideals were not to go +unchallenged. But the literature of the time is summarized in Pope; +and the easy neatness of his verses is quaintly representative of +the Georgian peace. Defoe and Swift had both done their work; and +the latter had withdrawn to Ireland to <a name="page129" id= +"page129"></a>die like a rat in a hole. Bishop Berkeley, indeed, +was convinced of the decadence of England; but his <i>Essay towards +Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain</i> (1721) shows rather the +effect of the speculative mania which culminated in the South Sea +Bubble upon a noble moral nature than a genius for political +thought. Certainly no one in that generation was likely to regard +with seriousness proposals for the endowment of motherhood and a +tax upon the estate of bachelors. The cynical sophistries of +Mandeville were, despite the indignation they aroused, more suited +to the age that Walpole governed. It is, in fact, the character of +the minister which sets the keynote of the time. An able speaker, +without being a great orator, a superb administrator, eager rather +for power than for good, rating men low by instinct and corrupting +them by intelligence, Walpole was not the man, either in type of +mind or of temperament, to bring great questions to the foreground +of debate. He was content to maintain his hold over the respect of +the Crown, and to punish able rivals by exclusion from office. One +by one, the younger men of <a name="page130" id= +"page130"></a>talent, Carteret, Pulteney, Chesterfield, Pitt, were +driven into hostility. He maintained himself in office by a +corruption as efficiently administered as it was cynically +conceived. An opposition developed less on principle than on the +belief that spoils are matter rather for distribution than for +concentration. The party so formed had, indeed, little ground save +personal animosity upon which to fight; and its ablest exertions +could only seize upon a doubtful insult to a braggart sea-captain +as the pretext of the war it was Walpole's ambition no less than +policy to avoid. From 1726 until 1735 the guiding spirit of the +party was Bolingbroke; but in the latter year he quarrelled with +Pulteney, nominally its leader, and retired in high dudgeon to +France. But in the years of his leadership he had evolved a theory +of politics than which nothing so clearly displays the intellectual +bankruptcy of the time.</p> +<p>To understand the argument of Bolingbroke it is necessary to +remember the peculiar character of his career. He had attained to +the highest office under Anne at an exceptionally early age; and +his <a name="page131" id="page131"></a>period of power had been +distinguished by the vehemence with which he pursued the ideal of a +strict division of parties and the expulsion of all alien elements +from the government. But he had staked all his fortunes upon a +scheme he had neither the resolution to plan nor the courage to +execute; and his flight to France, on the Hanoverian accession, had +been followed by his proscription. Walpole soon succeeded alike to +his reputation and place; and through an enormous bribe to the +bottomless pocket of the King's mistress St. John was enabled to +return from exile, though not to political place. His restless mind +was dissatisfied with exclusion from power, and he occupied himself +with creating an alliance between the Tories and malcontent Whigs +for Walpole's overthrow. The alliance succeeded, though too late +for Bolingbroke to enjoy the fruits of success; but in effecting +the purgation of the Tory party from its taint of Jacobitism he +rendered no inconsiderable service. His foundation, moreover, of +the <i>Craftsman</i>—the first official journal of a +political party in England—showed his appreciation of the +technique of political <a name="page132" id= +"page132"></a>controversy. Most of it is dead now, and, indeed, no +small part of its contemporary success is due to the making of +comment in terms of the immediate situation, as also by its +consistent use of a personal reference which has, save in the mass, +no meaning for today. Though, doubtless, the idea of its inception +was derived from journals like Defoe's <i>Review</i> and Leslie's +<i>Rehearsal</i>, which had won success, its intimate connection +with the party leadership was a novel element; and it may therein +claim a special relation to the official periodicals of a later +generation.</p> +<p>The reputation of Bolingbroke as a political philosopher is +something that our age can hardly understand. "A solemn trifler," +Lord Morley has called him; and it is difficult to know why his +easy declamation was so long mistaken for profound thought. Much, +doubtless, is due to that personal fascination which made him the +inspiration of men so different as Pope and Voltaire; and the man +who could supply ideas to Chatham and Disraeli cannot be wholly +devoid of merit. Certainly he wrote well, in that easy elegance of +style which was the delight of the <a name="page133" id= +"page133"></a>eighteenth century; and he is consistently happy in +his choice of adjectives. But his work is at every point +embellished with that affectation of classical learning which was +the curse of his age. He sought no general truths, and he is free +from the accusation of sincerity. Nor has he any enthusiasm save +that of bitter partisanship. He hated Walpole, and his political +writings are, at bottom, no more than an attempt to generalize his +animosity. The <i>Dissertation on Parties</i> (1734) and the +<i>Idea of a Patriot King</i> (1738) might have betrayed us, taken +alone, into regarding their author as a disinterested observer +watching with regret the development of a fatal system; but taken +in conjunction with the <i>Letter to Sir W. Windham</i> (1717), +which was not published until after his death, and is written with +an acrid cynicism fatal to his claim to honesty, they reveal the +opinions as no more than a mask for ambition born of hate.</p> +<p>The whole, of course, must have some sort of background; and the +<i>Letters on the Study of History</i> (1735) was doubtless +intended to supply it. Experience is to be the test of truth, since +history is <a name="page134" id="page134"></a>philosophy teaching +by example. But Bolingbroke's own argument supplies its refutation. +His history is an arbitrary selection of instances intended to +illustrate the particular ideas which happened to be uppermost in +his mind. The Roman consuls were chosen by annual election; whence +it is clear that England should have, if not an annual, at least a +triennial parliament. He acknowledges that the past in some degree +unknown determines the present. He has some not unhappy remarks +upon the evils of an attitude which fails to look upon events from +a larger aspect than their immediate environment. But his history +is intended less to illustrate the working of principle than to +collect cases worthy of citation. Time and space do not exist as +categories; he is as content with a Roman anecdote as with a Stuart +illustration. He is willing, indeed, to look for the causes of the +Revolution as far back as the reign of James I; though he shows his +lack of true perception when he ascribes the true inwardness of the +Reformation to the greed of the monarch for the spoils of the +clergy. At bottom what mainly impresses him is the immense <a name= +"page135" id="page135"></a>influence of personal accident upon +events. Intrigue, a sudden dislike, some backstairs piece of +gossip, here is the real root of great changes. And when he +expresses a "thorough contempt" for the kind of work scholars such +as Scaliger and Petavius had achieved, he shows his entire +ignorance of the method whereby alone a knowledge of general +principle can be attained.</p> +<p>A clear vision, of course, he has, and he was not beguiled by +high notions of prerogative or the like. The divine right of kings +is too stupid to be worth the trouble of refutation; all that makes +a king important is the authority he exerts. So, too, with the +Church; for Bolingbroke, as a professed deist, has no trouble with +such matters as the apostolic succession. He makes great show of +his love of liberty, which is the true end of government; and we +are informed with a vast solemnity of the "perpetual danger" in +which it always stands. So that the chief end of patriotism is its +maintenance; though we are never told what liberty is, nor how it +is to be maintained. The social compact seems to win his +approbation and we learn that the <a name="page136" id= +"page136"></a>secret of the British constitution is the balance of +powers and their mutual independency. But what the powers are, and +how their independence is preserved we do not learn, save by an +insistence that the safety of Europe is to be found in playing off +the ambitions of France and Austria against each other; an analogy +the rejection of which has been the secret of English +constitutional success. We learn of the evil of standing armies and +the danger of Septennial Parliaments. We are told that parties are +mainly moved by the prospect of enjoying office and vast patronage; +and a great enough show is made of his hatred for corruption as to +convince at least some critics of distinction of his sincerity. The +parties of the time had, as he sees, become divided by no +difference save that of interest; and herein, at least, he shows us +how completely the principles of the Revolution had become +exhausted. He wants severe penalties upon electoral corruption. He +would have disfranchised the rotten boroughs and excluded placemen +from Parliament. The press was to be free; and there is at least a +degree of generous insight in his plea for a wider <a name= +"page137" id="page137"></a>commercial freedom in colonial matters. +Yet what, after all, does this mean save that he is fighting a man +with the patronage at his disposal and a majority upon the +committee for the settlement of disputed elections? And what else +can we see in his desire for liberty of the press save a desire to +fight Walpole in the open, without fear of the penalties his former +treason had incurred?</p> +<p>His value can be tested in another way. His <i>Idea of a Patriot +King</i> is the remedy for the ills he has depicted. He was sixty +years old when it appeared, and he had then been in active politics +for thirty-five years, so that we are entitled to regard it as the +fruit of his mature experience. He was too convinced that the +constitution was "in the strictest sense a bargain, a conditional +contract between the prince and the people" to attempt again the +erection of a system of prerogative. Yet it is about the person of +the monarch that the theory hinges. He is to have no powers +inconsistent with the liberties of the people; for such restraints +will not shackle his virtues while they limit the evil propensities +of a bad king. What is needed is a <a name="page138" id= +"page138"></a>patriot king who will destroy corruption and awaken +the spirit of liberty. His effective government will synchronize +with the commencement of his reign; and he will at once dismiss the +old and cunning ministers, to replace them by servants who are +wise. He will not stand upon party, but upon the State. He will +unite the forces of good counsel into a single scheme. Complaints +will be answered, the evildoers punished. Commerce will flow on +with uninterrupted prosperity, and the navy of England receive its +due meed of attention. His conduct must be dignified, and he must +acquire his influence not apart from, but on account of, the +affection of his people. "Concord," says Bolingbroke in rhapsodical +prospection, "will appear breeding peace and prosperity on every +hand"; though he prudently hopes also that men will look back with +affection upon one "who desired life for nothing so much as to see +a King of Great Britain the most powerful man in the country, and a +patriot King at the head of a united people."</p> +<p>Bolingbroke himself has admitted that such a monarch would be a +"sort of <a name="page139" id="page139"></a>standing miracle," and +perhaps no other comment upon his system is required. A smile in +Plato at the sight of his philosopher-King in such strange company +might well be pardoned. It is only necessary to point out that the +person whom Bolingbroke designates for this high function was +Frederick, Prince of Wales, to us the most meagre of a meagre +generation, but to Bolingbroke, by whose grace he was captivated, +"the greatest and most glorious of human beings." This exaltation +of the monarch came at a time when a variety of circumstances had +combined to show the decrease of monarchical sentiment. It bears +upon its every page the marks of a personal antagonism. It is too +obviously the programme of a party to be capable of serious +interpretation as a system. The minister who is to be impeached, +the wise servants who are to gain office, the attack on corruption, +the spirited foreign policy—all these have the earmarks of a +platform rather than of a philosophy. Attacks on corruption hardly +read well in the mouth of a dissolute gambler; and the one solid +evidence of deep feeling is the remark on the danger <a name= +"page140" id="page140"></a>of finance in politics. For none of the +Tories save Barnard, who owed his party influence thereto, +understood the financial schemes of Walpole; and since they were +his schemes obviously they represented the triumph of devilish +ingenuity. The return of landed men to power would mean the return +of simplicity to politics; and one can imagine the country squires, +the last resort of enthusiasm for Church and King, feeling that +Bolingbroke had here emphasized the dangers of a régime +which already faintly foreshadowed their exclusion from power. The +pamphlet was the cornerstone in the education of Frederick's son; +and when George III came to the throne he proceeded to give such +heed to his master as the circumstances permitted. It is perhaps, +as Mr. A.L. Smith has argued, unfair to visit Bolingbroke with +George's version of his ideal; yet they are sufficiently connected +for the one to give the meaning to the other. Chatham, indeed, was +later intrigued by this ideal of a national party; and before +Disraeli discovered that England does not love coalitions he +expended much rhetoric upon the beauties of a patriotic king. +<a name="page141" id="page141"></a>But Chatham was a wayward genius +who had nothing of that instinct for common counsel which is of the +essence of party government; while it is necessary to draw a firm +line between Disraeli's genial declamation and his practice when in +office. It is sufficient to say that the one effort founded upon +the principles of Bolingbroke ended in disaster; and that his own +last reflections express a bitter disillusion at the result of the +event which he looked to as the inauguration of the golden age.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p>The fall of Walpole, indeed, released no energies for political +thought; the system continued, though the men were different. What +alone can be detected is the growth of a democratic opinion which +found its sustenance outside the House of Commons, the opinion the +strength of which was later to force the elder Pitt upon an +unwilling king. An able pamphlet of the time shows us the arrival +of this unlooked-for portent. <i>Faction detected by the Evidence +of Facts</i> (1742) <a name="page142" id="page142"></a>was, though +it is anonymous,<span class="fnref"><a name="fnref16" id="fnref16" +href="#fn16">[16]</a></span> obviously written by one in touch with +the inner current of affairs. The author had hoped for the fall of +Walpole, though he sees the chaos in its result. "A republican +spirit," he says, "has strangely arisen"; and he goes on to tell +how the electors of London and Westminster were now regarding their +members as delegates to whom instructions might be issued. "A new +party of malcontents" had arisen, "assuming to themselves, though +very falsely, the title of the People." They affect, he tells us, +"superiority to the whole legislature ... and endeavor in effect to +animate the people to resume into their own hands that vague and +loose authority which exists (unless in theory) in the people of no +country upon earth, and the inconvenience of which is so obvious +that it is the first step of mankind, when formed into society, to +divest themselves of it, and to delegate it forever from +themselves." The writer clearly foreshadows, even in his dislike, +that temper which produced the Wilkes affair, and made it possible +for Cartwright and Horne Tooke and Sir <a name="page143" id= +"page143"></a>Thomas Hollis to become the founders of English +radicalism.</p> +<div class="fn"><span class="fnnum"><a name="fn16" id="fn16" href= +"#fnref16">[16]</a></span> It was probably written by Lord +Egmont.</div> +<p>Yet the influence of that temper still lay a generation ahead; +and the next piece of import comes from a mind which, though +perhaps the most powerful of all which have applied themselves to +political philosophy in England, was, from its very scepticism, +incapable of constructive effort. David Hume was thirty-one years +of age when he published (1742) the first series of his essays; and +his <i>Treatise of Human Nature</i> which had fallen "dead-born +from the press" was in some sort compensated by the success of the +new work. The second part, entitled <i>Political Discourses</i>, +was published in 1752, almost simultaneously with the "<i>Inquiry +concerning the Principles of Morals</i>." As in the case of Hume's +metaphysical studies, they constitute the most powerful dissolvent +the century was to see. Yet nowhere was so clearly to be +demonstrated the euthanasia into which English politics had +fallen.</p> +<p>Hume, of course, is always critical and suggestive, and even if +he had no distinctive contribution to make, he gave a new <a name= +"page144" id="page144"></a>turn to speculation. There is something +almost of magic in the ease with which he demolishes divine right +and the social contract. The one is an inevitable deduction from +theism, but it protects an usurper not less than an hereditary +king, and gives a "divine commission" as well to a constable as to +the most majestic prince. The proponents of the social contract are +in no better case. "Were you to preach," he remarks, "in most parts +of the world that political connections are founded altogether on +voluntary consent, or on a mutual promise, the magistrate would +soon imprison you as seditious for loosening the ties of obedience; +if your friends did not before shut you up as delirious for +advancing such absurdities." The original contract could not be +produced, and, even if it were, it would suppose the "consent of +the fathers to bind the children even to the most remote +generations." The real truth, as he remarks, is that "almost all +the governments which exist at present, or of which there remains +any record in story, have been founded originally on usurpation, or +on conquest, or both, without any pretence of a fair <a name= +"page145" id="page145"></a>consent or voluntary subjection of the +people." If we then ask why obedience is possible, the sufficient +answer is that "it becomes so familiar that most men never make any +inquiry about its origin or cause, any more than about the +principle of gravity, resistance, or the most universal laws of +nature."</p> +<p>Government, in short, is dependent upon the inescapable facts of +psychology. It might be unnecessary if all desires could be +individually fulfilled by making them, or if man showed to his +fellow-men the same tender regard he has for himself. So happy a +condition does not exist; and government is the most useful way of +remedying the defects of our situation. A theologian might say that +Hume derives government from original sin; to which he would have +replied by denying the fall. His whole attitude is simply an +insistence that utility is the touchstone of institutions, and he +may claim to be the first thinker who attempted its application to +the whole field of political science. He knows that opinion is the +sovereign ruler of mankind, and that ideas of utility lie at the +base of the thoughts which get <a name="page146" id= +"page146"></a>accepted. He does not, indeed, deny that fear and +consent enter into the attitude of men; he simply asserts that +these also are founded upon a judgment of utility in the thing +judged. We obey because otherwise "society could not subsist," and +society subsists for its utility. "Men," he says "could not live at +all in society, at least in a civilized society, without laws and +magistrates and judges, to prevent the encroachments of the strong +upon the weak, of the violent upon the just and equitable."</p> +<p>Utilitarianism is, of course, above all a method; and it is not +unfair to say of Hume that he did not get very far beyond +insistence on that point. He sees that the subjection of the many +to the few is rooted in human impulse; but he has no penetrating +inquiry, such as that of Locke or Hobbes, into the purpose of such +subjection. So, too, it is the sense of public interest which +determines men's thoughts on government, on who should rule, and +what should be the system of property; but the ethical substance of +these questions he leaves undetermined. Politics, he thinks, may +one day be a science; though <a name="page147" id="page147"></a>he +considers the world still too young for general truths therein. The +maxims he suggests as of permanent value, "that a hereditary +prince, a nobility without vassals, and a people voting by their +representatives form the best monarchy, autocracy and democracy"; +that "free governments ... are the most ruinous and oppressive to +their provinces"; that republics are more favorable to science, +monarchies to art; that the death of a political body is +inevitable; would none of them, probably, be accepted by most +thinkers at the present time. And when he constructs an ideal +constitution, irrespective of time and place, which is to be +regarded as practical because it resembles that of Holland, it is +obvious that the historical method had not yet come fully into +being.</p> +<p>Yet Hume is full of flashes of deep wisdom, and it would be an +avoidance of justice not to note the extent of the spasmodic +insight that he had. He has a keen eye for the absurdity of Pope's +maxim that administration is all in all; nothing can ever make the +forms of government immaterial. He accepts Harrington's <a name= +"page148" id="page148"></a>dictum that the substance of government +corresponds to the distribution of property, without making it, as +later thinkers have done, the foundation of all political forces. +He sees that the Crown cannot influence the mass of men, or +withstand the new balance of property in the State; a prophecy of +which the accuracy was demonstrated by the failure of George III. +"In all governments," as he says, "there is a perpetual intestinal +struggle, open or secret," between Authority and Liberty; though +his judgment that neither "can ever absolutely prevail," shows us +rather that we are on the threshold of <i>laissez-faire</i> than +that Hume really understood the problem of freedom. He realized +that the House of Commons had become the pivot of the State; though +he looked with dread upon the onset of popular government. He saw +the inevitability of parties, as also their tendency to persist in +terms of men instead of principles. He was convinced of the +necessity of liberty to the progress of the arts and sciences; and +no one, save Adam Smith, has more acutely insisted upon the evil +effect on commerce of an absolute <a name="page149" id= +"page149"></a>government. He emphasized the value of freedom of the +press, in which he saw the secret whereby the mixed government of +England was maintained. "It has also been found," he said in a +happy phrase, "... that the people are no such dangerous monsters +as they have been represented, and that it is in every respect +better to guide them like rational creatures than to lead or drive +them like brute beasts." There is, in fact, hardly a page of his +work in which some such acuteness may not be found.</p> +<p>Not, indeed, that a curious blindness is absent. Hume was a +typical child of one aspect of the eighteenth century in his hatred +of enthusiasm, and the form in which he most abominates it is +religious. Why people's religious opinions should lead to +antagonism he could no more understand than why people should +refuse to pass one another on a road. Wars of religion thus seemed +to him based upon a merely frivolous principle; and in his ideal +commonwealth he made the Church a department of the State lest it +should get out of hand. He was, moreover, a static philosopher, +disturbed by signs of political <a name="page150" id= +"page150"></a>restlessness; and this led to the purgation of Whig +doctrines from his writings, and their consistent replacement by a +cynical conservatism. He was always afraid that popular government +would mean mob-rule; and absolute government is accordingly +recommended as the euthanasia of the British constitution. Not even +the example of Sweden convinced him that a standing army might +exist without civil liberty being endangered; and he has all the +noxious fallacies of his time upon the balance of power. Above all, +it is striking to see his helplessness before the problem of +national character. Mainly he ascribes it to the form of +government, and that in turn to chance. Even the friend of +Montesquieu can see no significance in race or climate. The idea, +in fact, of evolution is entirely absent from his political +speculation. Political life, like human life, ends in death; and +the problem is to make our egress as comfortable as we can, for the +prime evil is disturbance. It is difficult not to feel that there +is almost a physical basis in his own disease for this love of +quiet. The man who put indolence among the primary motives of human +<a name="page151" id="page151"></a>happiness was not likely to view +novel theories with unruffled temper.</p> +<p>Hume has an eminent place among economists, and for one to whom +the study of such phenomena was but a casual inquiry, it is +marvelous how much he saw. He is free from the crude errors of +mercantilism; and twenty years before Adam Smith hopes, "as a +British subject," for the prosperity of other countries. "Free +communication and exchange" seems to him an ordinance of nature; +and he heaps contempt upon those "numberless bars, obstructions and +imposts which all nations of Europe, and none more than England, +have put upon trade." Specie he places in its true light as merely +a medium of exchange. The supposed antagonism between commerce and +agriculture he disposes of in a half-dozen effective sentences. He +sees the place of time and distance in the discussion of economic +want. He sees the value of a general level of economic equality, +even while he is sceptical of its attainment. He insists upon the +economic value of high wages, though he somewhat belittles the +importance of wealth in the achievement of <a name="page152" id= +"page152"></a>happiness. Before Bentham, who on this point +converted Adam Smith, he knew that the rate of interest depends +upon the supply of and demand for loans. He insists that commerce +demands a free government for its progress, pointing out, doubtless +from his abundant French experience, that an absolute government +gives to the commercial class an insufficient status of honor. He +pointed out, doubtless with France again in his mind, the evils of +an arbitrary system of taxation. "They are commonly converted," he +says with unwonted severity, "into punishments on industry; and +also, by their unavoidable inequality, are more grievous, than by +the real burden which they impose." And he emphasizes his belief +that the best taxes are those which, like taxes upon luxury, press +least upon the poor.</p> +<p>Such insight is extraordinary enough in the pre-Adamite epoch; +but even more remarkable are his psychological foundations. The +wealth of the State, he says, is the labor of its subjects, and +they work because the wants of man are not a stated sum, but +"multiply every moment upon <a name="page153" id= +"page153"></a>him." The desire for wealth comes from the idea of +pleasure; and in the <i>Treatise on Human Nature</i> he discusses +with superb clarity the way in which the idea of pleasure is +related at once to individual satisfaction and to that sympathy for +others which is one of the roots of social existence. He points out +the need for happiness in work. "The mind," he writes, "acquires +new vigor, enlarges its powers and faculties, and by an assiduity +in honest industry both satisfies its own appetites and prevents +growth of unnatural ones"; though, like his predecessor, Francis +Hutcheson, he overemphasizes the delights opened by civilization to +the humbler class of men. He gives large space in his discussion to +the power of will; and, indeed, one of the main advantages he +ascribed to government was the compulsion it puts upon us to allow +the categories of time and space a part in our calculations. He +does not, being in his own life entirely free from avarice, regard +the appetite for riches as man's main motive to existence; though +no one was more urgent in his insistence that "the avidity of +acquiring goods and possessions for <a name="page154" id= +"page154"></a>ourselves and our nearest friends is ... destructive +of society" unless balanced by considerations of justice. And what +he therein intended may be gathered from the liberal notions of +equality he manifested. "Every person," he wrote in a famous +passage, "if possible ought to enjoy the fruits of his labor in a +full possession of all the necessaries, and many of the +conveniences of life. No one can doubt but such an equality is most +suitable to human nature, and diminishes much less the happiness of +the rich than it adds to that of the poor." It is clear that we +have moved far from the narrow confines of the old political +arithmetic. The theory of utility enables Hume to see the scope of +economics—the word itself he did not know—in a more +generous perspective than at any previous time. It would be too +much to say that his grasp of its psychological foundation enabled +him entirely to move from the limitations of the older concept of a +national prosperity expressed only in terms of bullion to the view +of economics as a social science. But at least he saw that +economics is rooted in the nature of men and therein he had the +<a name="page155" id="page155"></a>secret of its true +understanding. <i>The Wealth of Nations</i> would less easily have +made its way had not the insight of Hume prepared the road for its +reception.