diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'old/14735.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/14735.txt | 6234 |
1 files changed, 6234 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/old/14735.txt b/old/14735.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f51b1ff --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14735.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6234 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Political Thought in England from Locke to +Bentham, by Harold J. Laski + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham + +Author: Harold J. Laski + +Release Date: January 19, 2005 [EBook #14735] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND *** + + + + +Produced by David King and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + +HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE + +No. 103 + +_Editors:_ + +HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. +PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, LITT.D. LL.D., F.B.A. +PROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A. +PROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A. + + + + +POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND + +FROM LOCKE TO BENTHAM + + +BY + +HAROLD J. LASKI + + +SOMETIME EXHIBITIONER OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD, OF THE DEPARTMENT OF +HISTORY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY, AUTHOR OF STUDIES IN THE PROBLEM OF +SOVEREIGNTY AND AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE + + + +NEW YORK +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY +LONDON +WILLIAMS AND NORGATE + + + + +1920 + + + + +NOTE + +It is impossible for me to publish this book without some expression of +the debt it owes to Leslie Stephen's _History of the English Thought in +the Eighteenth Century_. 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. + +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. + +H.J.L. + +HARVARD UNIVERSITY +Sept. 15, 1919 + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER PAGE + + I. INTRODUCTION 7 + + II. THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REVOLUTION 24 + +III. CHURCH AND STATE 77 + + IV. THE ERA OF STAGNATION 127 + + V. SIGNS OF CHANGE 159 + + VI. BURKE 213 + +VII. THE FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMIC LIBERALISM 281 + +BIBLIOGRAPHY 317 + +INDEX 321 + + + + +CHAPTER I + +INTRODUCTION + + +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 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 respectable, they bear no comparison with masters like +Selden and Sir Henry Spelman. + +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. 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. + +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 +conclusions unfitted for a period dominated by rationalism. Locke +regarded his _Human Understanding_ as the preliminary to an ethical +enquiry; and Hume seems to have considered his _Principles of Morals_ +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 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. + +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 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 _Extraordinary Black +Book_ 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. + +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, 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 _Present Discontents_ and the +_Society for the Support of the Bill of Rights_ 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. + +The atmosphere of the time, in fact, is deep-rooted in the conditions of +the past. Locke could not have written had not 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 _politik_ than _staatslehre_. 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 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. + +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. + +The political ideas of the eighteenth 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 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 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. + +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 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. + +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 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 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 regime 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. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REVOLUTION + + + +I + + +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 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 regime +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. + +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; 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. + +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. 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. + +What secured the permanence of the 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 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. + + + +II + + +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 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. + +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 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 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. + +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 _Thoughts on Education_ 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 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 _History of the Air_ which +Locke himself edited after the death of his friend. + +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 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 _Method of Curing Fevers_ +(1676), and had been elected to the Royal Society in 1668. But his real +genius lay in other directions. + +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 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 _Essay Concerning Human +Understanding_ and the _Two Treatises of Government_ were both published +in 1690. Five years earlier the _Letter Concerning Toleration_ was +published in its Latin dress; and four years afterwards an English +translation appeared. This last, however, perhaps on 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 +_Letter on Toleration_ can be found in fragments of various dates +between the twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years of his life. Of the +_Two Treatises_ the first seems to have been written between 1680 and +1685, the second in the last year of his Dutch exile.[1] + +[Footnote 1: On the evidence for these dates see the convincing argument +of Mr. Fox-Bourne in his _Life of Locke_, Vol. II, pp. 165-7.] + +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 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 _Thoughts on Education_, in which the observant reader may +find the germ of most of Emile's ideas. He did not fail to revise the +_Essay_ from time to time; and his _Reasonableness of Christianity_, +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.[2] + +[Footnote 2: Fox-Bourne, _op. cit_. Letter from Lady Masham to Jean le +Clerc.] + + + +III + + +Locke's _Two Treatises of Government_ 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 _Patriarcha_, 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 _exercising_ +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 +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 _Treatise_. 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. + +The _Second Treatise_ 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 _Leviathan_ though +he rejects 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 regime. 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 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. + +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 +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 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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 acknowledged to be dependent upon +popular consent. The main thing was to be rid of the Divine Right of +kings. + +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, 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. + +Though Locke thus insisted upon the 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. + +Its corollary is the right of revolution. 