</p> +<p>What, then, and in general, is his place in the history of +political thought? Clearly enough, he is not the founder of a +system; his work is rather a series of pregnant hints than a +consecutive account of political facts. Nor must we belittle the +debt he owes to his predecessors. Much, certainly, he owed to +Locke, and the full radiance of the Scottish enlightenment emerges +into the day with his teaching. Francis Hutcheson gave him no small +inspiration; and Hutcheson means that he was indebted to +Shaftesbury. Indeed, there is much of the sturdy commonsense of the +Scottish school about him, particularly perhaps in that +interweaving of ethics, politics and economics, which is +characteristic of the school from Hutcheson in the middle +seventeenth century, to the able, if neglected, Lorimer in the +nineteenth.<span class="fnref"><a name="fnref17" id="fnref17" href= +"#fn17">[17]</a></span> He is entitled to be considered <a name= +"page156" id="page156"></a>the real founder of utilitarianism. He +first showed how difficult it is in politics to draw a distinction +between ethical right and men's opinion of what ought to be. He +brings to an end what Coleridge happily called the "metapolitical +school." After him we are done with the abuse of history to bolster +up Divine Right and social contract; for there is clearly present +in his use of facts a true sense of historical method. He put an +end also to the confusion which resulted from the effort of +thinkers to erect standards of right and wrong independent of all +positive law. He took the facts as phenomena to be explained rather +than as illustrations of some favorite thesis to be maintained in +part defiance of them. Conventional Whiggism has no foothold after +he has done with its analysis. His utilitarianism was the first +efficient substitute for the labored metaphysics of the contract +school; and even if he was not the first to see through its +pretensions—that is perhaps the claim of Shaftesbury—he +was the first to show the grounds of their uselessness. He saw that +history and psychology together provide the materials for <a name= +"page157" id="page157"></a>a political philosophy. So that even if +he could not himself construct it the hints at least were +there.</p> +<div class="fn"><span class="fnnum"><a name="fn17" id="fn17" href= +"#fnref17">[17]</a></span> There are few books which show so +clearly as Lorimer's <i>Institutes of Nations</i> (1872) how fully +the Scottish school was in the midstream of European thought.</div> +<p>His suggestiveness, indeed, may be measured in another fashion. +The metaphysics of Burke, so far as one may use a term he would +himself have repudiated, are largely those of Hume. The place of +habit and of social instinct alongside of consent, the perception +that reason alone will not explain political facts, the emphasis +upon resistance as of last resort, the denial that allegiance is a +mere contract to be presently explained, the deep respect for +order—all these are, after all, the fabric from which the +thought of Burke was woven. Nor is there in Bentham's defence of +Utilitarianism argument in which he would have recognized novelty. +Herein, at least, his proof that morality is no more than general +opinion of utility constructs, in briefer form, the later arguments +of Bentham, Paley and the Mills, nor can their mode of statement +claim superiority to Hume's. So that on either side of his work he +foreshadows the advent of the two great schools of modern political +thought. His utilitarianism is the real <a name="page158" id= +"page158"></a>path by which radical opinion at last found means of +acceptance. His use of history is, through Burke, the ancestor of +that specialized conservatism begotten of the historical method. If +there is thus so much, it is, of course, tempting to ask why there +is not more. If Hume has the materials why did he fail to build up +a system from them? The answer seems twofold. In part it is the man +himself. His genius, as his metaphysics show, lay essentially in +his power of destruction; and the man who gave solipsism to +philosophy was not likely to effect a new creation in politics. In +part, also, the condition of the time gave little stimulus to +novelty. Herein Hume was born a generation too early. Had he +written when George III attempted the destruction of the system of +the Revolution, and when America and France combined to raise again +the basic questions of politics, he might have done therein what +Adam Smith effected in his own field. But the time had not yet +come; and it was left to Burke and Bentham to reap where he had +sown.</p> +<hr class="long" /> +<a name="page159" id="page159"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> +<h3>SIGNS OF CHANGE</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p>From Hume until the publication of Burke's <i>Present +Discontents</i> (1770) there is no work on English politics of the +first importance. Walpole had fallen in 1742; but for the next +fifteen years his methods dominated the parliamentary scene. It was +only with the advent of the elder Pitt to power that a new temper +may be observed, a temper quickened by what followed on the +accession of George III. Henceforward, it is not untrue to say that +the early complacency of the time was lost; or, at least, it was no +longer in the ascendant again until the excesses of the French +Revolution enabled Burke to persuade his countrymen into that grim +satisfaction with their own achievement of which Lord Eldon is the +standing model. The signs of change are in each instance slight, +though collectively they acquire significance. It was difficult for +men to <a name="page160" id="page160"></a>grumble where, as under +Walpole, each harvest brought them greater prosperity, or where, as +under Chatham, they leaped from victory to victory. Something of +the exhilaration of these years we can still catch in the letters +which show the effort made by the jaded Horace Walpole to turn off +with easy laughter his deep sense of pride. In the House of +Commons, indeed, there is nothing, until the Wilkes case, to show +that a new age has come. It is in the novels of Richardson and +Fielding, the first shy hints of the romantic temper in Gray and +Collins, above all in the awakening of political science, that +novelty is apparent.</p> +<p>So far as a new current of thought can ever be referred to a +single source, the French influence is the effective cause of +change. Voltaire and Montesquieu had both visited England in the +period of Walpole's administration, and both had been greatly +influenced by what they saw. Rousseau, indeed, came later on that +amazing voyage which the good-natured Hume insisted would save him +from his dread of persecution, and there is evidence enough that he +did not relish his <a name="page161" id="page161"></a>experience. +Yet when he came, in 1762, to publish the <i>Contrat Social</i> it +was obvious that he had drunk deeply of English thought. The real +meaning of their work to Englishmen lay in the perspective they +gave to English institutions. Naturally enough, there was a vast +difference between the simplicity of a government where sovereignty +was the monarch's will and one in which a complex distribution of +powers was found to secure a general freedom. The Frenchmen were +amazed at the generous equality of English judicial procedure. The +liberty of unlicensed printing—less admirable than they +accounted it—the difference between a <i>Habeas Corpus</i> +and a <i>lettre de cachet</i>, the regular succession of +Parliaments, all these impressed them, who knew the meaning of +their absence, as a magnificent achievement. The English +constitution revealed to France an immense and unused reservoir of +philosophic illustration. Even to Englishmen itself that meaning +was but partly known. Locke's system was a generalization from its +significance at a special crisis. Hume had partial glimpses of its +inner substance. But for most it <a name="page162" id= +"page162"></a>had become a discreet series of remedies for +particular wrongs. Its analysis as a connected whole invigorated +thought as nothing had done since the Civil Wars had elaborated the +theory of parliamentary sovereignty. What was more significant was +the realization of Montesquieu's import simultaneously with the +effort of George III to revive crown influence. Montesquieu thus +became the prophet of a new race of thinkers. Rousseau's time was +not yet; though within a score of years it was possible to see him +as the rival to Burke's conservatism.</p> +<p>It is worth while to linger for a moment upon the thesis which +underlies the <i>Esprit des Lois</i> (1748). It is a commonplace +now that Montesquieu is to be regarded as the founder of the +historical method. The present is to be explained by its ancestry. +Laws, governments, customs are not truths absolute and universal, +but relative to the time of their origin and the country from which +they derive. It would be inaccurate, with Rousseau on the +threshold, to say that his influence demolished the systems of +political abstraction which, at their logical best, and in the most +<a name="page163" id="page163"></a>complete unreality, are to be +found in Godwin's <i>Political Justice</i>; but it is not beyond +the mark to affirm that after his time such abstract systems were +on the defensive. Therein, with all his faults, he had given Burke +the clue to those truths he so profoundly saw—the sense of +the State as more than a mechanical contrivance, the high regard +for prescription, the sense of law as the voice of past wisdom. He +was, said Burke, "the greatest genius which has enlightened this +age"; and Burke had every reason to utter that noble panegyric. But +Montesquieu was more than this. He emphasized legislation as the +main mechanism of social change; and therein he is the parent of +that decisive reversal of past methods of which Bentham first +revealed the true significance. Nor had any thinker before his time +so emphasized the importance of liberty as the true end of +government; even the placid Blackstone adopted the utterance from +him in his inaugural lecture as Vinerian professor. He insisted, +too, on the danger of perversion to which political principle lies +open; a feeling which found consistent utterance both in <a name= +"page164" id="page164"></a>the debates of the Philadelphia +Convention, and in the writings of Bentham and James Mill. What, +perhaps, is most immediately significant is his famous praise of +the British Constitution—the secret of which he entirely +misapprehended—and his discovery of its essence in the +separation of powers. The short sixth chapter of his eleventh book +is the real keynote of Blackstone and De Lolme. It led them to +investigate, on principles of at least doubtful validity, an +edifice never before described in detail. It is, when the last +criticism has been made, an immense step forward from the uncouth +antiquarianism of Coke's Second Institute to the neatly reticulated +structure erected upon the foundations of Montesquieu's hint. That +it was wrong was less important than that the attempt should have +been made. The evil that men do lives after them; and few doctrines +have been more noxious in their consequence than this theory of +checks and balances. But Blackstone's <i>Commentaries</i> (1765-9) +produced Bentham's <i>Fragment on Government</i> (1776), and with +that book we enter upon the realistic study of the British +Constitution.</p> +<a name="page165" id="page165"></a> +<p>Rousseau is in an antithetic tradition; but just as he drew from +English thinkers so did he exercise upon the next generation an +influence the more logical because the inferences he drew were +those that his masters, with the English love of compromise, had +sought to avoid. Rousseau is the disciple of Locke; and the real +difference between them is no more than a removal of the +limitations upon the power of government which Locke had proposed. +It is a removal at every point conditioned by the interest of the +people. For Rousseau declared that the existing distribution of +power in Europe was a monstrous thing, and he made the people +sovereign that there might be no hindrance to their achievement in +the shape of sinister interest. The powers of the people thus +became their rights and herein was an unlimited sanction for +innovation. It is easy enough then to understand why such a +philosophy should have been anathema to Burke. Rousseau's eager +sympathy for humble men, his optimistic faith in the immediate +prospect of popular power were to Burke the symptoms of insane +delusion and their author "the great <a name="page166" id= +"page166"></a>professor and founder of the philosophy of vanity in +England." But Burke forgot that the real secret of Rousseau's +influence was the success of the American Revolution; and no one +had done more than Burke himself to promote its cause and justify +its principles. That revolution established what Europe might well +consider a democracy; and its statesmen were astonished not less at +the vigilance with which America guarded against the growth of +autocratic government, than at the soberness with which it checked +the supposed weakness of the sovereign people. America made herself +independent while what was best in Europe combined in enthusiastic +applause; and it seemed as though the maxims of Rousseau had been +taken to heart and that a single, vigorous exertion of power could +remove what deliberation was impotent to secure. Here Rousseau had +a message for Great Britain which Burke at every stage denied. Nor, +at the moment, was it influential except in the general impetus it +gave to thought. But from the moment of its appearance it is an +undercurrent of decisive importance; and while in its <a name= +"page167" id="page167"></a>metaphysical form it failed to command +acceptance, in the hands of Bentham its results were victorious. +Bentham differs from Rousseau not in the conclusions he recommends +so much as in the language in which he clothes them. Either make a +final end of the optimism of men like Hume and Blackstone, or the +veneration for the past which is at the root of Burke's own +teaching.</p> +<p>It is easy to see why thought such as this should have given the +stimulus it did. Montesquieu came to praise the British +constitution at a time when good men were aghast at its perversion. +There was no room in many years for revolution, but at least there +was place for hearty discontent and a seeking after new methods. Of +that temper two men so different as the elder Pitt and Wilkes are +the political symbols. The former's rise to power upon the +floodtide of popular enthusiasm meant nothing so much as a protest +against the cynical corruption of the previous generation. Wilkes +was a sign that the populace was slowly awaking to a sense of its +own power. The French creed was too purely logical, too obviously +the outcome <a name="page168" id="page168"></a>of alien conditions, +to fit in its entirety the English facts; and, it must be admitted, +memories of wooden shoes played not a little part in its rejection. +The rights of man made only a partial appeal until the miseries of +Pitt's wars showed what was involved in that rejection; and then it +was too late. But no one could feel without being stirred the +illumination of Montesquieu; and Rousseau's questions, even if they +proved unanswerable, were stuff for thought. The work of the forty +years before the French Revolution is nothing so much as a +preparation for Bentham. The torpor slowly passes. The theorists +build an edifice each part of which a man whose passion is attuned +to the English nature can show to be obsolete and ugly. If the +French thinkers had conferred no other benefit, that, at least, +would have been a supreme achievement.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p>The first book to show the signs of change came in 1757. John +Brown's <i>Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times</i> +is largely forgotten now; <a name="page169" id="page169"></a>though +it went through seven editions in a year and was at once translated +into French. Brown was a clergyman, a minor planet in the vast +Warburtonian system, who had already published a volume of comment +upon the <i>Characteristics</i> of Shaftesbury. His book is too +evidently modelled upon Montesquieu, whom he mentions with +reverence, to make us doubt its derivation. There is the same +reliance upon Livy and Machiavelli, the same attempt at striking +generalization; though the argument upon which Brown's conclusions +are based is seldom given, perhaps because his geometric clarity of +statement impressed him as self-demonstrative. Brown's volumes are +an essay upon the depravity of the times. He does not deny it +humanitarianism, and a still lingering sense of freedom, but it is +steeped in corruption and displays nothing so much as a luxurious +and selfish effeminacy. He condemns the universities out of hand, +in phrases which Gibbon and Adam Smith would not have rejected. He +deplores the decay of taste and learning. Men trifle with Hume's +gay impieties, and could not, if they would, <a name="page170" id= +"page170"></a>appreciate the great works of Bishop Warburton. +Politics has become nothing save a means of promoting selfish +interests. The church, the theatre, and the arts have all of them +lost their former virtues. The neurotic temper of the times is +known to all. The nation, as was shown in 1745, when a handful of +Highlanders penetrated without opposition to the heart of the +kingdom, has grown slack and cowardly. Gambling penetrates every +nook and cranny of the upper class; the officers of the army devote +themselves to fashion; the navy's main desire is for prize money. +Even the domestic affections are at a low ebb; and the grand tour +brings back a new species of Italianate Englishman. The poor, +indeed, the middle class, and the legal and medical professions, +Brown specifically exempts from this indictment. But he emphasizes +his belief that this is unimportant. "The manners and principles of +those who lead," he says, "... not of those who are governed ... +will ever determine the strength or weakness, and therefore the +continuance or dissolution of a state."</p> +<p>This profligacy Brown compares to the <a name="page171" id= +"page171"></a>languid vice which preceded the fall of Carthage and +of Rome; and he sees the approaching ruin of Great Britain at the +hands of France, unless it can be cured. So far as he has an +explanation to offer, it seems to be the fault of Walpole, and the +decay of religious sentiment. His remedy is only Bolingbroke's +Patriot King, dressed up in the habit of the elder Pitt, now risen +to the height of power. What mainly stirred Englishmen was the +prophecy of defeat on the morrow of the disastrous convention of +Kloster Seven; but when Wolfe and Clive repaired that royal +humiliation Brown seems to have died a natural death. What is more +interesting than his prophecies was the evidence of a close reading +of Montesquieu. English liberty, he says, is the product of the +climate; a kind of mixture, it appears, of fog and sullen temper. +Nations inevitably decay, and the commercial grandeur of England is +the symptom of old age; it means a final departure from the +simplicity of nature and breeds the luxury which kills by +enervation. Brown has no passion, and his book reads rather like +Mr. Galsworthy's <i>Island Pharisees</i> sufficiently <a name= +"page172" id="page172"></a>expurgated to be declaimed by a +well-bred clergyman in search of preferment on the ground of +attention to the evils of his time. It describes undoubted facts, +and it shows that the era of content has gone. But its careful +periods and strangely far-off air lack the eagerness for truth +which Rousseau put into his questions. Brown can neither explain +nor can he proffer remedy. He sees that Pitt is somehow +significant; but when he rules out the popular voice as devoid of +all importance, he deprives himself of the means whereby to grasp +the meaning of the power that Pitt exerted. Nothing could prove +more strongly the exactitude of Burke's <i>Present Discontents</i>. +Nothing could better justify the savage indignation of Junius.</p> +<p>Hume was the friend of Montesquieu, though twenty years his +junior; and the <i>Esprit des Lois</i> travelled rapidly to +Scotland. There it caught the eye of Adam Ferguson, the author of a +treatise on refinement, and by the influence of Hume and Adam +Smith, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of +Edinburgh. Ferguson seems to have been immensely popular in his +time, and certainly <a name="page173" id="page173"></a>he has a +skill for polished phrase, and a genial paraphrase of other men's +ideas. His <i>Essay on the History of Civil Society</i> (1767), +which in a quarter of a century went through six editions, was +thought by Helvétius superior to Montesquieu, though Hume +himself, as always the incarnation of kindness, recommended its +suppression. At least Ferguson read enough of Montesquieu to make +some fluent generalities sound plausible. He knows that the +investigation of savage life will throw some light upon the origins +of government. He sees the folly of generalizing easily upon the +state of nature. He insists, probably after conversation with Adam +Smith, upon the social value of the division of functions. He does +not doubt the original equality of men. He thinks the luxury of his +age has reached the limit of its useful growth. Property he traces +back to a parental desire to make a better provision for children +"than is found under the promiscuous management of many +copartners." Climate has the new importance upon which Montesquieu +has insisted; or, at least, as it "ripens the pineapple and the +tamarina," <a name="page174" id="page174"></a>so it "inspires a +degree of mildness that can even assuage the rigours of despotical +government." The priesthood—this is Hume—becomes a +separate influence under the sway of superstition. Liberty, he +says, "is maintained by the continued differences and oppositions +of numbers, not by their concurring zeal in behalf of equitable +government." The hand that can bend Ulysses' bow is certainly not +here; and this pinchbeck Montesquieu can best be left in the +obscurity into which he has fallen. The <i>Esprit des Lois</i> took +twenty years in writing; and it needed the immense researches of +men like Savigny before its significance could fully be grasped. +Facile popularisers of this sort may have mollified the +drawing-room; but they did not add to political ideas.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p>A more fertile source of inquiry was to be found among the +students of constitutional law. Blackstone's <i>Commentaries on the +Laws of England</i> (1765-9) has had ever since its first +publication an authority such as Coke only before <a name="page175" +id="page175"></a>possessed. "He it is," said Bentham, "who, first +of all institutional writers, has taught jurisprudence to speak the +language of the Scholar and the Gentleman." Certainly, as Professor +Dicey has remarked, "the book contains much real learning about our +system of government." We are less concerned here with Blackstone +as an antiquarian lawyer than as a student of political philosophy. +Here his purpose seems obvious enough. The English constitution +raised him from humble means through a Professorship at Oxford to a +judgeship in the Court of Common Pleas. He had been a member of +Parliament and refused the office of Solicitor-General. He had thus +no reason to be dissatisfied with the conditions of his time; and +the first book of the <i>Commentaries</i> is nothing so much as an +attempt to explain why English constitutional law is a miracle of +wisdom.</p> +<p>Constitutional law, as such, indeed, found no place in +Blackstone's book. It creeps in under the rights of persons, where +he deals with the power of king and Parliament. His treatment +implies a whole philosophy. Laws are of three <a name="page176" id= +"page176"></a>kinds—of nature, of God, and of the civil +state. Civil law, with which alone he is concerned, is "a rule of +civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power in a state, +commanding what is right and prohibiting what is wrong." It is, he +tells us, "called a rule to distinguish it from a compact or +agreement." It derives from the sovereign power, of which the chief +character is the making of laws. Society is based upon the "wants +and fears" of men; and it is coeval with their origin. The idea of +a state of nature "is too wild to be seriously admitted," besides +being contrary to historical knowledge. Society implies government, +and whatever its origins or its forms there "must be in all of them +a supreme, irresistible, absolute, uncontrolled authority, in which +the <i>jura summa imperii</i>, or rights of sovereignty reside." +The forms of government are classified in the usual way; and the +British constitution is noted as a happy mixture of them all. "The +legislature of the Kingdom," Blackstone writes, "is entrusted to +three powers entirely independent of each other; first the King, +secondly the lords spiritual and temporal, which is an <a name= +"page177" id="page177"></a>aristocratical assembly of persons, +chosen for their piety, their birth, their wisdom, their valour or +their property; and, thirdly, the House of Commons, freely chosen +by the people from among themselves, which makes it a kind of +democracy; and as this aggregate body, actuated by different +springs and attentive to different interests, composes the British +Parliament and has the supreme disposal of everything; there can be +no inconvenience attempted by either of the three branches, but +will be withstood by one of the other two; each branch being armed +with a negative power, sufficient to repel any innovation which it +shall think inexpedient or dangerous." It is in the king in +Parliament that British sovereignty resides. Eschewing the notion +of an original contract, Blackstone yet thinks that all the +implications of it are secured. "The constitutional government of +this island," he says, "is so admirably tempered and compounded, +that nothing can endanger or hurt it, but destroying the +equilibrium of power between one branch of the legislature and the +rest."</p> +<p>All this is not enough; though, as <a name="page178" id= +"page178"></a>Bentham was to show in his <i>Fragment on +Government</i>, it is already far too much. "A body of nobility," +such is the philosophic interpretation of the House of Lords, "is +also more peculiarly necessary in our mixed and compounded +constitution, in order to support the rights of both the Crown and +people, by forming a barrier to withstand the encroachments of both +... if they were confounded with the mass of the people, and like +them had only a vote in electing representatives, their privileges +would soon be borne down and overwhelmed by the popular torrent, +which would effectually level all distinctions." "The Commons," he +says further, "consist of all such men of property in the kingdom +as have not seats in the House of Lords." The legal +irresponsibility of the King is emphasized. "He is not only +incapable of doing wrong," says Blackstone, "but even of thinking +wrong; he can never mean to do an improper thing; in him is no +folly or weakness," though he points out that the constitution "has +allowed a latitude of supposing the contrary." The powers of the +King are described in terms more suitable to the iron despotism of +<a name="page179" id="page179"></a>William the Norman than to the +backstairs corruption of George III. The right of revolution is +noted, with justice, as belonging to the sphere of morals rather +than of law.</p> +<p>"Its true defect," says Professor Dicey of the +<i>Commentaries</i>, "is the hopeless confusion both of language +and of thought introduced into the whole subject of constitutional +law by Blackstone's habit—common to all the lawyers of his +time—of applying old and inapplicable terms to new +institutions." This is severe enough; yet Blackstone's sins are +deeper than the criticism would suggest. He introduced into English +political philosophy that systematic attention to forms instead of +substance upon which the whole vicious theory of checks and +balances was erected. He made no distinction between the unlimited +sovereignty of law and the very obviously limited sovereignty of +reality. He must have known that to talk of the independence of the +branches of the legislature was simple nonsense at a time when King +and peers competed for the control of elections to the House of +Commons. His idealization of a peerage whose <a name="page180" id= +"page180"></a>typical spiritual member was Archbishop Cornwallis +and whose temporal embodiment was the Duke of Bedford would not +have deceived a schoolboy had it not provided a bulwark against +improvement. It was ridiculous to describe the Commons as +representative of property so long as places like Manchester and +Sheffield were virtually disfranchised. His picture of the royal +prerogative was a portrait against every detail of which what was +best in England had struggled in the preceding century and a half. +He has nothing to say of the cabinet, nothing of ministerial +responsibility, nothing of the party system. What he did was to +produce the defence of a non-existent system which acted as a +barrier to all legal, and much political, progress in the next +half-century. He gave men material without cause for +satisfaction.</p> +<p>As a description of the existing government there is thus hardly +an element of Blackstone's work which could stand the test of +critical inquiry. But even worse was its philosophy. As Bentham +pointed out, he was unaware of the distinction between society and +government. The state <a name="page181" id="page181"></a>of nature +exists, or fails to exist, with startling inconsistency. +Blackstone, in fact, was a Lockian who knows that Hume and +Montesquieu have cut the ground from under his master's feet, and +yet cannot understand how, without him, a foundation is to be +supplied. Locke, indeed, seems to him, as a natural conservative, +to go too far, and he rejects the original contract as without +basis in history; yet contractual notions are present at every +fundamental stage of his argument. The sovereign power, so we are +told, is irresistible; and then because Blackstone is uncertain +what right is to mean, we hear of moral limitations upon its +exercise. He speaks continually of representation without any +effort to examine into the notions it conveys. The members of +society are held to be equal; and great pains are taken to justify +existent inequalities. "The natural foundations of sovereignty," he +writes, "are the three great requisites... of wisdom, goodness and +power." Yet there is nowhere any proof in his book that steps have +been taken in the British Constitution to associate these with the +actual exertion of authority. Nor has he <a name="page182" id= +"page182"></a>clear notions of the way in which property is to be +founded. Communism, he writes in seventeenth century fashion, is +the institution of the all-beneficent Creator who gave the earth to +men; property comes when men occupy some special portion of the +soil continuously or mix their labor with movable possessions. This +is pure Locke; though the conclusions drawn by Blackstone are +utterly remote from the logical result of his own premises.</p> +<p>The truth surely is that Blackstone had, upon all these +questions, only the most confused sort of notions. He had to +preface his work with some sort of philosophic theory because the +conditions of the age demanded it. The one source of enlightenment +when he wrote was Hume; but for some uncertain reason, perhaps his +piety, Blackstone makes no reference to the great sceptic's +speculations. So that he was driven back upon notions he felt to be +false, without a proper realization of their falsity. His use of +Montesquieu shows rather how dangerous a weapon a great idea can be +in the hands of one incompetent to understand it, than the +fertility it contained. The merit of <a name="page183" id= +"page183"></a>Blackstone is his learning, which was substantial, +his realization that the powers of law demand some classification, +his dim yet constant sense that Montesquieu is right alike in +searching for the roots of law in custom and in applying the +historical method to his explanations. But as a thinker he was +little more than an optimistic trifler, too content with the +conditions of his time to question its assumptions.</p> +<p>De Lolme is a more interesting figure; and though, as with +Blackstone, what he failed to see was even more remarkable than +what he did perceive, his book has real ability and merit. De Lolme +was a citizen of Geneva, who published his <i>Constitution of +England</i> in 1775, after a twelve months' visit to shores +sufficiently inhospitable to leave him to die in obscurity and +want. His book, as he tells us in his preface, was no mean success, +though he derived no profit from it. Like Blackstone, he was +impressed by the necessity of obtaining a constitutional +equilibrium, wherein he finds the secret of liberty. The attitude +was not unnatural in one who, with his head full of <a name= +"page184" id="page184"></a>Montesquieu, was a witness of the +struggle between Junius and the King. He has, of course, the +limitation common to all writers before Burke of thinking of +government in purely mechanical terms. "It is upon the passions of +mankind," he says, "that is, upon causes which are unalterable, +that the action of the various parts of a state depends. The +machine may vary as to its dimensions; but its movement and acting +springs still remain intrinsically the same." Elsewhere he speaks +of government as "a great ballet or dance in which ... everything +depends upon the disposition of the figures." He does not deal, +that is to say, with men as men, but only as inert adjuncts of a +machine by which they are controlled. Such an attitude is bound to +suffer from the patent vices of all abstraction. It regards +historic forces as distinct from the men related to them. Every +mob, he says, must have its Spartacus; every republic will tend to +unstability. The English avoid these dangers by playing off the +royal power against the popular. The King's interest is safeguarded +by the division of Parliament into two Houses, each of <a name= +"page185" id="page185"></a>which rejects the encroachment of the +other upon the executive. His power is limited by parliamentary +privilege, freedom of the press, the right of taxation and so +forth. The theory was not true; though it represented with some +accuracy the ideals of the time.</p> +<p>Nor must we belittle what insight De Lolme possessed. He saw +that the early concentration of power in the royal hands prevented +the continental type of feudalism from developing in England; with +the result that while French nobles were massacring each other, the +English people could unite to wrest privileges from the superior +power. He understood that one of the mainsprings of the system was +the independence of the judges. He realized that the +party-system—he never used the actual term—while it +provides room for men's ambitions at the same time prevents the +equation of ambition with indispensability. "Woe to him," says De +Lolme, "... who should endeavor to make the people believe that +their fate depends on the persevering virtue of a single citizen." +He sees the paramount value of freedom of the press. This, as +<a name="page186" id="page186"></a>he says, with the necessity that +members should be re-elected, "has delivered into the hands of the +people at large the exercise of the censorial power." He has no +doubt but that resistance is the remedy whereby governmental +encroachment can be prevented; "resistance," he says, "is the +ultimate and lawful resource against the violences of power." He +points out how real is the guarantee of liberty where the onus of +proof in criminal cases is thrown upon the government. He regards +with admiration the supremacy of the civil over the military arm, +and the skillful way in which, contrary to French experience, it +has been found possible to maintain a standing army without adding +to the royal power. Nor can he fail to admire the insight which +organizes "the agitation of the popular mind," not as "the +forerunner of violent commotions" but to "animate all parts of the +state." Therein De Lolme had grasped the real essence of party +government.</p> +<p>It was, of course, no more than symptomatic of his time that +cabinet and prime minister should have escaped his notice. A more +serious defect was his inability, <a name="page187" id= +"page187"></a>with the Wilkes contest prominently in his notice, to +see that the people had assumed a new importance. For the masses, +indeed, De Lolme had no enthusiasm. "A passive share," he thought, +"was the only one that could, with safety to the state, be trusted" +to the humble man. "The greater part," he wrote, "of those who +compose this multitude, taken up with the care of providing for +their subsistence, have neither sufficient leisure, nor even, in +consequence of their imperfect education, the degree of +information, requisite for functions of this kind." Such an +attitude blinded him to the significance of the American conflict, +which he saw unattended by its moral implications. He trusted too +emphatically to the power of mechanisms to realize that +institutions which allowed of such manipulation as that of George +III could not be satisfactory once the people had awakened to a +sense of its own power. The real social forces of the time found +there no channels of activity; and the difference between De Lolme +and Bagehot is the latter's power to go behind the screen of +statute to the inner sources of power.</p> +<a name="page188" id="page188"></a> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p>The basis of revolutionary doctrine was already present in +England when, in 1762, Rousseau published his <i>Contrat +Social</i>. With its fundamental doctrines Locke had already made +his countrymen familiar; and what was needed for the appreciation +of its teaching was less a renaissance than discontent. So soon as +men are dissatisfied with the traditional foundations of the State, +a gospel of natural rights is certain to make its appearance. And, +once the design of George III had been made familiar by his +treatment of Chatham and Wilkes, the discontent did not fail to +show itself. Indeed, in the year before the publication of +Rousseau's book, Robert Wallace, a Scottish chaplain royal, had +written in his <i>Various Prospects</i> (1761) a series of essays +which are at once an anticipation of the main thesis of Malthus and +a plea for the integration of social forces by which alone the mass +of men could be raised from misery. In the light of later +experience it is difficult not to be impressed by the modernist +flavour of Wallace's attack. <a name="page189" id="page189"></a>He +insists upon the capacity of men and the disproportion between +their potential achievement and that which is secured by actual +society. Men are in the mass condemned to ignorance and toil; and +the lust of power sets man against his neighbor to the profit of +the rich. Wallace traces these evils to private property and the +individualistic organization of work, and he sees no remedy save +community of possessions and a renovated educational system. Yet he +does not conceal from himself that it is to the interest of the +governing class to prevent a revolution which, beneficent to the +masses, would be fatal to themselves; nor does he conceive it +possible until the fertility of men has been reduced to the +capacity of the soil. He speculates upon the chances of a new +spirit among men, of an all-wise legislator, and of the beneficent +example of colonies upon the later Owenite model. But his book is +contemporaneous with our own ideas rather than with the thoughts of +his generation. Nor does it seem to have excited any general +attention.</p> +<p>It is five years after Rousseau that we see the first clear +signs of his influence. <a name="page190" id= +"page190"></a>Naturally enough the men amongst whom the new spirit +spread abroad were the Nonconformists. For more than seventy years +they had been allowed existence without recognition. None had more +faithfully supported the new dynasty than they; none had been paid +less for their allegiance. Their utmost effort could secure only a +sparing mitigation of the Test Act. All of them were Whigs, and the +doctrines of Locke suited exactly their temper and their wants. +There were amongst them able men in every walk of life, and they +were apt to publication. Joseph Priestley, in particular, gave up +with willingness to mankind what was obviously meant for chemical +science. A few years previously Brown of the <i>Estimate</i> had +submitted a scheme for national education, in which the essential +principle was Church control. Priestley had answered him, and was +encouraged by friends to expand his argument into a general +treatise. His <i>Essay on the First Principles of Government</i> +appeared in 1768; and, if for nothing else, it would be noteworthy +because it was therein that the significance of the "greatest +happiness principle" first <a name="page191" id= +"page191"></a>flashed across Bentham's mind. But the book shows +more than this. "I had placed," says Priestley with due modesty, +"the foundation of some of the most valuable interests of mankind +on a broader and firmer basis than Mr. Locke"; and the breadth and +firmness are Rousseau's contribution.</p> +<p>Certainly we herein meet new elements. On the very threshold of +the book we meet the dogma of the perfectibility of man. +"Whatever," Priestley rhapsodizes, "was the beginning of this +world, the end will be glorious and paradisaical, beyond what our +imaginations can now conceive." "The instrument of this progress +... towards this glorious state" is government; though a little +later we are to find that the main business of government is +noninterference. Men are all equal, and their natural rights are +indefeasible. Government must be restrained in the interests of +liberty. No man can be governed without his consent; for government +is founded upon a contract by which civil liberty is surrendered in +exchange for a power to share in public decisions. It thus follows +that the people must be <a name="page192" id= +"page192"></a>sovereign, and interference with their natural rights +will justify resistance. Every government, he says, is "in its +original principles, and antecedent to its present form an equal +republic"; wherefore, of course, it follows that we must restore to +men the equality they have lost. And, equally, of course, this +would bestow upon the Nonconformists their full citizenship; for +Warburton's <i>Alliance</i>, to attack which Priestley exhausts all +the resources of his ingenuity, has been one of the main +instruments in their degradation. "Unbounded liberty in matters of +religion," which means the abolition of the Establishment, promises +to be "very favorable to the best interests of mankind."</p> +<p>So far the book might well be called an edition of Rousseau for +English Nonconformists; but there are divergences of import. It can +never be forgotten in the history of political ideas that the +alliance of Church and State made Nonconformists suspicious of +government interference. Their original desire to be left unimpeded +was soon exalted into a definite theory; and since political +conditions had confined them so largely to trade none felt as they +<a name="page193" id="page193"></a>did the hampering influence of +State-restrictions. The result has been a great difficulty in +making liberal doctrines in England realize, until after 1870, the +organic nature of the State. It remains for them almost entirely a +police institution which, once it aims at the realization of right, +usurps a function far better performed by individuals. There is no +sense of the community; all that exists is a sum of private +sentiments. "Civil liberty," says Priestley, "has been greatly +impaired by an abuse of the maxim that the joint understanding of +all the members of a State, properly collected, must be preferable +to that of individuals; and consequently that the more the cases +are in which mankind are governed by this united reason of the +whole community, so much the better; whereas, in truth, the greater +part of human actions are of such a nature, that more inconvenience +would follow from their being fixed by laws than from their being +left to every man's arbitrary will." If my neighbor assaults me, he +suggests, I may usefully call in the police; but where the object +is the discovery of truth, the means of education, <a name= +"page194" id="page194"></a>the method of religious belief, +individual initiative is superior to State action. The latter +produces an uniform result "incompatible with the spirit of +discovery." Nor is such attempt at uniform conditions just to +posterity; men have no natural right to judge for the future. Men +are too ignorant to fix their own ideas as the basis of all +action.</p> +<p>Priestley could not escape entirely the bondage of past +tradition; and the metaphysics which Bentham abhorred are scattered +broadcast over his pages. Nevertheless the basis upon which he +defended his ideas was a utilitarianism hardly less complete than +that which Bentham made the instrument of revolution. "Regard to +the general good," he says, "is the main method by which natural +rights are to be defended." "The good and happiness of the members, +that is, the majority of the members of any State, is the great +standard by which everything relating to that state must finally be +determined." In substance, that is to say, if not completely in +theory, we pass with Priestley from arguments of right to those of +expediency. His chief <a name="page195" id="page195"></a>attack +upon religious legislation is similarly based upon considerations +of policy. His view of the individual as a never-ending source of +fruitful innovation anticipates all the later Benthamite arguments +about the well-spring of individual energy. Interference and +stagnation are equated in exactly similar fashion to Adam Smith and +his followers. Priestley, of course, was inconsistent in urging at +the outset that government is the chief instrument of progress; but +what he seems to mean is less that government has the future in its +hands than that government action may well be decisive for good or +evil. Typical, too, of the later Benthamism is his glorification of +reason as the great key which is to unlock all doors. That is, of +course, natural in a scientist who had himself made discoveries of +vital import; but it was characteristic also of a school which +scanned a limitless horizon with serene confidence in a future of +unbounded good. Even if it be said that Priestley has all the vices +of that rationalism which, as with Bentham, oversimplifies every +problem it encounters, it is yet adequate to retort that a +confidence <a name="page196" id="page196"></a>in the energies of +men was better than the complacent stagnation of the previous +age.</p> +<p>It is difficult to measure the precise influence that Priestley +exerted; certainly among Nonconformists it cannot have been small. +Dr. Richard Price is a lesser figure; and much of the standing he +might have had has been obliterated by two unfortunate incidents. +His sinking-fund scheme was taken up by the younger Pitt, and +proved, though the latter believed in it to the last, to be founded +upon an arithmetical fallacy which did not sit well upon a fellow +of the Royal Society. His sermon on the French Revolution provoked +the <i>Reflections</i> of Burke; and, though much of the right was +on the side of Price, it can hardly be said that he survived +Burke's onslaught. Yet he was a considerable figure in his day, and +he shows, like Priestley, how deep-rooted was the English +revolutionary temper. He has not, indeed, Priestley's superb +optimism; for the rigid <i>a priori</i> morality of which he was +the somewhat muddled defender was less favorable to a confidence in +reason. He had a good deal of John Brown's fear that <a name= +"page197" id="page197"></a>luxury was the seed of English +degeneration; the proof of which he saw in the decline of the +population. His figures, in fact, were false; but they were +unessential to the general thesis he had to make.</p> +<p>Price, like Priestley a leading Nonconformist, was stirred to +print by the American Revolution; and if his views were not widely +popular, his <i>Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty</i> +(1776) attained its eighth edition within a decade. This, with its +supplement <i>Additional Observations</i> (1777), presents a +perfectly coherent theory. Nor is their ancestry concealed. They +represent the tradition of Locke, modified by the importations of +Rousseau. Price owes much to Priestley and to Hume, and he takes +sentences from Montesquieu where they aid him. But he has little or +nothing of Priestley's utilitarianism and the whole argument is +upon the abstract basis of right. Liberty means self-government, +and self-government means the right of every man to be his own +legislator. Price, with strict logic, follows out this doctrine to +its last consequence. Taxes become "free gifts for public +services"; laws are "particular <a name="page198" id= +"page198"></a>provisions or regulations established by Common +Consent for gaining protection and safety"; magistrates are +"trustees or deputies for carrying these regulations into +execution." And almost in the words of Rousseau, Price goes on to +admit that liberty, "in its most perfect degree, can be enjoyed +only in small states where every independent agent is capable of +giving his suffrage in person and of being chosen into public +offices." He knows that large States are inevitable, though he +thinks that representation may be made so adequate as to minimize +the sacrifice of liberty involved.</p> +<p>But the limitation upon government is everywhere emphasized. +"Government," he says, "... is in the very nature of it a trust; +and all its powers a Delegation for particular ends." He rejects +the theory of parliamentary sovereignty as incompatible with +self-government; if the Parliament, for instance, prolonged its +life, it would betray its constituents and dissolve itself. "If +omnipotence," he writes, "can with any sense be ascribed to a +legislature, it must be lodged where all legislative authority +originates; that is, in <a name="page199" id="page199"></a>the +People." Such a system is alone compatible with the ends of +government, since it cannot be supposed that men "combine into +communities and institute government" for self-enslavement. Nor is +any other political system "consistent with the natural equality of +mankind"; by which Price means that no man "is constituted by the +author of nature the vassal or subject of another, or has any right +to give law to him, or, without his consent, to take away any part +of his property or to abridge him of his liberty." From all of +which it is concluded that liberty is inalienable; and a people +which has lost it "must have a right to emancipate themselves as +soon as they can." The aptness of the argument to the American +situation is obvious enough; and nowhere is Price more happy or +more formidable than when he applies his precepts to phrases like +"the unity of the empire" and the "honor of the kingdom" which were +so freely used to cover up the inevitable results of George's +obstinacy.</p> +<p>The <i>Essay on the Right of Property in Land</i> (1781) of +William Ogilvie deserves at least a passing notice. The author, who +<a name="page200" id="page200"></a>published his book anonymously, +was a Professor of Latin in the University of Aberdeen and an +agriculturist of some success. His own career was distinctly +honorable. The teacher of Sir James Mackintosh, he had a high +reputation as a classical scholar and deserves to be remembered for +his effort to reform a college which had practically ceased to +perform its proper academic functions. His book is virtually an +essay upon the natural right of men to the soil. He does not doubt +that the distress of the times is due to the land monopoly. The +earth being given to men in common, its invasion by private +ownership is a dangerous perversion. Men have the right to the full +product of their labor; but the privileges of the landowner prevent +the enjoyment of that right. The primary duty of every State is the +increase of public happiness; and the happiest nation is that which +has the greatest number of free and independent cultivators. But +governments attend rather to the interest of the higher classes, +even while they hold out the protection of the common people as the +main pretext of their authority. <a name="page201" id= +"page201"></a>The result is their maintenance of land-monopoly even +though it affects the prime material of all essential industries, +prevents the growth of population, and makes the rich wealthier at +the expense of the poor. It breeds oppression and ignorance, and +poisons improvement by preventing individual initiative. He points +out how a nation is dominated by its landlords, and how they have +consistently evaded the fiscal burdens they should bear. Only in a +return to a nation of freeholders can Ogilvie see the real source +of an increase in happiness.</p> +<p>Such criticism is revolutionary enough, though when he comes to +speak of actual changes, he had little more to propose than a +system of peasant proprietorship. What is striking in the book is +its sense of great, impending changes, its thorough grasp of the +principle of utility, its realization of the immense agricultural +improvement that is possible if the landed system can be so changed +as to bring into play the impulses of humble men. He sees clearly +enough that wealth dominates the State; and his interpretation of +history is throughout economic. Ogilvie <a name="page202" id= +"page202"></a>is one of the first of those agrarian Socialists who, +chiefly through Spence and Paine, are responsible for a special +current of their own in the great tide of protest against the +unjust situation of labor. Like them, he builds his system upon +natural rights; though, unlike them, his natural rights are +defended by expediency and in a style that is always clear and +logical. The book itself has rather a curious history. At its +appearance, it seems to have excited no notice of any kind. +Mackintosh knew of its authorship; for he warned its author against +the amiable delusion that its excellence would persuade the British +government to force a system of peasant proprietorship upon the +East India Company. Reprinted in 1838 as the work of John Ogilby, +it was intended to instruct the Chartists in the secret of their +oppression; and therein it may well have contributed to the +tragicomic land-scheme of Feargus O'Connor. In 1891 the problem of +the land was again eagerly debated under the stimulus of Mr. Henry +George; and a patriotic Scotchman published the book with +biographical notes that constitute one of the most <a name= +"page203" id="page203"></a>amazing curiosities in English political +literature.</p> +<h4>V</h4> +<p>Against the school of Rousseau's English disciples it is +comparatively easy to multiply criticisms. They lacked any historic +sense. Government, for them, was simply an instrument which was +made and unmade at the volition of men. How complex were its +psychological foundations they had no conception; with the single +factor of consent they could explain the most marvellous edifice of +any time. They were buried beneath a mountain of metaphysical right +which they never related to legal facts or to political +possibility. They pursued relentlessly the logical conclusions of +the doctrines they abhorred without being willing carefully to +investigate the results to which their own doctrines in logic led. +They overestimated the extent to which men are willing to occupy +themselves with political affairs. They made no proper allowance +for the protective armour each social system must acquire by the +mere force of prescription. Nor is <a name="page204" id= +"page204"></a>there sufficient allowance in their attitude for +those limiting conditions of circumstance of which every statesman +must of necessity take account. They occupy themselves, that is to +say, so completely with <i>staatslehre</i> that they do not admit +the mollifying influence of <i>politik</i>. They search for +principles of universal right, without the perception that a right +which is to be universal must necessarily be so general in +character as to be useless in its application.</p> +<p>Yet such defects must not blind us to the general rightness of +their insight. They were protesting against a system strongly +upheld on grounds which now appear to have been simply +indefensible. The business of government had been made the private +possession of a privileged class; and eagerness for desirable +change was, in the mass, absent from the minds of most men engaged +in its direction. The loss of America, the heartless treatment of +Ireland, the unconstitutional practices in the Wilkes affair, the +heightening of corruption undertaken by Henry Fox and North at the +direct instance of the king, had blinded the eyes of <a name= +"page205" id="page205"></a>most to the fact that principle is a +vital part of policy. The revolutionists recalled men to the need +of explaining, no less than carrying on, the government of the +Crown. They represented the new sense of power felt by elements of +which the importance had been forgotten in the sordid intrigues of +the previous half-century. Their emphasis upon government as in its +nature a public trust was at least accompanied by a useful reminder +that, after all, ultimate power must rest upon the side of the +governed. For twenty years Whigs and Tories alike carried on +political controversy as though no public opinion existed outside +the small circle of the aristocracy. The mob which made Wilkes its +idol was, in a blind and unconscious way, enforcing the lesson that +Price and Priestley had in mind. For the moment, they were +unsuccessful. Cartwright, with his Constitutional Societies, might +capture the support of an eccentric peer like the Duke of Richmond; +but the vast majority remained, if irritated, unconvinced. It +needed the realization that the new doctrines were part of a vaster +synthesis which swept within its purview <a name="page206" id= +"page206"></a>the fortunes of Europe and America before they would +give serious heed; and even then they met antagonism with nothing +save oppression and hate. Yet the doctrines remained; for thought, +after all, is killed by reasoned answer alone. And when the first +gusts of war and revolution had passed, the cause for which they +stood was found to have permeated all classes save that which had +all to lose by learning.