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[3] 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 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. + +[Footnote 3: King, _Life of Locke_, pp. 62, 63.] + +The problem of Church and State demanded a separate discussion; and it +is difficult not to feel that the great _Letter on Toleration_ 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 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. + +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 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, +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. + + + +IV + + +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 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. + +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 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 _Vindiciae_ 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 _Discourses on Government_. 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 of Jeremy Taylor or the cogent simplicity of William +Penn. + +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. 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. + +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 +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. + +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 "natural law with changing content"[4]--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. + +[Footnote 4: Cf. my _Authority in the Modern State_, p. 64., and +the references there cited.] + +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 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.[5] + +[Footnote 5: Cf. my _Problem of Sovereignty_, Chap. I.] + +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.[6] Every government +department is compelled to legislate, and, often enough, to undertake +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.[7] + +[Footnote 6: Cf. Mr. Justice Holmes' remarks in _Jensen_ v. +_Southern Pacific_, 244 U.S. 221.] + +[Footnote 7: Cf. my _Authority in the Modern State_, pp. 70 f.] + +Nor must we belittle the criticism, in its clearest form the work of +Fitz James Stephen,[8] 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, 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. + +[Footnote 8: Cf. also Coleridge's apt remark. _Table Talk_, Jan. 3, +1834.] + +Here, indeed, as elsewhere Locke is the 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 _Second Treatise_ 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 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. + + + +V + + +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 +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 +_Franco-Gallia_ should have been embellished with a preface from one +who, as Molyneux wrote to Locke,[9] 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 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. + +[Footnote 9: Locke, Works (ed. of 1812), IX. 435.] + +More valuable testimony is not wanting. In the _Spectator_, on six +separate occasions, Addison speaks of him as one whose possession is a +national glory. Defoe in his _Original Power of the People of England_ +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 _Original and +Institution of Civil Government_, 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 _Second Treatise_ had also been pillaged. Even +Warburton ceased for a moment his habit of belittling all rivals in the +field he considered his own to call him, in that _Divine Legation_ 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 +_Craftsman_, he attacked the excise scheme of Walpole. That is +irrefutable evidence of the position he had attained. + +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 +_Declaration of Independence_ had still, in words taken from Locke, to +reassert the 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 _Treatise Concerning Civil Government_ and his _Four Letters_ he +declares himself unable to understand on what Locke's reputation was +based. Meanwhile the English disciples of Rousseau in the persons of +Price 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 _Fragment_ had begun to make its way, a new epoch +opened in the history of political ideas. + +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 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 +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. + +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 _Two Treatises_ is absent from the _Social Contract_. +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, +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. + +Wherein, perhaps, the most profound distinction between Locke's teaching +and our own time may be discovered is in our 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. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +CHURCH AND STATE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY + + + +I + + +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 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. + +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 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. + +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 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 _societas perfecta_; +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 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. + +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 +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. + +Yet the real interest of the Nonjuring 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 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. + +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[10] had collected much material to show how 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 it shows how hardly the earlier notions of Divine Right were to +die. + +[Footnote 10: _The History of Passive Obedience_. Its author was +Jeremy Collier.] + +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 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +It is easy enough to see that men who felt in this fashion could hardly +have decided otherwise than as they did. The 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. + +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 _Best of All_, "is due to +commonwealths by their subjects even for conscience' sake, where the +princes from whom they have revolted have given up their claim." + +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. + +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 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 _Convocation Book_ of Overall +seemed to suggest, might be taken not less to a _de facto_ monarch than +to one _de jure_. Few, indeed would have taken the ground of Bishop +Burnet, and allotted the 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. + +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,[11] "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 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. + +[Footnote 11: _A Vindication of their Majesties' Authority to fill +the Sees of the Deprived Bishops_ (1691).] + + + +III + + +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 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 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. + +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. + +The reasons for the hatred of dissent go back in part 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 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. + +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, 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. + +The controversy had begun on the threshold of William's accession; but +its real commencement dates from 1697. In that year was published the +_Letter to a Convocation Man_, probably written by Sir Bartholomew +Shower, an able if unscrupulous Jacobite lawyer, which maliciously, +though with abounding skill, raised every question that peaceful +churchmen must have been anxious