</p> +<p>We must not, however, commit the error of thinking of Price and +Priestley as representing more than an important segment of +opinion. The opposition to their theories was not less articulate +than their own defence of them. Some, like Burke, desired a +purification of the existing system; others, like Dr. Johnson, had +no sort of sympathy with new-fangled ideas. One thinker, at least, +deserves some mention less for the inherent value of what he had to +say, than for the nature of the opinions he expounded. Josiah +Tucker, the Dean of Gloucester, has a reputation alike in political +and economic enquiry. He represents the sturdy nationalism of +Arbuthnot's <i>John Bull</i>, the unreasoned <a name="page207" id= +"page207"></a>prejudice against all foreigners, the hatred of all +metaphysics as inconsistent with common sense, the desire to let +things be on the ground that the effort after change is worse than +the evil of which men complain. His <i>Treatise on Civil +Government</i> (1781) is in many ways a delightful book, bluff, +hardy, full of common sense, with, at times, a quaint humor that is +all its own. He had really two objects in view; to deal, in the +first place, faithfully with the American problem, and, in the +second, to explode the new bubble of Rousseau's followers. The +second point takes the form of an examination of Locke, to whom, as +Tucker shrewdly saw, the theories of the school may trace their +ancestry. He analyses the theory of consent in such fashion as to +show that if its adherents could be persuaded to be logical, they +would have to admit themselves anarchists. He has no sympathy with +the state of nature; the noble savage, on investigation, turns out +to be a barbaric creature with a club and scalping knife. +Government, he does not doubt, is a trust, or, as he prefers, +somewhat oddly, to call it, a quasi-contract; but that does not +mean <a name="page208" id="page208"></a>that the actual governors +can be dismissed when any eccentric happens to take exception to +their views. He has no sympathy with parliamentary reform. Give the +mob an increase of power, he says, and nothing is to be expected +but outrage and violence. He thinks the constitution very well as +it is, and those who preach the evils of corruption ought to prove +their charges instead of blasphemously asserting that the voice of +the people is the voice of God.</p> +<p>Upon America Tucker has doctrines all his own. He does not doubt +that the Americans deserve the worst epithets that can be showered +upon them. Their right to self-government he denied as stoutly as +ever George III himself could have desired. But not for one moment +would he fight them to compel their return to British allegiance. +If the American colonies want to go, let them by all means cut +adrift. They are only a useless source of expenditure. The trade +they represent does not depend upon allegiance but upon wants that +England can supply if she keeps shop in the proper way, if, that +is, she makes it to their interest to buy in her market. Indeed, +colonies of all kinds <a name="page209" id="page209"></a>seem to +him quite useless. They ever are, he says, and ever were, "a drain +to and an incumbrance on the Mother-country, requiring perpetual +and expensive nursing in their infancy, and becoming headstrong and +ungovernable in proportion as they grow up." All wise relations +depend upon self-interest, and that needs no compulsion. If +Gibraltar and Port Mahon and the rest were given up, the result +would be "multitudes of places ... abolished, jobs and contracts +effectually prevented, millions of money saved, universal industry +encouraged, and the influence of the Crown reduced to that +mediocrity it ought to have." Here is pure Manchesterism +half-a-century before its time; and one can imagine the good Dean +crustily explaining his notions to the merchants of Bristol who had +just rejected Edmund Burke for advocating free trade with +Ireland.</p> +<p>No word on Toryism would be complete without mention of Dr. +Johnson. Here, indeed, we meet less with opinion than with a set of +gloomy prejudices, acceptable only because of the stout honesty of +the source from which they come. He <a name="page210" id= +"page210"></a>thought life a poor thing at the best and took a low +view of human nature. "The notion of liberty," he told the faithful +Boswell, "amuses the people of England and helps to keep off the +<i>tedium vitae</i>." The idea of a society properly organized into +ranks and societies he always esteemed highly. "I am a friend to +subordination," he said, "as most conducive to the happiness of +society." He was a Jacobite and Tory to the end. Whiggism was the +offspring of the devil, the "negation of all principle"; and he +seems to have implied that it led to atheism, which he regarded as +the worst of sins. He did not believe in the honesty of +republicans; they levelled down, but were never inclined to level +up. Men, he felt, had a part to act in society, and their business +was to fulfil their allotted station. Rousseau was a very bad man: +"I would sooner sign a sentence for his transportation than that of +any fellow who has gone from the Old Bailey these many years." +Political liberty was worthless; the only thing worth while was +freedom in private concerns. He blessed the government in the case +of general warrants and thought the power <a name="page211" id= +"page211"></a>of the Crown too small. Toleration he considered due +to an inapt distinction between freedom to think and freedom to +talk, and any magistrate "while he thinks himself right ... ought +to enforce what he thinks." The American revolt he ascribed to +selfish faction; and in his <i>Taxation no Tyranny</i> (1775) he +defended the British government root and branch upon his favorite +ground of the necessity of subordination. He was willing, he said, +to love all mankind except an American.</p> +<p>Yet Dr. Johnson was the friend of Burke, and he found pleasure +in an acquaintance with Wilkes. Nor, in all his admiration for rank +and fortune, is there a single element of meanness. The man who +wrote the letter to Lord Chesterfield need never fear the charge of +abasement. He knew that there was "a remedy in human nature that +will keep us safe under every form of government." He defined a +courtier in the <i>Idler</i> as one "whose business it is to watch +the looks of a being weak and foolish as himself." Much of what he +felt was in part a revolt against the sentimental aspect of +contemporary liberalism, in part a sturdy contempt for <a name= +"page212" id="page212"></a>the talk of degeneracy that men such as +Brown had made popular. There is, indeed, in all his political +observations a strong sense of the virtue of order, and a +perception that the radicalism of the time was too abstract to +provide an adequate basis for government. Here, as elsewhere, +Johnson hated all speculation which raised the fundamental +questions. What he did not see was the important truth that in no +age are fundamental questions raised save where the body politic is +diseased. Rousseau and Voltaire, even Priestley and Price, require +something more for answer than unreasoned prejudice. Johnson's +attitude would have been admirable where there were no questions to +debate; but where Pelham ruled, or Grenville, or North, it had +nothing to contribute. Thought, after all, is the one certain +weapon of utility in a different and complex world; and it was +because the age refused to look it in the face that it invited the +approach of revolution.</p> +<hr class="long" /> +<a name="page213" id="page213"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> +<h3>BURKE</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p>It is the special merit of the English constitutional system +that the king stands outside the categories of political conflict. +He is the dignified emollient of an organized quarrel which, at +least in theory, is due to the clash of antagonistic principle. The +merit, indeed, is largely accidental; and we shall miss the real +fashion in which it came to be established unless we remark the +vicissitudes through which it has passed. The foreign birth of the +first two Hanoverians, the insistent widowhood of Queen Victoria, +these rather than deliberate foresight have secured the elevated +nullification of the Crown. Yet the first twenty-five years of +George III's reign represent the deliberate effort of an obstinate +man to stem the progress of fifty years and secure once more the +balance of <a name="page214" id="page214"></a>power. Nor was the +effort defeated without a struggle which went to the root of +constitutional principle.</p> +<p>And George III attempted the realization of his ambition at a +time highly favorable to its success. Party government had lost +much credit during Walpole's administration. Men like Bolingbroke, +Carteret and the elder Pitt were all of them dissatisfied with a +system which depended for its existence upon the exclusion of able +men from power. A generation of corrupt practice and the final +defeat of Stuart hopes had already deprived the Whigs of any +special hold on their past ideals. They were divided already into +factions the purpose of which was no more than the avid pursuit of +place and pension. Government by connection proved itself +irreconcilable with good government. But it showed also that once +corruption was centralized there was no limit to its influence, +granted only the absence of great questions. When George III +transferred that organization from the office of the minister to +his own court, there was already a tolerable certainty of his +success. For more than forty years the Tories had <a name="page215" +id="page215"></a>been excluded from office; and they were more than +eager to sell their support. The Church had become the creature of +the State. The drift of opinion in continental Europe was towards +benevolent despotism. The narrow, obstinate and ungenerous mind of +George had been fed on high notions of the power he might exert. He +had been taught the kingship of Bolingbroke's glowing picture; and +a reading in manuscript of the seventh chapter of Blackstone's +first book can only have confirmed the ideals he found there. Nor +was it obvious that a genuine kingship would have been worse than +the oligarchy of the great Whig families.</p> +<p>What made it worse, and finally impossible, was the character of +the king. The pathetic circumstances of his old age have combined +somewhat to obscure the viciousness of his maturity. He was +excessively ignorant and as obstinate as arbitrary. He trusted no +one but himself, and he totally misunderstood the true nature of +his office. There is no question which arose in the first forty +years of his reign in which he was not upon the wrong side and +proud of his error. He was <a name="page216" id="page216"></a>wrong +about Wilkes, wrong about America, wrong about Ireland, wrong about +France. He demanded servants instead of ministers. He attacked +every measure for the purification of the political system. He +supported the Slave trade and he opposed the repeal of the Test +Act. He prevented the grant of Catholic emancipation at the one +moment when it might have genuinely healed the wounds of Ireland. +He destroyed by his perverse creations the value of the House of +Lords as a legislative assembly. He was clearly determined to make +his will the criterion of policy; and his design might have +succeeded had his ability and temper been proportionate to its +greatness. It was not likely that the mass of men would have seen +with regret the destruction of the aristocratic monopoly in +politics. The elder Pitt might well have based a ministry of the +court upon a broad bottom of popularity. The House of Commons, as +the event proved, could be as subservient to the king as to his +minister.</p> +<p>Yet the design failed; and it failed because, with +characteristic stupidity, the <a name="page217" id= +"page217"></a>king did not know the proper instruments for his +purpose. Whatever he touched he mismanaged. He aroused the +suspicion of the people by enforcing the resignation of the elder +Pitt. In the Wilkes affair he threw the clearest light of the +century upon the true nature of the House of Commons. His own +system of proscription restored to the Whig party not a little of +the idealism it had lost; and Burke came to supply them with a +philosophy. Chatham remained the idol of the people despite his +hatred. He raised Wilkes to be the champion of representative +government and of personal liberty. He lost America and it was not +his fault that Ireland was retained. The early popularity he +received he never recovered until increasing years and madness had +made him too pathetic for dislike. The real result of his attempt +was to compel attention once again to the foundations of politics; +and George's effort, in the light of his immense failures, could +not, in the nature of things, survive that analysis.</p> +<p>Not, of course, that George ever lacked defenders. As early as +1761, the old rival of Walpole, Pulteney, whom a peerage <a name= +"page218" id="page218"></a>had condemned to obsolescence, published +his <i>Seasonable Hints from an Honest Man on the new Reign</i>. +Pulteney urged the sovereign no longer to be content with the +"shadow of royalty." He should use his "legal prerogatives" to +check "the illegal claims of factious oligarchy." Government had +become the private possession of a few powerful men. The king was +but a puppet in leading strings. The basis of government should be +widened, for every honest man was aware that distinctions of party +were now merely nominal. The Tories should be admitted to place. +They were now friendly to the accession and they no longer boasted +their hostility to dissent. They knew that Toleration and the +Establishment were of the essence of the Constitution. Were once +the Whig oligarchy overthrown, corruption would cease and +Parliament could no longer hope to dominate the kingdom. "The +ministers," he said, "will depend on the Crown not the Crown on +ministers" if George but showed "his resolution to break all +factitious connections and confederacies." The tone is +Bolingbroke's, and it was the lesson George had <a name="page219" +id="page219"></a>insistently heard from early youth. How sinister +was the advice, men did not see until the elder Pitt was in +political exile, with Wilkes an outlaw, and general warrants +threatening the whole basis of past liberties.</p> +<p>The first writer who pointed out in unmistakable terms the +meaning of the new synthesis was Junius. That his anonymity +concealed the malignant talent of Sir Philip Francis seems now +beyond denial. Junius, indeed, can hardly claim a place in the +history of political ideas. His genius lay not in the discussion of +principle but the dissection of personality. His power lay in his +style and the knowledge that enabled him to inform the general +public of facts which were the private possession of the inner +political circle. His mind was narrow and pedantic. He stood with +Grenville on American taxation; and he maintained without +perceiving what it meant that a nomination borough was a freehold +beyond the competence of the legislature to abolish. He was never +generous, always abusive, and truth did not enter into his +calculations. But he saw with unsurpassed clearness <a name= +"page220" id="page220"></a>the nature of the issue and he was a +powerful instrument in the discomfiture of the king. He won a new +audience for political conflict and that audience was the +unenfranchised populace of England. His letters, moreover, +appearing as they did in the daily journals gave the press a +significance in politics which it has never lost. He made the +significance of George's effort known to the mass of men at a time +when no other means of information was at hand. The opposition was +divided; the king's friends were in a vast majority; the +publication of debates was all but impossible. English government +was a secret conflict in which the entrance of spectators was +forbidden even though they were the subjects of debate. It was the +glory of Junius that he destroyed that system. Not even the +combined influence of the Crown and Commons, not even Lord +Mansfield's doctrine of the law of libel, could break the power of +his vituperation and Wilkes' courage. Bad men have sometimes been +the instruments of noble destiny; and there are few more curious +episodes in English history than the result of this alliance +between revengeful hate and insolent ambition.</p> +<a name="page221" id="page221"></a> +<h4>II</h4> +<p>Yet, in the long run, the real weapon which defeated George was +the ideas of Edmund Burke; for he gave to the political conflict +its real place in philosophy. There is no immortality save in +ideas; and it was Burke who gave a permanent form to the debate in +which he was the liberal protagonist. His career is illustrative at +once of the merits and defects of English politics in the +eighteenth century. The son of an Irish Protestant lawyer and a +Catholic mother, he served, after learning what Trinity College, +Dublin, could offer him, a long apprenticeship to politics in the +upper part of Grub Street. The story that he applied, along with +Hume, for Adam Smith's chair at Glasgow seems apocryphal; though +the <i>Dissertation on the Sublime and the Beautiful</i> (1756) +shows his singular fitness for the studies that Hutcheson had made +the special possession of the Scottish school. It was in Grub +Street that he appears to have attained that amazing amount of +varied yet profound knowledge which made him without equal in the +House of Commons. <a name="page222" id="page222"></a>His earliest +production was a <i>Vindication of Natural Society</i> (1756), +written in the manner of Lord Bolingbroke, and successful enough in +its imitative satire not only to deceive its immediate public, but +also to become the basis of Godwin's <i>Political Justice</i>. +After a vain attempt to serve in Ireland with "Single-Speech" +Hamilton, he became the private secretary to Lord Rockingham, the +leader of the one section of the Whig party to which an honorable +record still remained. That connection secured for him a seat in +Parliament at the comparatively late age of thirty-six; and +henceforward, until his death in 1797, he was among its leading +members. His intellectual pre-eminence, indeed, seems from the very +outset to have been recognized on all hands; though he was still, +in the eyes of the system, enough of an outsider to be given, in +the short months during which he held office, the minor office of +Paymaster-General, without a seat in the Cabinet. The man of whom +all England was the political pupil was denied without discussion a +place at the council board. Yet when Fox is little more than a +memory of great lovableness <a name="page223" id="page223"></a>and +Pitt a marvellous youth of apt quotations, Burke has endured as the +permanent manual of political wisdom without which statesmen are as +sailors on an uncharted sea.</p> +<p>For it has been the singular good fortune of Burke not merely to +obtain acceptance as the apostle of philosophic conservatism, but +to give deep comfort to men of liberal temper. He is, indeed, a +singularly lovable figure. "His stream of mind is perpetual," said +Johnson; and Goldsmith has told us how he wound his way into a +subject like a serpent. Macaulay thought him the greatest man since +Milton, Lord Morley the "greatest master of civil wisdom in our +tongue." "No English writer," says Sir Leslie Stephen, "has +received or has deserved more splendid panegyrics." Even when the +last criticism has been made, detraction from these estimates is +impossible. It is easy to show how irritable and violent was his +temperament. There is evidence and to spare of the way in which he +allowed the spirit of party to cloud his judgment. His relations +with Lord Chatham give lamentable proof of the violence of <a name= +"page224" id="page224"></a>his personal antipathies. As an orator, +his speeches are often turgid, wanting in self-control, and full of +those ample digressions in which Mr. Gladstone delighted to obscure +his principles. Yet the irritation did not conceal a magnificent +loyalty to his friends, and it was in his days of comparative +poverty that he shared his means with Barry and with Crabbe. His +alliance with Fox is the classic partnership in English politics, +unmarried, even enriched, by the tragedy of its close. He was never +guilty of mean ambition. He thought of nothing save the public +welfare. No man has ever more consistently devoted his energies to +the service of the nation with less regard for personal +advancement. No English statesman has ever more firmly moved amid a +mass of details to the principle they involve.</p> +<p>He was a member of no school of thought, and there is no +influence to whom his outlook can be directly traced. His politics, +indeed, bear upon their face the preoccupation with the immediate +problems of the House of Commons. Yet through them all the +principles that <a name="page225" id="page225"></a>emerge form a +consistent whole. Nor is this all. He hated oppression with all the +passion of a generous moral nature. He cared for the good as he saw +it with a steadfastness which Bright and Cobden only can claim to +challenge. What he had to say he said in sentences which form the +maxims of administrative wisdom. His horizon reached from London +out to India and America; and he cared as deeply for the Indian +ryot's wrongs as for the iniquities of English policy to Ireland. +With less width of mind than Hume and less intensity of gaze than +Adam Smith, he yet had a width and intensity which, fused with his +own imaginative sympathy, gave him more insight than either. He had +an unerring eye for the eternal principles of politics. He knew +that ideals must be harnessed to an Act of Parliament if they are +not to cease their influence. Admitting while he did that politics +must rest upon expediency, he never failed to find good reason why +expediency should be identified with what he saw as right. It is a +stainless and a splendid record. There are men in English politics +to whom a greater immediate <a name="page226" id= +"page226"></a>influence may be ascribed, just as in political +philosophy he cannot claim the persistent inspiration of Hobbes and +Locke. But in that middle ground between the facts and speculation +his supremacy is unapproached. There had been nothing like him +before in English politics; and in continental politics Royer +Collard alone has something of his moral fibre, though his +practical insight was far less profound. Hamilton had Burke's full +grasp of political wisdom, but he lacked his moral elevation. So +that he remains a figure of uniqueness. He may, as Goldsmith said, +have expended upon his party talents that should have illuminated +the universal aspect of the State. Yet there is no question with +which he dealt that he did not leave the richer for his +enquiry.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p>The liberalism of Burke is most apparent in his handling of the +immediate issues of the age. Upon Ireland, America and India, he +was at every point upon the side of the future. Where +constitutional reform was in debate no man <a name="page227" id= +"page227"></a>saw more clearly than he the evils that needed +remedy; though, to a later generation, his own schemes bear the +mark of timid conservatism. In the last decade of his life he +encountered the greatest cataclysm unloosed upon Europe since the +Reformation, and it is not too much to say that at every point he +missed the essence of its meaning. Yet even upon France and the +English Constitution he was full of practical sagacity. Had his +warning been uttered without the fury of hate that accompanied it, +he might well have guided the forces of the Revolution into +channels that would have left no space for the military +dictatorship he so marvellously foresaw. Had he perceived the real +evils of the aristocratic monopoly against which he so eloquently +inveighed, forty barren years might well have been a fruitful epoch +of wise and continuous reform. But Burke was not a democrat, and, +at bottom, he had little regard for that popular sense of right +which, upon occasion, he was ready to praise. What impressed him +was less the evils of the constitution than its possibilities, +could the defects quite alien from its nature but <a name="page228" +id="page228"></a>be pruned away. Moments, indeed, there are of a +deeper vision, and it is not untrue to say that the best answer to +Burke's conservatism is to be found in his own pages. But he was +too much the apostle of order to watch with calm the struggles +involved in the overthrow of privilege. He had too much the sense +of a Divine Providence taking thought for the welfare of men to +interfere with violence in his handiwork. The tinge of caution is +never absent, even from his most liberal moments; and he was +willing to endure great evil if it seemed dangerous to estimate the +cost of change.</p> +<p>His American speeches are the true text-book for colonial +administration. He put aside the empty plea of right which +satisfied legal pedants like George Grenville. What moved him was +the tragic fashion in which men clung to the shadow of a power they +could not maintain instead of searching for the roots of freedom. +He never concealed from himself that the success of America was +bound up with the maintenance of English liberties. "Armies," he +said many years later, "first victorious over Englishmen, in a +conflict <a name="page229" id="page229"></a>for English +constitutional rights and privileges, and afterwards habituated +(though in America) to keep an English people in a state of abject +subjection, would prove fatal in the end to the liberties of +England itself." He had firm hold of that insidious danger which +belittles freedom itself in the interest of curtailing some special +desire. "In order to prove that the Americans have no right to +their liberties," he said in the famous <i>Speech on Conciliation +with America</i> (1775), "we are every day endeavoring to subvert +the maxims which preserve the whole spirit of our own." The way for +the later despotism of the younger Pitt, was, as Burke saw, +prepared by those who persuaded Englishmen of the paltry character +of the American contest. His own receipt was sounder. In the +<i>Speech on American Taxation</i> (1774) he had riddled the view +that the fiscal methods of Lord North were likely to succeed. The +true method was to find a way of peace. "Nobody shall persuade me," +he told a hostile House of Commons, "when a whole people are +concerned that acts of lenity are not means of conciliation." +<a name="page230" id="page230"></a>"Magnanimity in politics," he +said in the next year, "is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a +great empire and little minds go ill together." He did not know, in +the most superb of all his maxims, how to draw up an indictment +against a whole people. He would win the colonies by binding them +to England with the ties of freedom. "The question with me," he +said, "is not whether you have a right to render your people +miserable, but whether it is not your interest to make them happy." +The problem, in fact, was one not of abstract right but of +expediency; and nothing could be lost by satisfying American +desire. Save for Johnson and Gibbon, that was apparent to every +first-class mind in England. But the obstinate king prevailed; and +Burke's great protest remained no more than material for the +legislation of the future. Yet it was something that ninety years +after his speech the British North America Act should have given +his dreams full substance.</p> +<p>Ireland had always a place apart in Burke's affections, and when +he first entered the House of Commons he admitted that uppermost in +his thoughts was the <a name="page231" id="page231"></a>desire to +assist its freedom. He saw that here, as in America, no man will be +argued into slavery. A government which defied the fundamental +impulses of men was bound to court disaster. How could it seek +security where it defied the desires of the vast majority of its +subjects? Why is the Irish Catholic to have less justice than the +Catholic of Quebec or the Indian Mohammedan? The system of +Protestant control, he said in the <i>Letter to Sir Hercules +Langrishe</i> (1792), was "well fitted for the oppression, +impoverishment and degradation of a people, and the debasement in +them of human nature itself." The Catholics paid their taxes; they +served with glory in the army and navy. Yet they were denied a +share in the commonwealth. "Common sense," he said, "and common +justice dictate ... some sort of compensation to a people for their +slavery." The British Constitution was not made "for great, general +and proscriptive exclusions; sooner or later it will destroy them, +or they will destroy the constitution." The argument that the body +of Catholics was prone to sedition was no reason to oppress them. +"No man will <a name="page232" id="page232"></a>assert seriously," +he said, "that when people are of a turbulent spirit the best way +to keep them in order is to furnish them with something to complain +of." The advantages of subjects were, as he urged, their right; and +a wise government would regard "all their reasonable wishes as so +many claims." To neglect them was to have a nation full of +uneasiness; and the end was bound to be disaster.</p> +<p>There is nothing more noble in Burke's career than his long +attempt to mitigate the evils of Company rule in India. Research +may well have shown that in some details he pressed the case too +far; yet nothing has so far come to light to cast doubt upon the +principles he there maintained. He was the first English statesman +fully to understand the moral import of the problem of subject +races; and if he did not make impossible the Joseph Sedleys of the +future, at least he flung an eternal challenge to their malignant +complacency. He did not ask the abandonment of British dominion in +India, though he may have doubted the wisdom of its conquest. All +that he insisted upon was this, that in imperial adventure the +<a name="page233" id="page233"></a>conquering race must abide by a +moral code. A lie was a lie whether its victim be black or white. +The European must respect the powers and rights of the Hindu as he +would be compelled by law to respect them in his own State. "If we +are not able," he said, "to contrive some method of governing India +well which will not of necessity become the means of governing +Great Britain ill, a ground is laid for their eternal separation, +but none for sacrificing the people of that country to our +constitution." England must be in India for India's benefit or not +at all; political power and commercial monopoly such as the East +India Company enjoyed could be had only insofar as they are +instruments of right and not of violence. The Company's system was +the antithesis of this. "There is nothing," he said in a +magnificent passage, "before the eyes of the natives but an +endless, hopeless prospect of new flights of birds of prey and +passage, with appetites continually renewing for a food that is +continually wasting." Sympathy with the native, regard for his +habits and wants, the Company's servants failed to display. "The +English youth in <a name="page234" id="page234"></a>India drink the +intoxicating draught of authority and dominion before their heads +are able to bear it, and as they are full grown in fortune long +before they are ripe in principle, neither nature nor reason have +any opportunity to exert themselves for the excesses of their +premature power. The consequences of their conduct, which in good +minds (and many of theirs are probably such) might produce +penitence or amendment, are unable to pursue the rapidity of their +flight. Their prey is lodged in England; and the cries of India are +given to seas and winds to be blown about in every breaking up of +the monsoon over a remote and unhearing ocean." More than a century +was to pass before the wisest of Burke's interpreters attempted the +translation of his maxims into statute. But there has never, in any +language, been drawn a clearer picture of the danger implicit in +imperial adventure. "The situation of man," said Burke, "is the +preceptor of his duty." He saw how a nation might become corrupted +by the spoils of other lands. He knew that cruelty abroad is the +parent of a later cruelty at home. Men will complain of <a name= +"page235" id="page235"></a>their wrongdoing in the remoter empire; +and imperialism will employ the means Burke painted in +unforgettable terms in his picture of Paul Benfield. He denied that +the government of subject races can be regarded as a commercial +transaction. Its problem was not to secure dividends but to +accomplish moral benefit. He abhorred the politics of prestige. He +knew the difficulties involved in administering distant +territories, the ignorance and apathy of the public, the consequent +erosion of responsibility, the chance that wrong will fail of +discovery. But he did not shrink from his conclusion. "Let us do +what we please," he said, "to put India from our thoughts, we can +do nothing to separate it from our public interest and our national +reputation." That is a general truth not less in Africa and China +than in India itself. The main thought in Burke's mind was the +danger lest colonial dominion become the breeding-ground of +arbitrary ideas. That his own safeguards were inadequate is clear +enough at the present time. He knew that the need was good +government. He did not nor could he realize how intimately that +ideal was <a name="page236" id="page236"></a>connected with +self-government. Yet the latest lesson is no more than the final +outcome of his teaching.</p> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p>A background so consistent as this in the inflexible +determination to moralize political action resulted in a noble +edifice. Yet, through it all, the principles of policy are rather +implied than admitted. It was when he came to deal with domestic +problems and the French Revolution that Burke most clearly showed +the real trend of his thought. That trend is unmistakable. Burke +was a utilitarian who was convinced that what was old was valuable +by the mere fact of its arrival at maturity. The State appeared to +him an organic compound that came but slowly to its full splendour. +It was easy to destroy; creation was impossible. Political +philosophy was nothing for him but accurate generalization from +experience; and he held the presumption to be against novelty. +While he did not belittle the value of reason, he was always +impressed by the immense part played by prejudice in the <a name= +"page237" id="page237"></a>determination of policy. He had no doubt +that property was a rightful index to power; and to disturb +prescription seemed to him the opening of the flood gates. Nor must +we miss the religious aspect of his philosophy. He never doubted +that religion was the foundation of the English State. +"Englishmen," he said in the <i>Reflections on the French +Revolution</i> (1790), "know, and what is better, we feel inwardly, +that religion is the basis of civil society and the source of all +good and of all comfort." The utterance is characteristic, not +merely in its depreciation of reason, but in its ultimate reliance +upon a mystic explanation of social facts. Nothing was more alien +from Burke's temper than deductive thinking in politics. The only +safeguard he could find was in empiricism.</p> +<p>This hatred of abstraction is, of course, the basis of his +earliest publication; but it remained with him to the end. He would +not discuss America in terms of right. "I do not enter into these +metaphysical distinctions," he said in the <i>Speech on American +Taxation</i>, "I hate the very sound of them." "One sure symptom of +an ill-conducted state," he wrote in the <a name="page238" id= +"page238"></a><i>Reflections</i>, "is the propensity of the people +to resort to theories." "It is always to be lamented," he said in a +<i>Speech on the Duration of Parliament</i>, "when men are driven +to search into the foundations of the commonwealth." The theory of +a social contract he declared "at best a confusion of judicial with +civil principles," and he found no sense in the doctrine of popular +sovereignty. "The lines of morality," he said in the <i>Appeal from +the New to the Old Whigs</i> (1791), "are not like ideal lines of +mathematics. They are broad and deep as well as long. They admit of +exceptions; they demand modifications. These exceptions and +modifications are made, not by the process of logic but by the +rules of prudence. Prudence is not only first in rank of the +virtues political and moral, but she is the director, the +regulator, the standard of them all." Nor did he hesitate to draw +the obvious conclusion. "This," he said, "is the true touchstone of +all theories which regard man and the affairs of men—does it +suit his nature in general, does it suit his nature as modified by +his habits?"</p> +<a name="page239" id="page239"></a> +<p>Of the truth of this general attitude it is difficult to make +denial. But when Burke came to apply it to the British Constitution +the "rules of prudence" he was willing to admit are narrow enough +to cause surprised enquiry. He did not doubt that the true end of a +legislature was "to give a direction, a form, a technical dress ... +to the general sense of the community"; he admitted that popular +revolt is so much the outcome of suffering that in any dispute +between government and people, the presumption is at least equal in +the latter's favor. He urged the acceptance of Grenville's bill for +improving the method of decision upon disputed elections. He made a +magnificent defence of the popular cause in the Middlesex election. +He was in favor of the publication of parliamentary debates and of +the voting lists in divisions. He supported almost with passion the +ending of that iniquitous system by which the enfranchisement of +revenue officers gave government a corrupt reservoir of electoral +support. His <i>Speech on Economical Reform</i> (1780) was the +prelude to a nobly-planned and successful attack upon the waste of +the Civil list.</p> +<a name="page240" id="page240"></a> +<p>Yet beyond these measures Burke could never be persuaded to go. +He was against the demand for shorter Parliaments on the excellent +ground that the elections would be more corrupt and the Commons +less responsible. He opposed the remedy of a Place Bill for the +good and sufficient reason that it gave the executive an interest +against the legislature. He would not, as in the great speech at +Bristol (1774), accept the doctrine that a member of Parliament was +a mere delegate of his constituents rather than a representative of +his own convictions. "Government and legislation," he said, "are +matters of reason and of judgment"; and once the private member had +honorably arrived at a decision which he thought was for the +interest of the whole community, his duty was done. All this, in +itself, is unexceptionable; and it shows Burke's admirable grasp of +the practical application of attractive theories to the event. But +it is to be read in conjunction with a general hostility to basic +constitutional change which is more dubious. He had no sympathy +with the Radicals. "The bane of the Whigs," he said, "has been the +admission <a name="page241" id="page241"></a>among them of the +corps of schemers ... who do us infinite mischief by persuading +many sober and well-meaning people that we have designs +inconsistent with the Constitution left us by our forefathers." "If +the nation at large," he wrote in another letter, "has disposition +enough to oppose all bad principles and all bad men, its form of +government is, in my opinion, fully sufficient for it; but if the +general disposition be against a virtuous and manly line of public +conduct, there is no form into which it can be thrown that will +improve its nature or add to its energy"; and in the same letter he +foreshadows a possible retirement from the House of Commons as a +protest against the growth of radical opinion in his party. He +resisted every effort to reduce the suffrage qualification. He had +no sympathy with the effort either to add to the county +representation or to abolish the rotten boroughs. The framework of +the parliamentary system seemed to him excellent. He deplored all +criticism of Parliament, and even the discussion of its essentials. +"Our representation," he said, "is as nearly perfect as the +<a name="page242" id="page242"></a>necessary imperfections of human +affairs and of human creatures will suffer it to be." It was in the +same temper that he resisted all effort at the political relief of +the Protestant dissenters. "The machine itself," he had said, "is +well enough to answer any good purpose, provided the materials were +sound"; and he never moved from that opinion.</p> +<p>Burke's attitude was obsolete even while he wrote; yet the +suggestiveness of his very errors makes examination of their ground +important. Broadly, he was protesting against natural right in the +name of expediency. His opponents argued that, since men are by +nature equal, it must follow that they have an equal right to +self-government. To Burke, the admission of this principle would +have meant the overthrow of the British constitution. Its +implication was that every institution not of immediate popular +origin should be destroyed. To secure their ends, he thought, the +radicals were compelled to preach the injustice of those +institutions and thus to injure that affection for government upon +which peace and security depend. Here was an effort <a name= +"page243" id="page243"></a>to bring all institutions to the test of +logic which he thought highly dangerous. "No rational man ever did +govern himself," he said, "by abstractions and universals." The +question for him was not the abstract rightness of the system upon +some set of <i>a priori</i> principles but whether, on the whole, +that system worked for the happiness of the community. He did not +doubt that it did; and to overthrow a structure so nobly tested by +the pressure of events in favor of some theories outside historic +experience seemed to him ruinous to society. Government, for him, +was the general harmony of diverse interests; and the continual +adjustments and exquisite modifications of which it stood in need +were admirably discovered in the existing system. Principles were +thus unimportant compared to the problem of their application. "The +major," he said of all political premises, "makes a pompous figure +in the battle, but the victory depends upon the little minor of +circumstances."</p> +<p>To abstract natural right he therefore opposed prescription. The +presumption of wisdom is on the side of the past, and <a name= +"page244" id="page244"></a>when we change, we act at our peril. +"Prescription," he said in 1782, "is the most solid of all titles, +not only to property, but to what is to secure that property, to +government." Because he saw the State organically he was impressed +by the smallness both of the present moment and the individual's +thought. It is built upon the wisdom of the past for "the species +is wise, and when time is given to it, as a species it almost +always acts right." And since it is the past alone which has had +the opportunity to accumulate this rightness our disposition should +be to preserve all ancient things. They could not be without a +reason; and that reason is grounded upon ancestral experience. So +the prescriptive title becomes "not the creature, but the master, +of positive law ... the soundest, the most general and the most +recognized title between man and man that is known in municipal or +public jurisprudence." It is by prescription that he defends the +existence of Catholicism in Ireland not less than the supposed +deformities of the British Constitution. So, too, his main attack +on atheism is its implication that "everything is to be <a name= +"page245" id="page245"></a>discussed." He does not say that all +which is has rightness in it; but at least he urges that to doubt +it is to doubt the construction of a past experience which built +according to the general need. Nor does he doubt the chance that +what he urges may be wrong. Rather does he insist that at least it +gives us security, for him the highest good. "Truth," he said, "may +be far better ... but as we have scarcely ever that certainty in +the one that we have in the other, I would, unless the truth were +evident indeed, hold fast to peace, which has in her company +charity, the highest of the virtues."</p> +<p>Such a philosophy, indeed, so barely stated, would seem a +defence of political immobility; but Burke attempted safeguards +against that danger. His insistence upon the superior value of past +experience was balanced by a general admission that particular +circumstances must always govern the immediate decision. "When the +reason of old establishments is gone," he said in his <i>Speech on +Economical Reform</i>, "it is absurd to preserve nothing but the +burden of them." "A disposition to preserve and an ability <a name= +"page246" id="page246"></a>to improve," he wrote in the +<i>Reflections on the French Revolution</i>, "taken together would +be my standard of a statesman." But that "ability to improve" +conceals two principles of which Burke never relaxed his hold. "All +the reformations we have hitherto made," he said, "have proceeded +upon the principle of reference to antiquity"; and the <i>Appeal +from the New to the Old Whigs</i>, which is the most elaborate +exposition of his general attitude, proceeds upon the general basis +that 1688 is a perpetual model for the future. Nor is this all. "If +I cannot reform with equity," said Burke, "I will not reform at +all"; and equity seems here to mean a sacrifice of the present and +its passionate demands to the selfish errors of past policy.</p> +<p>Burke, indeed, was never a democrat, and that is the real root +of his philosophy. He saw the value of the party-system, and he +admitted the necessity of some degree of popular representation. +But he was entirely satisfied with current Whig principles, could +they but be purged of their grosser deformities. He knew too well +how little reason is wont to enter into the <a name="page247" id= +"page247"></a>formation of political opinion to make the sacrifice +of innovation to its power. He saw so much of virtue in the old +order, that he insisted upon the equation of virtue with +quintessence. Men of great property and position using their +influence as a public trust, delicate in their sense of honor, and +acting only from motives of right—these seemed to him the men +who should with justice exercise political power. He did not doubt +that "there is no qualification for government but virtue and +wisdom ... wherever they are actually found, they have, in whatever +state, condition, profession or trade, the passport to heaven"; but +he is careful to dissociate the possibility that they can be found +in those who practice the mechanical arts. He did not mean that his +aristocracy should govern without response to popular demand. He +had no objection to criticism, nor to the public exercise of +government. There was no reason even for agreement, so long as each +party was guided by an honorable sense of the public good. This, so +he urged, was the system which underlay the temporary evils of the +British Constitution. An <a name="page248" id= +"page248"></a>aristocracy delegated to do its work by the mass of +men was the best form of government his imagination could conceive. +It meant that property must be dominant in the system of +government, that, while office should be open to all, it should be +out of the reach of most. "The characteristic essence of property," +he wrote in the <i>Reflections</i>, "... is to be unequal"; and he +thought the perpetuation of that inequality by inheritance "that +which tends most to the perpetuation of society itself." The system +was difficult to maintain, and it must be put out of the reach of +popular temptation. "Our constitution," he said in the <i>Present +Discontents</i>, "stands on a nice equipoise, with sharp precipices +and deep waters on all sides of it. In removing it from a dangerous +leaning towards one side, there may be a danger towards oversething +it on the other." In straining, that is to say, after too large a +purification, we may end with destruction. And Burke, of course, +was emphatic upon the need that property should be undisturbed. It +was always, he thought, at a great disadvantage in any struggle +with ability; and there are many <a name="page249" id= +"page249"></a>passages in which he urges the consequent special +representation which the adequate defence of property requires.</p> +<p>The argument, at bottom, is common to all thinkers +over-impressed by the sanctity of past experience. Hegel and +Savigny in Germany, Taine and Renan in France, Sir Henry Maine and +Lecky in England, have all urged what is in effect a similar plea. +We must not break what Bagehot called the cake of custom, for men +have been trained to its digestion, and new food breeds trouble. +Laws are the offspring of the original genius of a people, and +while we may renovate, we must not unduly reform. The true idea of +national development is always latent in the past experience of the +race and it is from that perpetual spring alone that wisdom can be +drawn. We render obedience to what is with effortless +unconsciousness; and without this loyalty to inherited institutions +the fabric of society would be dissolved. Civilization, in fact, +depends upon the performance of actions defined in preconceived +channels; and if we obeyed those novel impulses of right which +seem, at times, to contradict our inheritance, we <a name="page250" +id="page250"></a>should disturb beyond repair the intricate +equilibrium of countless ages. The experience of the past rather +than the desires of the present is thus the true guide to our +policy. "We ought," he said in a famous sentence, "to venerate +where we are unable presently to comprehend."</p> +<p>It is easy to see why a mind so attuned recoiled from horror at +the French Revolution. There is something almost sinister in the +destiny which confronted Burke with the one great spectacle of the +eighteenth century which he was certain not merely to misunderstand +but also to hate. He could not endure the most fragmentary change +in tests of religious belief; and the Revolution swept overboard +the whole religious edifice. He would not support the abolition +even of the most flagrant abuses in the system of representation; +and he was to see in France an overthrow of a monarchy even more +august in its prescriptive rights than the English Parliament. +Privileges were scattered to the winds in a single night. Peace was +sacrificed to exactly those metaphysical theories of equality and +justice which he most deeply abhorred. The <a name="page251" id= +"page251"></a>doctrine of progress found an eloquent defender in +that last and noblest utterance of Condorcet which is still perhaps +its most perfect justification. On all hands there was the sense of +a new world built by the immediate thought of man upon the +wholehearted rejection of past history. Politics was emphatically +declared to be a system of which the truths could be stated in +terms of mathematical certainty. The religious spirit which Burke +was convinced lay at the root of good gave way before a general +scepticism which, from the outset of his life, he had declared +incompatible with social order. Justice was asserted to be the +centre of social right; and it was defined as the overthrow of +those prescriptive privileges which Burke regarded as the +protective armour of the body politic. Above all, the men who +seized the reins of power became convinced that theirs was a +specific of universal application. Their disciples in England +seemed in the same diabolic frenzy with themselves. In a moment of +time, the England which had been the example to Europe of ordered +popular liberty became, for these enthusiasts, only <a name= +"page252" id="page252"></a>less barbaric than the despotic princes +of the continent. That Price and Priestley should suffer the +infection was, even for Burke, a not unnatural thing. But when +Charles Fox cast aside the teaching of twenty years for its +antithesis, Burke must have felt that no price was too great to pay +for the overthrow of the Revolution.</p> +<p>Certainly his pamphlets on events in France are at every point +consistent with his earlier doctrine. The charge that he supported +the Revolution in America and deserted it in France is without +meaning; for in the one there is no word that can honorably be +twisted to support the other. And when we make allowances for the +grave errors of personal taste, the gross exaggeration, the +inability to see the Revolution as something more than a single +point in time, it becomes obvious enough that his criticism, de +Maistre's apart, is by far the soundest we possess from the +generation which knew the movement as a living thing. The attempt +to produce an artificial equality upon which he seized as the +essence of the Revolution was, as Mirabeau was urging in private +<a name="page253" id="page253"></a>to the king, the inevitable +precursor of dictatorship. He realized that freedom is born of a +certain spontaneity for which the rigid lines of doctrinaire +thinkers left no room. That worship of symmetrical form which +underlies the constitutional experiments of the next few years he +exposed in a sentence which has in it the essence of political +wisdom. "The nature of man is intricate"; he wrote in the +<i>Reflections</i>, "the objects of society are of the greatest +possible complexity; and therefore no simple disposition or +direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature or to the +quality of his affairs." The note recurs in substance throughout +his criticism. Much of its application, indeed, will not stand for +one moment the test of inquiry; as when, for instance, he +correlates the monarchical government of France with the English +constitutional system and extols the perpetual virtues of 1688. The +French made every effort to find the secret of English principles, +but the roots were absent from their national experience.</p> +<p>A year after the publication of the <i>Reflections</i> he +himself perceived the <a name="page254" id="page254"></a>narrowness +of that judgment. In the <i>Thoughts on French Affairs</i> (1791) +he saw that the essence of the Revolution was its foundation in +theoretic dogma. It was like nothing else in the history of the +world except the Reformation; which last event it especially +resembles in its genius for self-propagation. Herein he has already +envisaged the importance of that "<i>patrie intellectuelle</i>" +which Tocqueville emphasized as born of the Revolution. That led +Burke once again to insist upon the peculiar genius of each +separate state, the difficulties of a change, the danger of +grafting novelties upon an ancient fabric. He saw the certainty +that in adhering to an abstract metaphysical scheme the French were +in truth omitting human nature from their political equation; for +general ideas can find embodiment in institutional forms only after +they have been moulded by a thousand varieties of circumstance. The +French created an universal man not less destructive of their +practical sagacity than the Frankenstein of the economists. They +omitted, as Burke saw, the elements which objective experience must +demand; with the result <a name="page255" id="page255"></a>that, +despite themselves, they came rather to destroy than to fulfil. +Napoleon, as Burke prophesied, reaped the harvest of their +failure.</p> +<p>Nor was he less right in his denunciation of that distrust of +the past which played so large a part in the revolutionary +consciousness. "We are afraid," he wrote in the <i>Reflections</i>, +"to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of +reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, +and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the +general bank and capital of nations and of ages." Of +Siéyès' building constitutions overnight, this is no +unfair picture; but it points a more general truth never long +absent from Burke's mind. Man is for him so much the creature of +prejudice, so much a mosaic of ancestral tradition, that the chance +of novel thought finding a peaceful place among his institutions is +always small. For Burke, thought is always at the service of the +instincts, and these lie buried in the remote experience of the +state. So that men like Robespierre were asking from their subjects +an impossible task. <a name="page256" id="page256"></a>That which +they had conceived in the gray abstractness of their speculations +was too little related to what the average Frenchman knew and +desired to be enduring. Burke looks with sober admiration at the +way in which the English revolution related itself at every point +to ideas and theories with which the average man was as familiar as +with the physical landmarks of his own neighborhood. For the +motives which underlie all human effort are, he thought, +sufficiently constant to compel regard. That upon which they feed +submits to change; but the effort is slow and the disappointments +many. The Revolution taught the populace the thirst for power. But +it failed to remember that sense of continuity in human effort +without which new constructions are built on sand. The power it +exercised lacked that horizon of the past through which alone it +suffers limitation to right ends.</p> +<p>The later part of Burke's attack upon the Revolution does not +belong to political philosophy. No man is more responsible than he +for the temper which drew England into war. He came to write rather +with the zeal of a fanatic waging a holy <a name="page257" id= +"page257"></a>war than in the temper of a statesman confronted with +new ideas. Yet even the <i>Letters on a Regicide Peace</i> (1796) +have flashes of the old, incomparable insight; and they show that +even in the midst of his excesses he did not war for love of it. So +that it is permissible to think he did not lightly pen those +sentences on peace which stand as oases of wisdom in a desert of +extravagant rhetoric. "War never leaves where it found a nation," +he wrote, "it is never to be entered upon without mature +deliberation." That was a lesson his generation had still to learn; +nor did it take to heart the even nobler passage that follows. "The +blood of man," he said, "should never be shed but to redeem the +blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for +our God, for our country, for mankind. The rest is vanity; the rest +is crime." It is perhaps the most tragic wrong in that century's +history that these words were written to justify an effort of which +they supply an irrefutable condemnation.