to avoid. The _Letter_ 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." + +Here was a clear challenge which was at once answered, in _The Authority +of Christian Princes_, by William Wake, who 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 correct, improve, or otherwise +alter their resolutions, according to his own liking, before he gives +his authority to them." + +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 _Letter_ 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 _Rights, Powers +and Privileges of an English Convocation Stated and Vindicated_ 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 _State +of the Church_ (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 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. + +Here, as elsewhere, it was Charles Leslie who best summed up the +feeling of High Churchmen. His _Case of the Regale_ (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 _de jure_ 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 _imperium in imperio_; but Leslie would not admit that +fruitful stumbling block to the debate. "The 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." + +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. + +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 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 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 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 _Preservative +against the Principles and Practice of Nonjurors_ 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 men privileges which confessedly belong to persons outside +the category of fallibility. And, exactly in the fashion of Leslie in +the _Regale_ 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 _imperium in imperio_ 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 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." + +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 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. + +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 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. + +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 _ignoratio elenchi_, 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 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. + +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. + +Here, indeed, the antagonists were on common ground. Both had denied the +absolute character of any authority; but while Hoadly virtually +postulates 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. + +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 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. _Quieta non movere_ 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. + +In the hundred and twenty years which 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 _Independent Whig_, 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 _Alliance between Church and State_ (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 personality distinct from that of their members in +words reminiscent of an historic legal pronouncement.[12] "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." + +[Footnote 12: Dicey, _Law and Opinion in England_ (2nd edition), +p. 165.] + +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. 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 _imperium in imperio_, and the "mischiefs which so +terrified Hobbes" are met by the terms upon which it is founded. + +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 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. + +Until the Toleration Act, the theory was worthless to the English Church +because its temper, under the aegis 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 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. + + + +IV + + +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 +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. + +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 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. + +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 the ideals, that is to say, of Laud and Andrewes.[13] 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,[14] "... see the absolute need, if a Church is +to be strong and vigorous, for the Church, _qua_ 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,[15] "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. + +[Footnote 13: Cf. my _Problem of Sovereignty_, Chapter III.] + +[Footnote 14: _Parliamentary Debates_. Fifth Series, Vol. 34, +p. 992 (June 3, 1919).] + +[Footnote 15: _Parliamentary Debates_. Fifth Series, Vol. 34, p 1002. +The quotation does not fully represent Lord Haldane's views.] + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE ERA OF STAGNATION + + + +I + + +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, 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. + +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 +_Aufklarung_ 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 die like a rat in a hole. Bishop +Berkeley, indeed, was convinced of the decadence of England; but his +_Essay towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain_ (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 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. + +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 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 _Craftsman_--the first official journal of a political +party in England--showed his appreciation of the technique of political +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 _Review_ and Leslie's _Rehearsal_, 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. + +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 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 _Dissertation on Parties_ (1734) and the _Idea of a +Patriot King_ (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 _Letter +to Sir W. Windham_ (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. + +The whole, of course, must have some sort of background; and the +_Letters on the Study of History_ (1735) was doubtless intended to +supply it. Experience is to be the test of truth, since history is +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 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. + +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 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 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? + +His value can be tested in another way. His _Idea of a Patriot King_ 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 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." + +Bolingbroke himself has admitted that such a monarch would be a "sort of +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 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 regime 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. 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. + + + +II + + +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. +_Faction detected by the Evidence of Facts_ (1742) was, though it is +anonymous,[16] 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 Thomas Hollis to become the founders of English +radicalism. + +[Footnote 16: It was probably written by Lord Egmont.] + +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 _Treatise of Human Nature_ which +had fallen "dead-born from the press" was in some sort compensated by +the success of the new work. The second part, entitled _Political +Discourses_, was published in 1752, almost simultaneously with the +"_Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals_." 