</p> +<a name="page258" id="page258"></a> +<h4>V</h4> +<p>Criticism of Burke's theories can be made from at least two +angles. It is easy to show that his picture of the British +Constitution was remote from the facts even when he wrote. Every +change that he opposed was essential to the security of the next +generation; and there followed none of the disastrous consequences +he had foreshadowed. Such criticism would be at almost every point +just; and yet it would fail to touch the heart of Burke's position. +What is mainly needed is analysis at once of his omissions and of +the underlying assumptions of what he wrote. Burke came to his +maturity upon the eve of the Industrial Revolution; and we have it +upon the authority of Adam Smith himself that no one had so clearly +apprehended his own economic principles. Yet there is no word in +what Burke had to say of their significance. The vast agrarian +changes of the time contained, as it appears, no special moment +even for him who burdened himself unduly to restore the +Beaconsfield estate. No man was more eager than he that the public +should be admitted to the <a name="page259" id= +"page259"></a>mysteries of political debate; yet he steadfastly +refused to draw the obvious inference that once the means of +government were made known those who possessed the knowledge would +demand their share in its application. He did not see that the +metaphysics he so profoundly distrusted was itself the offspring of +that contemptible worship of expediency which Blackstone +generalized into a legalistic jargon. Men never move to the +adumbration of general right until the conquest of political rights +has been proved inadequate. That Burke himself may be said in a +sense to have seen when he insisted upon the danger of examining +the foundations of the State. Yet a man who refuses to admit that +the constant dissatisfaction with those foundations his age +expressed is the expression of serious ill in the body politic is +wilfully blind to the facts at issue. No one had more faithfully +than Burke himself explained why the Whig oligarchy was obsolete; +yet nothing would induce him ever to realize that the alternative +to aristocratic government is democracy and that its absence was +the cause of that disquiet of which he realized that Wilkes was but +the symptom.</p> +<a name="page260" id="page260"></a> +<p>Broadly, that is to say, Burke would not realize that the reign +of political privilege was drawing to its close. That is the real +meaning of the French Revolution and therein it represents a stream +of tendency not less active in England than abroad. In France, +indeed, the lines were more sharply drawn than elsewhere. The +rights men craved were not, as Burke insisted, the immediate +offspring of metaphysic fancy, but the result of a determination to +end the malignant wrong of centuries. A power that knew no +responsibility, war and intolerance that derived only from the +accidental caprice of the court, arrest that bore no relation to +offence, taxation inversely proportionate to the ability to pay, +these were the prescriptive privileges that Burke invited his +generation to accept as part of the accumulated wisdom of the past. +It is not difficult to see why those who swore their oath in the +tennis-court at Versailles should have felt such wisdom worthy to +be condemned. Burke's caution was for them the timidity of one who +embraces existent evils rather than fly to the refuge of an +accessible good. In a less degree, <a name="page261" id= +"page261"></a>the same is true of England. The constitution that +Burke called upon men to worship was the constitution which made +the Duke of Bedford powerful, that gave no representation to +Manchester and a member to Old Sarum, which enacted the game laws +and left upon the statute-book a penal code which hardly yielded to +the noble attack of Romilly. These, which were for Burke merely the +accidental excrescences of a noble ideal, were for them its inner +essence; and where they could not reform they were willing to +destroy.</p> +<p>The revolutionary spirit, in fact, was as much the product of +the past as the very institutions it came to condemn. The +innovations were the inevitable outcome of past oppression. Burke +refused to see that aspect of the picture. He ascribed to the crime +of the present what was due to the half-wilful errors of the past. +The man who grounded his faith in historic experience refused to +admit as history the elements alien from his special outlook. He +took that liberty not to venerate where he was unable to comprehend +which he denied to his opponents. Nor did he admit the uses to +which his doctrine of <a name="page262" id= +"page262"></a>prescription was bound to be put in the hands of +selfish and unscrupulous men. No one will object to privilege for a +Chatham; but privilege for the Duke of Grafton is a different +thing, and Burke's doctrine safeguards the innumerable men of whom +Grafton is the type in the hope that by happy accident some Chatham +will one day emerge. He justifies the privileges of the English +Church in the name of religious well-being; but it is difficult to +see what men like Watson or Archbishop Cornwallis have got to do +with religion. The doctrine of prescription might be admirable if +all statesmen were so wise as Burke; but in the hands of lesser men +it becomes no more than the protective armour of vested interests +into the ethics of which it refuses us leave to examine.</p> +<p>That suspicion of thought is integral to Burke's philosophy, and +it deserves more examination than it has received. In part it is a +rejection of the Benthamite position that man is a reasoning +animal. It puts its trust in habit as the chief source of human +action; and it thus is distrustful of thought as leading into +channels to which the nature of man is not adapted. <a name= +"page263" id="page263"></a>Novelty, which is assumed to be the +outcome of thought, it regards as subversive of the routine upon +which civilization depends. Thought is destructive of peace; and it +is argued that we know too little of political phenomena to make us +venture into the untried places to which thought invites us. Yet +the first of many answers is surely the most obvious fact that if +man is so much the creature of his custom no reason would prevail +save where they proved inadequate. If thought is simply a reserve +power in society, its strength must obviously depend upon common +acceptance; and that can only come when some routine has failed to +satisfy the impulses of men.</p> +<p>But we may urge a difficulty that is even more decisive. No +system of habits can ever hope to endure long in a world where the +cumulative power of memory enables change to be so swift; and no +system of habits can endure at all unless its underlying idea +represents the satisfaction of a general desire. It must, that is +to say, make rational appeal; and, indeed, as Aristotle said, it +can have virtue only to the point where it is conscious of itself. +The uncritical routine of which Burke is <a name="page264" id= +"page264"></a>the sponsor would here deprive the mass of men of +virtue. Yet in modern civilization the whole strength of any custom +depends upon exactly that consciousness of right which Burke +restricted to his aristocracy. Our real need is less the automatic +response to ancient stimulus than power to know what stimulus has +social value. We need, that is to say, the gift of criticism rather +than the gift of inert acceptance. Not, of course, that the habits +which Burke so earnestly admired are at all part of our nervous +endowment in any integral sense. The short space of the French +Revolution made the habit of thinking in terms of progress an +essential part of our intellectual inheritance; and where the +Burkian school proclaims how exceptional progress has been in +history, we take that as proof of the ease with which essential +habit may be acquired. Habit, in fact, without philosophy destroys +the finer side of civilized life. It may leave a stratum to whom +its riches have been discovered; but it leaves the mass of men +soulless automata without spontaneous response to the chords struck +by another hand.</p> +<a name="page265" id="page265"></a> +<p>Burke's answer would, of course, have been that he was not a +democrat. He did not trust the people and he rated their capacity +as low. He thought of the people—it was obviously a +generalization from his time—as consistently prone to +disorder and checked only by the force of ancient habit. Yet he has +himself supplied the answer to that attitude. "My observation," he +said in his <i>Speech on the East India Bill</i>, "has furnished me +with nothing that is to be found in any habits of life or education +which tends wholly to disqualify men for the functions of +government." We can go further than that sober caution. We know +that there is one technique only capable of securing good +government and that is the training of the mass of men to interest +in it. We know that no State can hope for peace in which large +types of experience are without representation. Indeed, if proof +were here wanting, an examination of the eighteenth century would +supply it. Few would deny that statesmen are capable of +disinterested sacrifice for classes of whose inner life they are +ignorant; yet the relation between law and the interest of the +dominant class is <a name="page266" id="page266"></a>too intimate +to permit with safety the exclusion of a part of the State from +sharing in its guidance. Nor did Burke remember his own wise saying +that "in all disputes between the people and their rulers the +presumption is at least upon a par in favor of the people"; and he +quotes with agreement that great sentence of Sully's which traces +popular violence to popular suffering. No one can watch the +economic struggles of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries or +calculate the pain they have involved to humble men, without +admitting that they represent the final protest of an outraged mind +against oppression too intolerable to be borne. Burke himself, as +his own speeches show, knew little or nothing of the pain involved +in the agrarian changes of his age. The one way to avoid violent +outbreak is not exclusion of the people from power but their +participation in it. The popular sense of right may often, as +Aristotle saw, be wiser than the opinion of statesmen. It is not +necessary to equate the worth of untrained commonsense with +experienced wisdom to suggest that, in the long run, neglect of +common sense will make the effort of that wisdom fruitless.</p> +<a name="page267" id="page267"></a> +<p>This, indeed, is to take the lowest ground. For the case against +Burke's aristocracy has a moral aspect with which he did not deal. +He did not inquire by what right a handful of men were to be +hereditary governors of a whole people. Expediency is no answer to +the question, for Bentham was presently to show how shallow was +that basis of consent. Once it is admitted that the personality of +men is entitled to respect institutional room must be found for its +expression. The State is morally stunted where their powers go +undeveloped. There is something curious here in Burke's inability +to suspect deformity in a system which gave his talents but partial +place. He must have known that no one in the House of Commons was +his equal. He must have known how few of those he called upon to +recognize the splendor of their function were capable of playing +the part he pictured for them. The answer to a morally bankrupt +aristocracy is surely not the overwhelming effort required in its +purification when the plaintiff is the people; for the mere fact +that the people is the plaintiff is already evidence of its fitness +<a name="page268" id="page268"></a>for power. Burke gave no hint of +how the level of his governing class could be maintained. He said +nothing of what education might accomplish for the people. He did +not examine the obvious consequences of their economic status. Had +his eyes not been obscured by passion the work of that +States-General the names in which appeared to him so astonishing in +their inexperience, might have given him pause. The "obscure +provincial advocates ... stewards of petty local jurisdictions ... +the fomenters and conductors of the petty war of village vexation" +legislated, out of their inexperience, for the world. Their +resolution, their constancy, their high sense of the national need, +were precisely the qualities Burke demanded in his governing class; +and the States-General did not move from the straight path he laid +down until they met with intrigue from those of whom Burke became +the licensed champion.</p> +<p>Nor is it in the least clear that his emphasis upon expediency +is, in any real way, a release from metaphysical inquiry. Rather +may it be urged that what was needed in Burke's philosophy was the +<a name="page269" id="page269"></a>clear avowal of the metaphysic +it implied. Nothing is more greatly wanted in political inquiry +than discovery of that "intuition more subtle than any articulate +major premise" which, as Mr. Justice Holmes has said, is the true +foundation of so many of our political judgments. The theory of +natural rights upon which Burke heaped such contempt was wrong +rather in its form than in its substance. It clearly suffered from +its mistaken effort to trace to an imaginary state of nature what +was due to a complex experience. It suffered also from its desire +to lay down universal formulæ. It needed to state the rights +demanded in terms of the social interests they involved rather than +in the abstract ethic they implied. But the demands which underlay +the thought of men like Price and Priestley was as much the +offspring of experience as Burke's own doctrine. They made, indeed, +the tactical mistake of seeking to give an unripe philosophic form +to a political strategy wherein, clearly enough, Burke was their +master. But no one can read the answers of Paine and Mackintosh, +who both were careful to avoid the panoply of <a name="page270" id= +"page270"></a>metaphysics, to the <i>Reflections</i>, without +feeling that Burke failed to move them from their main position. +Expediency may be admirable in telling the statesmen what to do; +but it does not explain the sources of his ultimate act, nor +justify the thing finally done. The unconscious deeps which lie +beneath the surface of the mind are rarely less urgent than the +motives that are avowed. Action is less their elimination than +their index; and we must penetrate within their recesses before we +have the full materials for judgment.</p> +<p>Considered in this fashion, the case for natural rights is +surely unanswerable. The things that men desire correspond, in some +rough fashion, to the things they need. Natural rights are nothing +more than the armour evolved to protect their vital interests. Upon +the narrow basis of legal history it is, of course, impossible to +protect them. History is rather the record of the thwarting of +human desire than of its achievement. But upon the value of certain +things there is a sufficient and constant opinion to give us +assurance that repression will ultimately involve disorder. Nor is +there any difference between the <a name="page271" id= +"page271"></a>classes of men in this regard. Forms, indeed, will +vary; and the power we have of answering demand will always wait +upon the discoveries of science. Our natural rights, that is to +say, will have a changing content simply because this is not a +static world. But that does not mean, as Burke insisted, that they +are empty of experience. They come, of course, mainly from men who +have been excluded from intimate contact with the fruits of power. +Nonconformists in religion, workers without land or capital save +the power of their own hands, it is from the disinherited that they +draw, as demands, their strength. Yet it is difficult to see, as +Burke would undoubtedly have insisted, that they are the worse from +the source whence they derive. Rather do they point to grave +inadequacy in the substance of the state, inadequacy neglect of +which has led to the cataclysms of historic experience. The +unwillingness of Burke to examine into their foundation reveals his +lack of moral insight into the problem he confronted.</p> +<p>That lack of insight must, of course, be given some explanation; +and its cause seems rooted in Burke's metaphysic <a name="page272" +id="page272"></a>outlook. He was profoundly religious; and he did +not doubt that the order of the universe was the command of God. It +was, as a consequence, beneficent; and to deny its validity was, +for him, to doubt the wisdom of God. "Having disposed," he wrote, +"and marshalled us by a divine tactic, not according to our will, +but to His, He had, in and by that disposition, vitally subjected +us to act the part which belongs to the place assigned us." The +State, in fact, it is to be built upon the sacrifice of men; and +this they must accept as of the will of God. We are to do our duty +in our allotted station without repining, in anticipation, +doubtless, of a later reward. What we are is thus the expression of +his goodness; and there is a real sense in which Burke may be said +to have maintained the inherent rightness of the existing order. +Certainly he throws a cloak of religious veneration about the +purely metaphysical concept of property; and his insistence upon +the value of peace as opposed to truth is surely part of the same +attitude. Nor is it erroneous to connect this background with his +antagonism to the French Revolution. What there was <a name= +"page273" id="page273"></a>most distressing to him was the +overthrowal of the Church, and he did not hesitate, in very +striking fashion, to connect revolutionary opinion with infidelity. +Indeed Burke, like Locke, seems to have been convinced that a +social sense was impossible in an atheist; and his <i>Letters on a +Regicide Peace</i> have a good deal of that relentless illogic +which made de Maistre connect the first sign of dissent from +ultramontanism with the road to a denial of all faith. Nothing is +more difficult than to deal with a thinker who has had a +revelation; and this sense that the universe was a divine mystery +not to be too nearly scrutinized by man grew greatly upon Burke in +his later years. It was not an attitude which reason could +overthrow; for its first principle was an awe in the presence of +facts to which reason is a stranger.</p> +<p>There is, moreover, in Burke a Platonic idealism which made him, +like later thinkers of the school, regard existing difficulties +with something akin to complacent benevolence. What interested him +was the idea of the English State; and whatever, as he thought, +deformed it, <a name="page274" id="page274"></a>was not of the +essence of its nature. He denied, that is to say, that the degree +to which a purpose is fulfilled is as important as the purpose +itself. A thing becomes good by the end it has in view; and the +deformities of time and place ought not to lead us to deny the +beauty of the end. It is the great defect of all idealistic +philosophy that it should come to the examination of facts in so +optimistic a temper. It never sufficiently realizes that in the +transition from theoretic purpose to practical realization a +significant transformation may occur. We do not come to grips with +the facts. What we are bidden to remember is the splendor of what +the facts are trying to be. The existing order is beatified as a +necessary stage in a beneficent process. We are not to separate out +the constituent elements therein, and judge them as facts in time +and space. Society is one and indivisible; and the defects do not +at any point impair the ultimate integrity of the social bond.</p> +<p>Yet it is surely evident that in the heat and stress of social +life, we cannot afford so long a period as the basis for our +judgment. We may well enough regard the <a name="page275" id= +"page275"></a>corruption of the monarchy under the later +Hanoverians as the necessary prelude to its purification under +Victoria; but that does not make it any the less corrupt. We may +even see how a monistic view of society is possible to one who, +like Burke, is uniquely occupied with the public good. But the men +who, like Muir and Hardy in the treason trials of the Revolution, +think rather in terms of the existing disharmonies than the beauty +of the purpose upon which they rest, are only human if they think +those disharmonies more real than the purpose they do not meet. +They were surely to be pardoned if, reading the <i>Reflections</i> +of Burke, they regarded class distinctions as more vital than their +harmony of interest, when they saw the tenacity with which +privileges they did not share were defended. It is even possible to +understand why some insisted that if those privileges were, as +Burke had argued, essential to the construction of the whole, it +was against that whole, alike in purpose and in realization, that +they were in revolt. For them the fact of discontinuity was vital. +They could not but ask for happiness in their own individual lives +<a name="page276" id="page276"></a>no less than in the State of +which they were part. They came to see that without self-government +in the sense of their own active participation in power, such +happiness must go unfulfilled. The State, in fact, may have the +noblest purpose; but its object is attempted by agents who are also +mortal men. The basis of their scrutiny became at once pragmatic. +The test of allegiance to established institutions became +immediately the achievement for which they were responsible. The +achievement, as they urged, was hardly written with adequacy in +terms of the lives of humble men. That was why they judged no +attitude of worth which sought the equation of the real and the +ideal. The first lesson of their own experience of power was the +need for its limitation by the instructed judgment of free +minds.<span class="fnref"><a name="fnref18" id="fnref18" href= +"#fn18">[18]</a></span></p> +<div class="fn"><span class="fnnum"><a name="fn18" id="fn18" href= +"#fnref18">[18]</a></span> Cf. my <i>Authority in the Modern +State</i>, pp. 65-9.</div> +<h4>VI</h4> +<p>No man was more deeply hostile to the early politics of the +romantic movement, to the <i>Contrat Social</i> of Rousseau and the +<i>Political Justice</i> of Godwin, than was <a name="page277" id= +"page277"></a>Burke; yet, on the whole, it is with the romantics +that Burke's fundamental influence remains. His attitude to reason, +his exaltation of passion and imagination over the conscious logic +of men, were of the inmost stuff of which they were made. In that +sense, at least, his kinship is with the great conservative +revolution of the generation which followed him. Hegel and Savigny +in Germany, de Maistre and Bonald in France, Coleridge and the +later Wordsworth in England, are in a true sense his disciples. +That does not mean that any of them were directly conscious of his +work but that the movement he directed had its necessary outcome in +their defence of his ideals. The path of history is strewn with +undistributed middles; and it is possible that in the clash between +his attitude and that of Bentham there were the materials for a +fuller synthesis in a later time. Certainly there is no more +admirable corrective in historical politics that the contrast they +afford.</p> +<p>It is easy to praise Burke and easier still to miss the +greatness of his effort. Perspective apart, he is destined +doubtless to live rather as the author of some <a name="page278" +id="page278"></a>maxims that few statesmen will dare to forget than +as the creator of a system which, even in its unfinished +implications, is hardly less gigantic than that of Hobbes or +Bentham. His very defects are lessons in themselves. His +unhesitating inability to see how dangerous is the concentration of +property is standing proof that men are over-prone to judge the +rightness of a State by their own wishes. His own contempt for the +results of reasonable inquiry is a ceaseless lesson in the virtue +of consistent scrutiny of our inheritance. His disregard of popular +desire suggests the fatal ease with which we neglect the opinion of +those who stand outside the active centre of political conflict. +Above all, his hostility to the Revolution should at least make +later generations beware lest novelty of outlook be unduly +confounded with erroneous doctrine.</p> +<p>Yet even when such deduction has been made, there is hardly a +greater figure in the history of political thought in England. +Without the relentless logic of Hobbes, the acuteness of Hume, the +moral insight of T.H. Green, he has a large part of the faculties +of each. He <a name="page279" id="page279"></a>brought to the +political philosophy of his generation a sense of its direction, a +lofty vigour of purpose, and a full knowledge of its complexity, +such as no other statesman has ever possessed. His flashes of +insight are things that go, as few men have ever gone, into the +hidden deeps of political complexity. Unquestionably, his +speculation is rather that of the orator in the tribune than of the +thinker in his study. He never forgot his party, and he wrote +always in that House of Commons atmosphere which makes a man unjust +to the argument and motives of his opponent. Yet, when the last +word of criticism has been made, the balance of illumination is +immense. He illustrates at its best the value of that party-system +the worth of which made so deep an impression on all he wrote. He +showed that government by discussion can be made to illuminate +great principles. He showed also that allegiance to party is never +inconsistent with the deeper allegiance to the demand of +conscience. When he came to the House of Commons, the prospects of +representative government were very dark; and it is mainly to his +emphasis <a name="page280" id="page280"></a>upon its virtues that +its victory must be attributed. Institutional change is likely to +be more rapid than in his generation; for we seem to have reached +that moment when, as he foresaw, "they who persist in opposing that +mighty current will appear rather to resist the decrees of +Providence itself than the mere designs of men." The principles +upon which we proceed are doubtless different from those that he +commended; yet his very challenge to their wisdom only gives to his +warning a deeper inspiration for our effort.</p> +<hr class="long" /> +<a name="page281" id="page281"></a> +<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> +<h3>THE FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMIC LIBERALISM</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p>The Industrial Revolution is hardly less a fundamental change in +the habits of English thought than in the technique of commercial +production. Alongside the discoveries of Hargreaves and Crompton, +the ideas of Hume and Adam Smith shifted the whole perspective of +men's minds. The Revolution, indeed, like all great movements, did +not originate at any given moment. There was no sudden invention +which made the hampering system of government-control seem +incompatible with industrial advance. The mercantilism against +which the work of Adam Smith was so magistral a protest was already +rather a matter of external than internal commerce when he wrote. +He triumphed less because he suddenly opened men's eyes to a truth +hitherto concealed than because he represented the <a name= +"page282" id="page282"></a>culmination of certain principles which, +under various aspects, were common to his time. The movement for +religious toleration is not only paralleled in the next century by +the movement for economic freedom, but is itself in a real sense +the parent of the latter. For it is not without significance that +the pre-Adamite economists were almost without exception the urgent +defenders of religious toleration. The landowners were churchmen, +the men of commerce largely Nonconformist; and religious +proscription interfered with the balance of trade. When the roots +of religious freedom had been secured, it was easy for them to +transfer their argument to the secular sphere.</p> +<p>Nothing, indeed, is more important in the history of English +political philosophy than to realize that from Stuart times the +Nonconformists were deeply bitten with distrust of government. Its +courts of special instance hampered industrial life at every turn +in the interest of religious conformity. Their heavy fines and +irritating restrictions upon foreign workmen were nothing so much +as a tax upon industrial progress. What the Nonconformists <a name= +"page283" id="page283"></a>wanted was to be left alone; and +Davenant explained the root of their desire when he tells of the +gaols crowded with substantial tradesmen whose imprisonment spelt +unemployment for thousands of workmen. Sir William Temple, in his +description of Holland, represents economic prosperity as the child +of toleration. The movement for ecclesiastical freedom in England, +moreover, became causally linked with that protest against the +system of monopolies with which it was the habit of the court to +reward its favorites. Freedom in economic matters, like freedom in +religion, came rapidly to mean permission that diversity shall +exist; and economic diversity soon came to mean free competition. +The latter easily became imbued with religious significance. +English puritanism, as Troeltsch has shown us, insisted that work +was the will of God and its performance the test of grace. The +greater the energy of its performance, the greater the likelihood +of prosperity; and thence it is but a step to argue that the free +development of a man's industrial worth is the law of God. Success +in business, indeed, became for many a test of <a name="page284" +id="page284"></a>religious grace, and poverty the proof of God's +disfavor. Books like Steele's <i>Religious Tradesman</i> (1684) +show clearly how close is the connection. The hostility of the +English landowners to the commercial classes in the eighteenth +century is at bottom the inheritance of religious antagonism. The +typical qualities of dissent became a certain pushful exertion by +which the external criteria of salvation could be secured.</p> +<p>Much of the contemporary philosophy, moreover, fits in with this +attitude. From the time of Bacon, the main object of speculation +was to disrupt the scholastic teleology. In the result the State +becomes dissolved into a discrete mass of individuals, and the +self-interest of each is the starting-point of all inquiry. Hobbes +built his state upon the selfishness of men; even Locke makes the +individual enter political life for the benefits that accrue +therefrom. The cynicism of Mandeville, the utilitarianism of Hume, +are only bypaths of the same tradition. The organic society of the +middle ages gives place to an individual who builds the State out +of his own desires. Liberty becomes their <a name="page285" id= +"page285"></a>realization; and the object of the State is to enable +men in the fullest sense to secure the satisfaction of their +private wants. How far is that conception from the Anglican outlook +of the seventeenth century, a sermon of Laud's makes clear. "If any +man," he said,<span class="fnref"><a name="fnref19" id="fnref19" +href="#fn19">[19]</a></span> "be so addicted to his private +interest that he neglects the common State, he is void of the sense +of piety, and wishes peace and happiness for himself in vain. For, +whoever he be, he must live in the body of the commonwealth and in +the body of the Church." So Platonic an outlook was utterly alien +from the temper of puritanism. They had no thought of sacrificing +themselves to an institution which they had much ground for +thinking existed only for their torment. The development of the +religious instinct to the level of salvation found its philosophic +analogue in the development of the economic sense of fitness. The +State became the servant of the individual from being his master; +and service became equated with an internal policy of +<i>laissez-faire</i>.</p> +<div class="fn"><span class="fnnum"><a name="fn19" id="fn19" href= +"#fnref19">[19]</a></span> Sermon of June 19, 1621. Works (ed. of +1847), p. 28.</div> +<p>Such summary, indeed, abridges the <a name="page286" id= +"page286"></a>long process of release from which the eighteenth +century had still to suffer; nor does it sufficiently insist upon +the degree to which the old idea of state control still held sway +in external policies of trade. Mercantilism was still in the +ascendant when Adam Smith came to write. Few statesmen of +importance before the younger Pitt had learned the secret of its +fallacies; and, indeed, the chief ground for difference between +Chatham and Burke was the former's suspicion that Burke had +embraced the noxious doctrine of free trade. Mercantilism, by the +time of Locke, is not the simple error that wealth consists in +bullion but the insistence that the balance of trade must be +preserved. Partly it was doubtless derived from the methods of the +old political arithmetic of men like Petty and Davenant; the +individual seeks a balance at the end of his year's accounting and +so, too, the State must have a balance. "A Kingdom," said Locke, +"grows rich or poor just as a farmer does, and no other way"; and +while there is a sense in which this is wholly true, the meaning +attached to it by the mercantilists was that foreign <a name= +"page287" id="page287"></a>competition meant national weakness. +They could not conceive a commercial bargain which was profitable +to both sides. Nations grow prosperous at each other's expense; +wherefore a woolen trade in Ireland necessarily spells English +unemployment. Even Davenant, who was in many respects on the high +road to free trade, was in this problem adamant. Protection was +essential in the colonial market; for unless the trade of the +colonies was directed through England they might be dangerous +rivals. So Ireland and America were sacrificed to the fear of +British merchants, with the inevitable result that repression +brought from both the obvious search for remedy.</p> +<p>Herein it might appear that Adam Smith had novelty to +contribute; yet nothing is more certain than that his full sense of +the world as the only true unit of marketing was fully grasped +before him. In 1691 Sir Dudley North published his <i>Discourses +upon Trade</i>. Therein he clearly sees that commercial barriers +between Great Britain and France are basically as senseless as +would be commercial barriers between Yorkshire and <a name= +"page288" id="page288"></a>Middlesex. Indeed, in one sense, North +goes even further than Adam Smith, for he argues against the usury +laws in terms Bentham would hardly have disowned. Ten years later +an anonymous writer in a tract entitled <i>Considerations on the +East India Trade</i> (1701) has no illusions about the evil of +monopoly. He sees with striking clarity that the real problem is +not at any cost to maintain the industries a nation actually +possesses, but to have the national capital applied in the most +efficient channels. So, too, Hume dismissed the Mercantile theory +with the contemptuous remark that it was trying to keep water +beyond its proper level. Tucker, as has been pointed out, was a +free trader, and his opinion of the American war was that it was as +mad as those who fought "under the peaceful Cross to recover the +Holy Land"; and he urged, indeed, prophesied, the union with +Ireland in the interest of commercial amity. Nor must the emphasis +of the Physiocrats upon free trade be forgotten. There is no +evidence now that Adam Smith owed this perception to his +acquaintance with Quesnay and Turgot; but they may well have +confirmed <a name="page289" id="page289"></a>him in it, and they +show that the older philosophy was attacked on every side.</p> +<p>Nor must we miss the general atmosphere of the time. On the +whole his age was a conservative one, convinced, without due +reason, that happiness was independent of birth or wealth and that +natural law somehow could be made to justify existing institutions. +The poets, like Pope, were singing of the small part of life which +kings and laws may hope to cure; and that attitude is written in +the general absence of economic legislation during the period. +Religiously, the Church exalted the <i>status quo</i>; and where, +as with Wesley, there was revolt, its impetus directed the mind to +the source of salvation in the individual act. It may, indeed, be +generally argued that the religious teachers acted as a social +soporific. Where riches accumulated, they could be regarded as the +blessing of God; where they were absent their unimportance for +eternal happiness could be emphasized. Burke's early attack on a +system which condemned "two hundred thousand innocent persons ... +to so intolerable slavery" was, in truth, a justification of +<a name="page290" id="page290"></a>the existing order. The social +question which, in the previous century, men like Bellers and +Winstanley had brought into view, dropped out of notice until the +last quarter of the century. There was, that is to say, no +organized resistance possible to the power of individualism; and +resistance was unlikely to make itself heard once the resources of +the Industrial Revolution were brought into play. Men discovered +with something akin to ecstasy the possibilities of the new +inventions; and when the protest came against the misery they +effected, it was answered that they represented the working of that +natural law by which the energies of men may raise them to success. +And discontent could easily, as with the saintly Wilberforce, be +countered by the assertion that it was revolt against the will of +God.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p>Few lives represent more splendidly than that of Adam Smith the +speculative ideal of a dispassionate study of philosophy. He was +fortunate in his teachers and his friends. At Glasgow he was the +<a name="page291" id="page291"></a>pupil of Francis Hutcheson; and +even if he was taught nothing at Oxford, at least six years of +leisure gave him ample opportunity to learn. His professorship at +Glasgow not only brought him into contact with men like Hume, but +also admitted him to intercourse with a group of business men whose +liberal sentiments on commerce undoubtedly strengthened, if they +did not originate, his own liberal views. At Glasgow, too, in 1759, +he published his <i>Theory of Moral Sentiments</i>, written with +sufficient power of style to obscure its inner poverty of thought. +The book brought him immediately a distinguished reputation from a +public which exalted elegance of diction beyond all literary +virtues. The volatile Charles Townshend made him tutor to the Duke +of Buccleuch, through whom Smith not only secured comparative +affluence for the rest of his days, but also a French tour in which +he met at its best the most brilliant society in Europe. The germ +of his <i>Wealth of Nations</i> already lay hidden in those Glasgow +lectures which Mr. Cannan has so happily recovered for us; and it +was in a moment of leisure in France <a name="page292" id= +"page292"></a>that he set to work to put them together in +systematic fashion. Not, indeed, that the Frenchmen whom he met, +Turgot, Quesnay and Dupont de Nemours, can be said to have done +more than confirm the truths he had already been teaching. When he +returned to Scotland and a competence ten years of constant labor +were necessary before the <i>Wealth of Nations</i> was complete. +After its publication, in 1776, Adam Smith did little save attend +to the administrative duties of a minor, but lucrative office in +the Customs. Until the end, indeed, he never quite gave up the +hope, foreshadowed first in the <i>Moral Sentiments</i> of +completing a gigantic survey of civilized institutions. But he was +a slow worker, and his health was never robust. It was enough that +he should have written his book and cherished friendships such as +it is given to few men to possess. Hume and Burke, Millar the +jurist, James Watt, Foulis the printer, Black the chemist and +Hutton of geological fame—it is an enviable circle. He had +known Turgot on intimate terms and visited Voltaire on Lake Geneva. +Hume had told him that his book had "depth and solidity <a name= +"page293" id="page293"></a>and acuteness"; the younger Pitt had +consulted him on public affairs. Few men have moved amid such happy +peace within the very centre of what was most illustrious in their +age.</p> +<p>We are less concerned here with the specific economic details of +the <i>Wealth of Nations</i> than with its general attitude to the +State. But here a limitation upon criticism must be noted. The man +of whom Smith writes is man in search of wealth; by definition the +economic motive dominates his actions. Such abuse, therefore, as +Ruskin poured upon him is really beside the point when his +objective is borne in mind. What virtually he does is to assume the +existence of a natural economic order which tends, when +unrestrained by counter-tendencies, to secure the happiness of men. +"That order of things which necessity imposes in general," he +writes, "... is, in every particular country promoted by the +natural inclinations of man"; and he goes on to explain what would +have resulted "if human institutions had never thwarted those +natural inclinations." "All systems either of preference or of +restraint, <a name="page294" id="page294"></a>therefore, being thus +completely taken away," he writes again, "the obvious and simple +system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. +Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is +left perfectly free to pursue his own interest in his own way.... +The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty in the +attempting to perform which he must always be exposed to +innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which no +human wisdom or knowledge would ever be sufficient; the duty of +superintending the industry of private people and of directing it +towards the employments most suitable to the interests of the +society."</p> +<p>The State, in this conception has but three +functions—defence, justice and "the duty of erecting and +maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions +which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small +number of individuals, to erect and maintain." The State, in fact, +is simply to provide the atmosphere in which production is +possible. Nor does Smith conceal his thought that the main function +of justice <a name="page295" id="page295"></a>is the protection of +property. "The affluence of the rich," he wrote, "excites the +indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want and +prompted by envy to invade their possessions. It is only under the +shelter of the civil magistrate that the owner of that valuable +property, acquired by the labor of many years, or perhaps many +successive generations, can sleep a single night in security." The +attitude, indeed, is intensified by his constant sense that the +capital which makes possible new productivity is the outcome of +men's sacrifice; to protect it is thus to safeguard the sources of +wealth itself. And even if the State is entrusted with education +and the prevention of disease, this is rather for the general +benefit they confer and the doubt that private enterprise would +find them profitable than as the expression of a general rule. +Collective effort of every kind awakened in him a deep distrust. +Trade regulations such as the limitation of apprenticeship he +condemned as "manifest encroachment upon the just liberty of the +workman and of those who may be disposed to employ him." Even +educational establishments <a name="page296" id="page296"></a>are +suspect on the ground—not unnatural after his own experience +of Oxford—that their possibilities of comfort may enervate +the natural energies of men.</p> +<p>The key to this attitude is clear enough. The improvement of +society is due, he thinks not to the calculations of government but +to the natural instincts of economic man. We cannot avoid the +impulse to better our condition; and the less its effort is +restrained the more certain it is that happiness will result. We +gain, in fact, some sense of its inherent power when we bear in +mind the magnitude of its accomplishment despite the folly and +extravagance of princes. Therein we have some index of what it +would achieve if left unhindered to work out its own destinies. +Human institutions continually thwart its power; for those who +build those institutions are moved rather "by the momentary +fluctuations of affairs" than their true nature. "That insidious +and crafty animal, vulgarly called a politician or statesman" meets +little mercy for his effort compared to the magic power of the +natural order. "In all countries where there is a tolerable +security," he writes, <a name="page297" id="page297"></a>"every man +of common understanding will endeavor to employ whatever stock he +can command in procuring either present enjoyment or future +profit." Individual spontaneity is thus the root of economic good; +and the real justification of the state is the protection it +affords to this impulse. Man, in fact, is by nature a trader and he +is bound by nature to discover the means most apt to progress.</p> +<p>Nor was he greatly troubled by differences of fortune. Like most +of the Scottish school, especially Hutcheson and Hume, he thought +that men are much alike in happiness, whatever their station or +endowments. For there is a "never-failing certainty" that "all men +sooner or later accommodate themselves to whatever becomes their +permanent situation"; though he admits that there is a certain +level below which poverty and misery go hand in hand. But, for the +most part, happiness is simply a state of mind; and he seems to +have had but little suspicion that differences of wealth might +issue in dangerous social consequence. Men, moreover, he regarded +as largely equal in their original powers; and differences of +<a name="page298" id="page298"></a>character he ascribes to the +various occupations implied in the division of labor. Each man, +therefore, as he follows his self-interest promotes the general +happiness of society. That principle is inherent in the social +order. "Every man," he wrote in the <i>Moral Sentiments</i>, "is by +nature first and principally recommended to his own care" and +therein he is "led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was +no part of his intention." The State, that is to say, is the sum of +individual goods; whereby to better ourselves is clearly to its +benefit. And that desire "which comes with us from the womb and +never leaves us till we go to the grave" is the more efficacious +the less it is restrained by governmental artifice. For we know so +well what makes us happy that none can hope to help us so much as +we help ourselves.</p> +<p>Enlightened selfishness is thus the root of prosperity; but we +must not fall into the easy fallacy which makes Smith deaf to the +plaint of the poor. He urged the employer to have regard to the +health and welfare of the worker, a regard which was the voice of +reason and humanity. Where <a name="page299" id="page299"></a>there +was conflict between love of the <i>status quo</i> and a social +good which Revolution alone could achieve, he did not, at least in +the <i>Moral Sentiments</i>, hesitate to choose the latter. Order +was, for the most part, indispensable; but "the greatest and +noblest of all characters" he made the reformer of the State. Yet +he is too impressed by the working of natural economic laws to +belittle their influence. Employers, in his picture, are little +capable of benevolence or charity. Their rule is the law of supply +and demand and not the Sermon on the Mount. They combine without +hesitation to depress wages to the lowest point of subsistence. +They seize every occasion of commercial misfortune to make better +terms for themselves; and the greater the poverty the more +submissive do servants become so that scarcity is naturally +regarded as more favorable to industry.</p> +<p>Obviously enough, the inner hinge of all this argument is +Smith's conception of nature. Nor can there be much doubt of what +he thought its inner substance. Facile distinctions such as the +effort of Buckle to show that while in the <i>Moral <a name= +"page300" id="page300"></a>Sentiments</i> Adam Smith was dealing +with the unselfish side of man's nature, in the <i>Wealth of +Nations</i> he was dealing with a group of facts which required the +abstraction of such altruistic elements, are really beside the +point. Nature for Smith is simply the spontaneous action of human +character unchecked by hindrances of State. It is, as Bonar has +aptly said, "a vindication of the unconscious law present in the +separate actions of men when these actions are directed by a +certain strong personal motive." Adam Smith's argument is an +assumption that the facts can be made to show the relative +powerlessness of institutions in the face of economic laws grounded +in human psychology. The psychology itself is relatively simple, +and, at least in the <i>Wealth of Nations</i> not greatly different +from the avowed assumptions of utilitarianism. He emphasizes the +strength of reason in the economic field, and his sense that it +enables men to judge much better of their best interests than an +external authority can hope to do. And therefore the practices +accomplished by this reason are those in which the impulses of men +are to be found. <a name="page301" id="page301"></a>The order they +represent is the natural order; and whatever hinders its full +operation is an unwise check upon the things for which men +strive.</p> +<p>Obviously enough, this attitude runs the grave risk of seeming +to abstract a single motive—the desire for wealth—from +the confused welter of human impulses and to make it dominant at +the expense of human nature itself. A hasty reading of Adam Smith +would, indeed, confirm that impression; and that is perhaps why he +seemed to Ruskin to blaspheme human nature. But a more careful +survey, particularly when the <i>Moral Sentiments</i> is borne in +mind suggests a different conclusion. His attitude is implicit in +the general medium in which he worked. What he was trying to do was +less to emphasize that men care above all things for the pursuit of +wealth than that no institutional modifications are able to destroy +the power of that motive to labor. There is too much history in the +<i>Wealth of Nations</i> to make tenable the hypothesis of complete +abstraction. And there is even clear a sense of a nature behind his +custom when he speaks of a "sacred <a name="page302" id= +"page302"></a>regard" for life, and urges that every man has +property in his own labor. The truth here surely is that Smith was +living in a time of commercial expansion. What was evident to him +was the potential wealth to be made available if the obsolete +system of restraint could be destroyed. Liberty to him meant +absence of restraint not because its more positive aspect was +concealed from him but rather because the kind of freedom wanted in +the environment in which he moved was exactly that for which he +made his plea. There is a hint that freedom as a positive thing was +known to him from the fact that he relied upon education to relieve +the evils of the division of labor. But the general context of his +book required less emphasis upon the virtues of state-interference +than upon its defects. His cue was to show that all the benefits of +regulation had been achieved despite its interference; from which, +of course, it followed that restraint was a matter of +supererogation.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p>It would be tedious to praise the <i>Wealth of Nations</i>. It +may be doubtful <a name="page303" id="page303"></a>whether Buckle's +ecstatic judgment that it has had more influence than any other +book in the world was justified even when he wrote; but certainly +it is one of the seminal books of the modern time. What is more +important is to note the perspective in which its main teaching was +set. He wrote in the midst of the first significant beginnings of +the Industrial Revolution; and his emphatic approval of Watt's +experiments suggests that he was not unalive to its importance. Yet +it cannot in any full sense be said that the Industrial Revolution +has a large part in his book. The picture of industrial +organization and its possibilities is too simple to suggest that he +had caught any far reaching glimpse into the future. Industry, for +him, is still in the last stage of handicraft; it is a matter of +skillful workmanship and not of mechanical appliance. Capital is +still the laborious result of parsimony. Credit is spoken of rather +in the tones of one who sees it less as a new instrument of finance +than a dangerous attempt by the aspiring needy to scale the heights +of wealth. Profits are always a justified return for productive +labor; <a name="page304" id="page304"></a>interest the payment for +the use of the owner's past parsimony. Business is still the +middleman distributing to the consumer on a small scale. He did +not, or could not, conceive of an industry either so vast or so +depersonalized as at present. He was rather writing of a system +which, like the politics of the eighteenth century, had reached an +equilibrium of passable comfort. His natural order was, at bottom, +the beatification of that to which this equilibrium tended. Its +benefits might be improved by free trade and free workmanship; but, +upon the whole, he saw no reason to call in question its +fundamental dogmas.</p> +<p>Therein, of course, may be found the main secret of his +omissions. The problem of labor finds no place in his book. The +things that the poor have absent from their lives, that concept of +a national minimum below which no State can hope to fulfil even the +meanest of its aims, of these he has no conception. Rather the note +of the book is a quiet optimism, impressed by the possibilities of +constant improvement which lie imbedded in the human impulse to +better itself. What he did not see is <a name="page305" id= +"page305"></a>the way in which the logical outcome of the system he +describes may well be the attainment of great wealth at a price in +human cost that is beyond its worth. Therein, it is clear, all +individualistic theories of the state miss the true essence of the +social bond. Those who came after Adam Smith saw only half his +problem. He wrote a consumer's theory of value. But whereas he had +in mind a happy and contented people, the economics of Ricardo and +Malthus seized upon a single element in human nature as that which +alone the State must serve. Freedom from restraint came ultimately +to mean a judgment upon national well-being in terms of the volume +of trade. "It is not with happiness," said Nassau Senior, "but with +wealth that I am concerned as a political economist; and I am not +only justified in omitting, but am perhaps bound to omit, all +considerations which have no influence upon wealth."</p> +<p>In such an aspect, it was natural for the balance of +investigation to swing towards the study of the technique of +production; and with the growing importance of capital, as +machinery was introduced, the <a name="page306" id= +"page306"></a>worker, without difficulty, became an adjunct, easily +replaced, to the machine. What was remembered then was the side of +Adam Smith which looked upon enlightened selfishness as the key to +social good. Regulation became anathema even when the evils it +attempted to restrain were those which made the mass of the people +incapable of citizenship. Even national education was regarded as +likely to destroy initiative; or, as a pauper's dole which men of +self-respect would regard with due abhorrence. The State, in short, +ceased to concern itself with justice save insofar as the +administration of a judicial code spelled the protection of the new +industrial system. Nothing is more striking in the half-century +after Adam Smith than the optimism of the economist and the +business man in contrast to the hopeless despair of labor. That men +can organize to improve their lot was denied with emphasis, so that +until Francis Place even the workers themselves were +half-convinced. The manufacturers were the State; and the whole +intellectual strength of economics was massed to prove the +rightness of the equation. The literature <a name="page307" id= +"page307"></a>of protest, men like Hall and Thompson, Hodgskin and +Bray, exerted no influence upon the legislation of the time; and +Robert Owen was deemed an amiable eccentric rather than the prophet +of a new hope. The men who succeeded, as Wilberforce, carried out +to the letter the unstated assumptions of Puritan economics. The +poor were consigned to a God whose dictates were by definition +beneficent; and if they failed to understand the curious incidence +of his rewards that was because his ways were inscrutable. No one +who reads the tracts of writers like Harriet Martineau can fail to +see how pitiless was the operation of this attitude. Life is made a +struggle beneficent, indeed, but deriving its ultimate meaning from +the misery incident to it. The tragedy is excused because the +export-trade increases in its volume. The iron law of wages, the +assumed transition of every energetic worker to the ranks of +wealth, the danger lest the natural ability of the worker to better +his condition be sapped by giving to him that which his +self-respect can better win—these became the unconscious +assumptions of all economic discussion.</p> +<a name="page308" id="page308"></a> +<p>In all this, as in the foundation with which Adam Smith provided +it, we must not miss the element of truth that it contains. No +poison is more subtly destructive of the democratic State than +paternalism; and the release of the creative impulses of men must +always be the coping-stone of public policy. Adam Smith is the +supreme representative of a tradition which saw that release +effected by individual effort. Where each man cautiously pursued +the good as he saw it, the realization was bound, in his view, to +be splendid. A population each element of which was active and +alert to its economic problems could not escape the achievement of +greatness. All that is true; but it evades the obvious conditions +we have inherited. For even when the psychological inadequacies of +Smith's attitude are put aside, we can judge his theory in the +light of the experience it summarizes. Once it is admitted that the +object of the State is the achievement of the good life, the final +canon of politics is bound to be a moral one. We have to inquire +into the dominant conception of the good life, the number of those +upon whom it is intended that good shall be conferred.</p> +<a name="page309" id="page309"></a> +<p>In the light of this conception it is obvious enough that +Smith's view is impossible. No mere conflict of private interests, +however pure in motive, seems able to achieve a harmony of interest +between the members of the State. Liberty, in the sense of a +positive and equal opportunity for self-realization, is impossible +save upon the basis of the acceptance of certain minimal standards +which can get accepted only through collective effort. Smith did +not see that in the processes of politics what gets accepted is not +the will that is at every moment a part of the state-purpose, but +the will of those who in fact operate the machinery of government. +In the half-century after he wrote the men who dominated political +life were, with the best intentions, moved by motives at most +points unrelated to the national well-being. The fellow-servant +doctrine would never have obtained acceptance in a state where, as +he thought, employer and workman stood upon an equal footing. +Opposition to the Factory Acts would never have developed in a +community where it was realized that below certain standards of +subsistence the <a name="page310" id="page310"></a>very concept of +humanity is impossible. Modern achievement implies a training in +the tools of life; and that, for most, is denied even in our own +day to the vast majority of men. In the absence of legislation, it +is certain that those who employ the services of men will be their +political masters; and it will follow that their Acts of Parliament +will be adapted to the needs of property. That shrinkage of the +purpose of the State will mean for most not merely hardship but +degradation of all that makes life worthy. Upon those stunted +existences, indeed, a wealthy civilization may easily be builded. +Yet it will be a civilization of slaves rather than of men.</p> +<p>The individualism, that is to say, for which Adam Smith was +zealous demands a different institutional expression from that +which he gave it. We must not assume an <i>a priori</i> +justification for the forces of the past. The customs of men may +represent the thwarting of the impulses of the many at the expense +of the few not less easily than they may embody a general desire; +and it is surely a mistaken usage to dignify as natural <a name= +"page311" id="page311"></a>whatever may happen to have occurred. A +man may find self-realization not less in working for the common +good than in the limited satisfaction of his narrow desire for +material advancement. And that, indeed, is the starting-point of +modern effort. Our liberty means the consistent expression of our +personality in media where we find people like-minded with +ourselves in their conception of social life. The very scale of +civilization implies collective plans and common effort. The +constant revision of our basic notions was inevitable immediately +science was applied to industry. There was thus no reason to +believe that the system of individual interests for which Smith +stood sponsor was more likely to fit requirements of a new time +than one which implied the national regulation of business +enterprise. The danger in every period of history is lest we take +our own age as the term in institutional evolution. Private +enterprise has the sanction of prescription; but since the +Industrial Revolution the chief lesson we have had to learn is the +unsatisfactory character of that title. History is an unenviable +record of bad metaphysics used <a name="page312" id= +"page312"></a>to defend obsolete systems. It took almost a century +after the publication of the <i>Wealth of Nations</i> for men to +realize that its axioms represented the experience of a definite +time. Smith thought of freedom in the terms most suitable to his +generation and stated them with a largeness of view which remains +impressive even at a century's distance.</p> +<p>But nothing is more certain in the history of political +philosophy than that the problem of freedom changes with each age. +The nineteenth century sought release from political privilege; and +it built its success upon the system prepared by its predecessor. +It can never be too greatly emphasized that in each age the +substance of liberty will be found in what the dominating forces of +that age most greatly want. With Locke, with Smith, with Hegel and +with Marx, the ultimate hypothesis is always the summary of some +special experience universalized. That does not mean that the past +is worthless. Politics, as Seeley said, are vulgar unless they are +liberalized by history; and a state which failed to see itself as a +mosaic of ancestral institutions would build its <a name="page313" +id="page313"></a>novelties upon foundations of sand. Suspicions of +collective effort in the eighteenth century ought not to mean +suspicion in the twentieth; to think in such fashion is to fall +into the error for which Lassalle so finely criticized Hegel. It is +as though one were to confound the accidental phases of the history +of property with the philosophic basis of property itself. From +such an error it is the task of history above all to free us. For +it records the ideals and doubts of earlier ages as a perennial +challenge to the coming time.</p> +<p>The rightness of this attitude admits of proof in terms of the +double tradition to which Adam Smith gave birth. On the one hand he +is the founder of the classic political economy. With Ricardo, the +elder Mill and Nassau Senior, the main preoccupation is the +production of wealth without regard to its moral environment; and +the state for them is merely an engine to protect the atmosphere in +which business men achieve their labors. There is nothing in them +of that fine despair which made Stuart Mill welcome socialism +itself rather than allow the continuance of the new capitalist +system. Herein the <a name="page314" id="page314"></a>State is +purged of moral purpose; and the utilitarian method achieves the +greatest happiness by insisting that the technique of production +must dominate all other circumstances. Until the Reform Act of +1867, the orthodox economists remained unchallenged. The use of the +franchise was only beginning to be understood. The "new model" of +trade unionism had not yet been tested in the political field. But +it was discovered impossible to act any longer upon the assumptions +of the abstract economic man. The infallible sense of his own +interest was discovered to be without basis in the facts for the +simple reason that the instruments of his perception obviously +required training if they were to be applied to a complex world. +Individualism, in the old, utilitarian sense, passed away because +it failed to build a State wherein a channel of expression might be +found for the creative energies of humble men.</p> +<p>It is only within the last two decades that we have begun to +understand the inner significance of the protest against this +economic liberalism. Adam Smith had declared the source of value to +lie in <a name="page315" id="page315"></a>labor; and, at the moment +of its deepest agony, there were men willing to point the moral of +his tale. That it represented an incautious analysis was, for them, +unimportant beside the fact that it opened once more a path whereby +economics could be reclaimed for moral science. For if labor was +the source of value, as Bray and Thompson pointed out, it seemed as +though degradation was the sole payment for its services. They did +not ask whether the organization they envisaged was economically +profitable, but whether it was ethically right. No one can read the +history of these years and fail to understand their uncompromising +denial of its rightness. Their negation fell upon unheeding ears; +but twenty years later, the tradition for which they stood came +into Marx's hands and was fashioned by him into an interpretation +of history. With all its faults of statement and of emphasis, the +doctrine of the English socialists has been, in later hands, the +most fruitful hypothesis of modern politics. It was a deliberate +effort, upon the basis of Adam Smith's ideas, to create a +commonwealth in the interests of the masses. Wealth, in <a name= +"page316" id="page316"></a>its view, was less the mere production +of goods than the accumulated happiness of humble men. The impulses +it praised and sought through state-action to express were, indeed, +different from those upon which Smith laid emphasis; and he would +doubtless have stood aghast at the way in which his thought was +turned to ends of which he did not dream. Yet he can hardly have +desired a greater glory. He thus made possible not only knowledge +of a State untrammelled in its economic life by moral +considerations; but also the road to those categories wherein the +old conception of co-operative effort might find a new expression. +Those who trod in his footsteps may have repudiated the ideal for +which he stood, but they made possible a larger hope in which he +would have been proud and glad to share.</p> +<hr class="long" /></div> +<div id="bibliography"><br /> +<a name="page317" id="page317"></a> +<h2>BIBLIOGRAPHY</h2> +<p>This bibliography makes no pretence to completeness. It attempts +only to enumerate the more obvious sources that an interested +reader would care to examine.</p> +<br /> +<h3>GENERAL</h3> +<ul> +<li>LESLIE STEPHEN. +<ul> +<li><i>History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century</i>. +1876. Vol. II, Chapters IX and X.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>W.E.H. LECKY. +<ul> +<li><i>History of England in the Eighteenth Century.</i></li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>A.L. SMITH. +<ul> +<li><i>Political Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth and +Eighteenth Centuries</i> in the <i>Cambridge Modern History</i>. +Vol. VI, Chapter XXIII.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>J. BONAR. +<ul> +<li><i>Philosophy and Political Economy</i>. Chapters V-IX.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>F.W. MAITLAND. +<ul> +<li><i>An Historical Sketch of Liberty and Equality</i> in +<i>Collected Papers</i>. Vol. I.</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> +<br /> +<h3>CHAPTER II</h3> +<ul> +<li>JOHN LOCKE. +<ul> +<li><i>Works</i> (Eleventh Edition), 10 volumes. London, 1812.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>H.R. FOX-BOURNE. +<ul> +<li><i>Life of John Locke</i>. London, 1876.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>T.H. GREEN. +<ul> +<li><i>The Principles of Political Obligation</i> in <i>Collected +Works</i>. Vol. II. London, 1908.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>PETER. LORD KING. +<ul> +<li><i>The Life and Letters of John Locke</i>. London, 1858.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>SIR F. POLLOCK. +<ul> +<li><i>Locke's Theory of the State</i> in <i>Proc. Brit. Acad.</i>. +Vol. I. London, 1904.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>S.P. LAMPRECHT. +<ul> +<li><i>The Moral and Political Philosophy of Locke</i>. New York, +1918.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>A.A. SEATON. +<ul> +<li><i>The Theory of Toleration under the Later Stuarts</i>. +Cambridge, 1911.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>J.N. FIGGIS. +<ul> +<li><i>The Divine Right of Kings</i>. Cambridge, 1914.</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> +<br /> +<a name="page318" id="page318"></a> +<h3>CHAPTER III</h3> +<ul> +<li>JEREMY COLLIER. +<ul> +<li><i>The History of Passive Obedience</i>. London, 1689.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>WILLIAM SHERLOCK. +<ul> +<li><i>The Case of Resistance</i>. London, 1684.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>CHARLES LESLIE. +<ul> +<li class="sub"><i>The Case of the Regale</i> (Collected Works). +Vol. Ill, p. 291.</li> +<li class="sub"><i>The Rehearsal</i>.</li> +<li class="sub"><i>The New Association</i>.</li> +<li class="sub"><i>Cassandra</i>.</li> +<li class="sub"><i>The Finishing Stroke</i>.</li> +<li class="sub"><i>Obedience to Civil Government Clearly +Stated</i>.</li> +<li class="sub"><i>The Best Answer</i>.</li> +<li class="sub"><i>The Best of All</i>.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>SAMUEL GRASCOM. +<ul> +<li><i>A Brief Answer</i>.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>E. SHELLINGFLEET. +<ul> +<li><i>A Vindication of their Majesties Authoritie</i>.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>B. SHOWER. +<ul> +<li><i>A Letter to a Convocation Man.</i></li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>W. WAKE. +<ul> +<li><i>The Authority of Christian Princes</i>. <i>The State of the +Church</i> (1703).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>FRANCIS ATTERBURY. +<ul> +<li><i>Rights, Powers and Privileges of an English Convocation</i> +(1701).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>BENJAMIN HOADLY. +<ul> +<li class="sub"><i>Origins of Civil Government</i> (1710).</li> +<li class="sub"><i>Preservative Against Nonjurors</i> (1716).</li> +<li class="sub"><i>Works</i>, 3 vols. London (1773).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>WILLIAM LAW. +<ul> +<li><i>A Defence of Church Principles</i> (ed. Gore). Edinburgh, +1904.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>W. WARBURTON. +<ul> +<li><i>Alliance between Church and State</i> (1736).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>J.H. OVERTON. +<ul> +<li><i>The Nonjurors.</i> New York, 1903.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>T. LATHEBURY. +<ul> +<li><i>History of Convocation.</i> London, 1842.</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> +<br /> +<h3>CHAPTER IV</h3> +<ul> +<li>BERKELEY. +<ul> +<li><i>Essay Towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain</i> +(1721).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>H. ST. JOHN (Viscount Bolingbroke). +<ul> +<li><i>Works.</i> 5 vols. London, 1754.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>LORD EGMONT. +<ul> +<li><i>Faction detected by the Evidence of Facts</i> (1742).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>DAVID HUME. +<ul> +<li class="sub"><i>Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals</i> +(1752).</li> +<li class="sub"><i>Essays</i>. (1742-1752) ed. Green & Grose. +London, 1876.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>W. SICHEL.<a name="page319" id="page319"></a> +<ul> +<li><i>Life of Bolingbroke</i>. 2 vols. 1900-4.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>J. CHURTON COLLINS. +<ul> +<li><i>Bolingbroke and Voltaire in England</i>.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>J. HILL BURTON. +<ul> +<li><i>Life of Hume</i>.</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> +<br /> +<h3>CHAPTER V</h3> +<ul> +<li>MONTESQUIEU. +<ul> +<li><i>L'Esprit des Lois</i> (1748).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>J.J. ROUSSEAU. +<ul> +<li><i>Du Contrat Social</i> (1762). See ed. by Vaughan, 1918.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>JOHN BROWN. +<ul> +<li><i>Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times</i> +(1757).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>ADAM FERGUSON. +<ul> +<li><i>Essay on the History of Civil Society</i> (1767).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>WILLIAM BLACKSTONE. +<ul> +<li><i>Commentaries</i> (1765-9).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>JEREMY BENTHAM. +<ul> +<li><i>A Fragment on Government</i> (1776). Ed. F.C. Montague, +1891.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>J. DE LOLME. +<ul> +<li><i>The Constitution of England</i> (1775).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>ROBERT WALLACE. +<ul> +<li><i>Various Prospects</i> (1761).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. +<ul> +<li><i>Essay on the First Principles of Government</i> (1768).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>RICHARD PRICE. +<ul> +<li class="sub"><i>Observations on Civil Liberty</i> (1776).</li> +<li class="sub"><i>Additional Observations</i> (1777).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>WILLIAM OGILVIE. +<ul> +<li><i>The Right of Property in Land</i> (1781). Ed. Macdonald, +1891.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>JOSIAH TUCKER. +<ul> +<li><i>Treatise on Civil Government</i> (1781).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>SAMUEL JOHNSON. +<ul> +<li><i>Taxation No Tyranny</i> (1775).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>M. BEER. +<ul> +<li><i>History of British Socialism</i> (1919).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>JAMES BOSWELL. +<ul> +<li><i>Life of Samuel Johnson</i> (1791).</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> +<br /> +<h3>CHAPTER VI</h3> +<ul> +<li>EDMUND BURKE. +<ul> +<li><i>Collected Works</i>. London, 1808.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>JOHN MORLEY. +<ul> +<li><i>Edmund Burke</i> (1867). <i>Life of Burke</i> (1887).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>J. MACCUNN. +<ul> +<li><i>The Political Philosophy of Burke</i> (1908).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>JUNIUS. +<ul> +<li><i>Letters</i> (1769-72). London, 1812.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>THOMAS PAINE. +<ul> +<li><i>The Rights of Man</i> (1791-2).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>JAMES MACKINTOSH. +<ul> +<li><i>Vendiciæ Gallicæ</i> (1791).</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> +<br /> +<a name="page320" id="page320"></a> +<h3>CHAPTER VII</h3> +<ul> +<li>CHARLES DAVENANT. +<ul> +<li><i>Works</i>. London, 1771.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>SIR DUDLEY NORTH. +<ul> +<li><i>A Discourse upon Trade</i> (1691).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>ADAM SMITH. +<ul> +<li class="sub"><i>Theory of Moral Sentiments</i> (1759).</li> +<li class="sub"><i>Wealth of Nations</i> (1776).</li> +<li class="sub"><i>Lectures on Justice and Police</i>. (Ed. Cannan, +1896).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>W.R. SCOTT. +<ul> +<li><i>Life of Francis Hutcheson</i> (1900).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>JOHN RAE. +<ul> +<li><i>Life of Adam Smith</i> (1895).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>W. BAGEHOT. +<ul> +<li><i>Adam Smith as a Person</i> in <i>Coll. Works</i>. Vol. +VII.</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>F.W. HIRST. +<ul> +<li><i>Adam Smith</i> (1904).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>W. HASBACH. +<ul> +<li><i>Untersuchungen über Adam Smith</i> (1891).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>J. BONAR. +<ul> +<li><i>A Catalogue of Adam Smith's Library</i> (1894).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>T. CLIFFE LESLIE. +<ul> +<li><i>Adam Smith</i> in <i>Essays in Moral and Political +Philosophy</i> (1879).</li> +</ul> +</li> +<li>E. TROELTSCH. +<ul> +<li><i>Die Sociallehren der Christlichen Kirchen</i> (1912).</li> +</ul> +</li> +</ul> +<hr class="long" /></div> +<div id="index"><br /> +<a name="page321" id="page321"></a> +<h2>INDEX</h2> +<ul> +<li>Addison, <a href="#page69">69</a></li> +<li>Andrewes, <a href="#page83">83</a></li> +<li>Ashley, <a href="#page33">33-4</a></li> +<li>Atterbury, <a href="#page102">102</a></li> +<li>Austin, <a href="#page62">62</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Bagehot, <a href="#page9">9</a>, <a href= +"#page249">249</a></li> +<li>Barbeyrac, <a href="#page68">68</a></li> +<li>Barrow, <a href="#page84">84</a></li> +<li>Bellarmine, <a href="#page83">83</a>, <a href= +"#page121">121</a></li> +<li>Bentham, <a href="#page23">23</a>, <a href="#page62">62</a>, +<a href="#page72">72</a>, <a href="#page151">151</a>, <a href= +"#page157">157</a>, <a href="#page175">175</a>, <a href= +"#page194">194</a></li> +<li>Berkeley, <a href="#page10">10</a>, <a href= +"#page129">129</a></li> +<li>Blackstone, <a href="#page163">163-4</a>, <a href= +"#page174">174f</a></li> +<li>Bolingbroke, <a href="#page69">69</a>, <a href= +"#page131">131f</a></li> +<li>Bonald, <a href="#page277">277</a></li> +<li>Bonar, <a href="#page300">300</a></li> +<li>Bonwicke, <a href="#page82">82</a></li> +<li>Boswell, <a href="#page209">209</a></li> +<li>Bray, <a href="#page307">307</a>, <a href= +"#page315">315</a></li> +<li>Brown (J.), <a href="#page168">168</a></li> +<li>Brown (R.), <a href="#page52">52</a></li> +<li>Burke, <a href="#page7">7</a>, <a href="#page8">8</a>, <a href= +"#page16">16</a>, <a href="#page30">30</a>, <a href= +"#page157">157</a>, <a href="#page159">159</a>, <a href= +"#page166">166</a>, <a href="#page221">221f</a>, <a href= +"#page286">286</a></li> +<li>Burnet, <a href="#page80">80</a>, <a href="#page87">87</a>, +<a href="#page93">93</a></li> +<li>Busher, <a href="#page52">52</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Cartwright, <a href="#page97">97</a></li> +<li>Chatham, <a href="#page132">132</a>, <a href= +"#page167">167</a>, <a href="#page188">188</a>, <a href= +"#page262">262</a></li> +<li>Chillingworth, <a href="#page52">52</a></li> +<li>Chubb, <a href="#page128">128</a></li> +<li>Coleridge, <a href="#page277">277</a></li> +<li>Collier, <a href="#page84">84n</a></li> +<li>Cowper, <a href="#page20">20</a></li> +<li>Crabbe, <a href="#page20">20</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Dalrymple, <a href="#page8">8</a></li> +<li>Darwin, <a href="#page67">67</a></li> +<li>Davenant, <a href="#page283">283</a>, <a href= +"#page287">287</a></li> +<li>Defoe, <a href="#page8">8</a>, <a href="#page128">128</a>, +<a href="#page132">132</a></li> +<li>Dicey, <a href="#page175">175</a>, <a href= +"#page179">179</a></li> +<li>Disraeli, <a href="#page132">132</a></li> +<li>Divine Right, <a href="#page7">7</a>, <a href= +"#page30">30</a></li> +<li>Dodwell, <a href="#page82">82</a></li> +<li>Dupont de Nemours, <a href="#page292">292</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Egmont, <a href="#page142">142</a></li> +<li>Eldon, <a href="#page159">159</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Ferguson, <a href="#page172">172-4</a></li> +<li>Fielding, <a href="#page160">160</a></li> +<li>Filmer, <a href="#page7">7</a>, <a href="#page38">38</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Galsworthy, <a href="#page171">171-2</a></li> +<li>George III, <a href="#page13">13</a>, <a href="#page15">15</a>, +<a href="#page158">158</a>, <a href="#page188">188</a>, <a href= +"#page213">213f</a></li> +<li>Godwin, <a href="#page10">10</a>, <a href="#page163">163</a>, +<a href="#page222">222</a>, <a href="#page276">276</a></li> +<li>Goldsmith, <a href="#page19">19</a>, <a href= +"#page223">223</a></li> +<li>Goodman, <a href="#page57">57</a></li> +<li>Grascom, <a href="#page86">86</a></li> +<li>Gray, <a href="#page160">160</a></li> +<li>Green (T.H.), <a href="#page61">61</a>, <a href= +"#page279">279</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Haldane, <a href="#page126">126</a></li> +<li>Hales, <a href="#page52">52</a></li> +<li>Halifax, <a href="#page8">8</a>, <a href="#page27">27</a></li> +<li>Hall, <a href="#page17">17</a>, <a href="#page307">307</a></li> +<li>Hamilton (J.L. & B.), <a href="#page19">19</a></li> +<li>Harrington, <a href="#page147">147</a></li> +<li>Hegel, <a href="#page249">249</a>, <a href="#page277">277</a>, +<a href="#page212">212-3</a></li> +<li>Hickes, <a href="#page83">83</a><a name="page322" id= +"page322"></a></li> +<li>Hoadly, <a href="#page9">9</a>, <a href="#page22">22</a>, +<a href="#page69">69</a>, <a href="#page107">107f</a></li> +<li>Hobbes, <a href="#page8">8</a>, <a href="#page16">16</a>, +<a href="#page30">30</a>, <a href="#page40">40f</a>, <a href= +"#page72">72</a>, <a href="#page91">91</a>, <a href= +"#page278">278</a>, <a href="#page284">284</a></li> +<li>Hodgskin, <a href="#page17">17</a>, <a href= +"#page307">307</a></li> +<li>Holmes (O.W.), <a href="#page63">63n</a>, <a href= +"#page269">269</a></li> +<li>Holt, <a href="#page14">14</a>,</li> +<li>Hooker, <a href="#page44">44</a></li> +<li>Hotman, <a href="#page57">57</a>, <a href="#page68">68</a></li> +<li>Hume, <a href="#page8">8</a>, <a href="#page11">11</a>, +<a href="#page71">71</a>, <a href="#page92">92</a>, <a href= +"#page143">143f</a>, <a href="#page278">278</a>, <a href= +"#page284">284</a>, <a href="#page297">297</a></li> +<li>Hutcheson, <a href="#page11">11</a>, <a href= +"#page153">153</a>, <a href="#page155">155</a>, <a href= +"#page291">291</a>, <a href="#page297">297</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Independents, <a href="#page40">40</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Jackson, <a href="#page84">84</a></li> +<li>James II, <a href="#page24">24f</a>, <a href= +"#page35">35</a></li> +<li>Johnson (Dr.), <a href="#page18">18</a>, <a href= +"#page210">210f</a>, <a href="#page223">223</a>, <a href= +"#page230">230</a></li> +<li>Junius, <a href="#page21">21</a>, <a href= +"#page219">219</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Keble, <a href="#page82">82</a></li> +<li>Kerr, <a href="#page82">82</a></li> +<li>Knox, <a href="#page57">57</a>, <a href="#page83">83</a>, +<a href="#page97">97</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Lassalle, <a href="#page313">313</a></li> +<li>Laud, <a href="#page285">285</a></li> +<li>Law, <a href="#page22">22</a>, <a href="#page108">108f</a></li> +<li>Leslie, <a href="#page80">80</a>, <a href="#page85">85</a>, +<a href="#page88">88</a>, <a href="#page90">90</a>, <a href= +"#page97">97</a>, <a href="#page104">104</a>, <a href= +"#page132">132</a></li> +<li>Locke, <a href="#page7">7</a>, <a href="#page11">11</a>, +<a href="#page21">21</a>, <a href="#page29">29-76</a>, <a href= +"#page79">79</a>, <a href="#page197">197</a>, <a href= +"#page207">207</a>, <a href="#page273">273</a>, <a href= +"#page287">287</a></li> +<li>de Lolme, <a href="#page10">10</a>, <a href= +"#page183">183f</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Mackintosh, <a href="#page269">269</a></li> +<li>Madison, <a href="#page63">63</a></li> +<li>Maine, <a href="#page66">66</a>, <a href= +"#page249">249</a></li> +<li>Maistre, <a href="#page91">91</a>, <a href="#page252">252</a>, +<a href="#page273">273</a></li> +<li>Malthus, <a href="#page305">305</a></li> +<li>Mandeville, <a href="#page129">129</a>, <a href= +"#page284">284</a></li> +<li>Mariana, <a href="#page57">57</a></li> +<li>Martin, <a href="#page69">69</a></li> +<li>Marx, <a href="#page312">312</a>, <a href= +"#page315">315</a></li> +<li>Melville, <a href="#page121">121</a></li> +<li>Mill, <a href="#page157">157</a></li> +<li>Milton, <a href="#page52">52</a></li> +<li>Molyneux, <a href="#page68">68</a></li> +<li>Montesquieu, <a href="#page12">12</a>, <a href= +"#page63">63</a>, <a href="#page160">160f</a>, <a href= +"#page173">173</a>, <a href="#page183">183</a></li> +<li>Morley, <a href="#page132">132</a>, <a href= +"#page223">223</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Newton, <a href="#page37">37</a></li> +<li>Newman, <a href="#page81">81</a>, <a href="#page122">122</a>, +<a href="#page125">125</a></li> +<li>North, <a href="#page287">287</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Ogilvie, <a href="#page199">199f</a></li> +<li>Owen, <a href="#page17">17</a>, <a href="#page307">307</a></li> +<li>Oxford Movement, <a href="#page81">81</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Paine, <a href="#page202">202</a>, <a href= +"#page269">269</a></li> +<li>Paley, <a href="#page157">157</a></li> +<li>Pattison, <a href="#page10">10</a></li> +<li>Penn, <a href="#page58">58</a></li> +<li>Place, <a href="#page306">306</a></li> +<li>Pope, <a href="#page69">69</a>, <a href="#page128">128</a>, +<a href="#page132">132</a></li> +<li>Price, <a href="#page196">196f</a></li> +<li>Priestley, <a href="#page72">72</a>, <a href= +"#page190">190f</a></li> +<li>Proast, <a href="#page64">64</a></li> +<li>Prynne, <a href="#page8">8</a>, <a href="#page55">55</a></li> +<li>Pufendorf, <a href="#page68">68</a></li> +<li>Pulteney, <a href="#page217">217</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Quesnay, <a href="#page288">288</a>, <a href= +"#page292">292</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Renan, <a href="#page249">249</a></li> +<li>Ricardo, <a href="#page305">305</a></li> +<li>Richardson, <a href="#page160">160</a></li> +<li>Richardson (S.), <a href="#page52">52</a></li> +<li>Rousseau, <a href="#page8">8</a>, <a href="#page74">74</a>, +<a href="#page162">162f</a>, <a href="#page188">188</a>, <a href= +"#page197">197</a>, <a href="#page276">276</a></li> +<li>Royer-Collard, <a href="#page226">226</a></li> +<li>Ruskin, <a href="#page293">293</a>, <a href= +"#page301">301</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Sanderson, <a href="#page84">84</a></li> +<li>Savigny, <a href="#page249">249</a>, <a href= +"#page277">277</a></li> +<li>Seeley, <a href="#page312">312</a></li> +<li>Selden, <a href="#page9">9</a></li> +<li>Senior, <a href="#page304">304</a></li> +<li>Separation of Powers, <a href="#page63">63f</a></li> +<li>Shaftesbury, <a href="#page11">11</a>, <a href= +"#page128">128</a>, <a href="#page155">155</a><a name="page323" id= +"page323"></a></li> +<li>Sherlock (T.), <a href="#page108">108</a></li> +<li>Sherlock (W.), <a href="#page87">87</a></li> +<li>Shower, <a href="#page99">99</a></li> +<li>Sidney, <a href="#page7">7</a>, <a href="#page57">57</a></li> +<li>Smith (Adam), <a href="#page9">9</a>, <a href="#page16">16</a>, +<a href="#page152">152</a>, <a href="#page195">195</a>, <a href= +"#page258">258</a>, <a href="#page281">281f</a></li> +<li>Smith (A.L.), <a href="#page140">140</a></li> +<li>Snape, <a href="#page108">108</a></li> +<li>Social Contract, <a href="#page57">57</a></li> +<li>Spelman, <a href="#page9">9</a></li> +<li>Spence, <a href="#page202">202</a></li> +<li>Stammler, <a href="#page60">60</a></li> +<li>Steele, <a href="#page284">284</a></li> +<li>Stephen (F.), <a href="#page65">65</a></li> +<li>Stephen (L.), <a href="#page108">108</a>, <a href= +"#page223">223</a></li> +<li>Stillingfleet, <a href="#page37">37</a>, <a href= +"#page87">87</a>, <a href="#page93">93</a></li> +<li>Suarez, <a href="#page57">57</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Taylor, <a href="#page52">52</a>, <a href="#page57">57</a></li> +<li>Temple, <a href="#page283">283</a></li> +<li>Thompson, <a href="#page307">307</a>, <a href= +"#page215">215</a></li> +<li>Tindal, <a href="#page123">123</a></li> +<li>Tocqueville, <a href="#page254">254</a></li> +<li>Toleration, <a href="#page52">52</a>, <a href= +"#page64">64</a></li> +<li>Tucker, <a href="#page71">71</a>, <a href="#page206">206f</a>, +<a href="#page288">288</a></li> +<li>Turgot, <a href="#page288">288</a>, <a href= +"#page292">292</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Voltaire, <a href="#page12">12</a>, <a href="#page132">132</a>, +<a href="#page160">160</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Wake, <a href="#page80">80</a>, <a href= +"#page100">100f</a></li> +<li>Wallace, <a href="#page188">188</a></li> +<li>Walpole, <a href="#page13">13</a>, <a href="#page21">21</a>, +<a href="#page128">128-30</a></li> +<li>Warburton, <a href="#page69">69</a>, <a href= +"#page118">118f</a>, <a href="#page192">192</a></li> +<li>Wilberforce, <a href="#page290">290</a></li> +<li>Wilkes, <a href="#page167">167</a>, <a href="#page188">188</a>, +<a href="#page220">220</a></li> +<li>William III, <a href="#page25">25f</a></li> +<li>Williams (Roger), <a href="#page52">52</a></li> +<li>Woolston, <a href="#page128">128</a></li> +<li>Wordsworth, <a href="#page277">277</a></li> +</ul> +</div> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14735 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/14735-h/images/image01.png b/14735-h/images/image01.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2ae0b10 --- /dev/null +++ b/14735-h/images/image01.png |