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. + +Hume, of course, is always critical and suggestive, and even if he had +no distinctive contribution to make, he gave a new 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 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." + +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 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." + +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 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. + +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 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 _laissez-faire_ 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 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. + +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 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 +happiness was not likely to view novel theories with unruffled temper. + +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 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. + +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 +him." The desire for wealth comes from the idea of pleasure; and in the +_Treatise on Human Nature_ 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 +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 secret of its true understanding. _The Wealth of Nations_ +would less easily have made its way had not the insight of Hume prepared +the road for its reception. + +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.[17] He is +entitled to be considered 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 political philosophy. +So that even if he could not himself construct it the hints at least +were there. + +[Footnote 17: There are few books which show so clearly as Lorimer's +_Institutes of Nations_ (1872) how fully the Scottish school was in the +midstream of European thought.] + +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 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. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +SIGNS OF CHANGE + + + +I + + +From Hume until the publication of Burke's _Present Discontents_ (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 +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. + +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 experience. Yet +when he came, in 1762, to publish the _Contrat Social_ 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 _Habeas +Corpus_ and a _lettre de cachet_, 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 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. + +It is worth while to linger for a moment upon the thesis which underlies +the _Esprit des Lois_ (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 complete unreality, are to be found in Godwin's _Political +Justice_; 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 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 _Commentaries_ (1765-9) produced Bentham's +_Fragment on Government_ (1776), and with that book we enter upon the +realistic study of the British Constitution. + +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 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 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. + +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 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. + + + +II + + +The first book to show the signs of change came in 1757. John Brown's +_Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times_ is largely +forgotten now; 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 _Characteristics_ 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, +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." + +This profligacy Brown compares to the 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 +_Island Pharisees_ sufficiently 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 _Present +Discontents_. Nothing could better justify the savage indignation of +Junius. + +Hume was the friend of Montesquieu, though twenty years his junior; and +the _Esprit des Lois_ 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 he has a skill for polished phrase, and a +genial paraphrase of other men's ideas. His _Essay on the History of +Civil Society_ (1767), which in a quarter of a century went through six +editions, was thought by Helvetius 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," 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 _Esprit des Lois_ 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. + + + +III + + +A more fertile source of inquiry was to be found among the students of +constitutional law. Blackstone's _Commentaries on the Laws of England_ +(1765-9) has had ever since its first publication an authority such as +Coke only before 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 +_Commentaries_ is nothing so much as an attempt to explain why English +constitutional law is a miracle of wisdom. + +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 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 _jura summa imperii_, 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 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." + +All this is not enough; though, as Bentham was to show in his _Fragment +on Government_, 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 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. + +"Its true defect," says Professor Dicey of the _Commentaries_, "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 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. + +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 +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 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. + +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 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. + +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 _Constitution of England_ 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 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 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. + +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 +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. + +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, 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. + + + +IV + + +The basis of revolutionary doctrine was already present in England when, +in 1762, Rousseau published his _Contrat Social_. 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 _Various Prospects_ (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. 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. + +It is five years after Rousseau that we see the first clear signs of his +influence. 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 _Estimate_ 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 _Essay on the First Principles of Government_ 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 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. + +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 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 +_Alliance_, 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." + +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 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, +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. + +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 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 in the +energies of men was better than the complacent stagnation of the +previous age. + +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 _Reflections_ 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 _a priori_ 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 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. + +Price, like Priestley a leading Nonconformist, was stirred to print by +the American Revolution; and if his views were not widely popular, his +_Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty_ (1776) attained its eighth +edition within a decade. This, with its supplement _Additional +Observations_ (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 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. + +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 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. + +The _Essay on the Right of Property in Land_ (1781) of William Ogilvie +deserves at least a passing notice. The author, who 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. 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. + +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 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 amazing curiosities in English political literature. + + + +V + + +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 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 _staatslehre_ that they do not admit the mollifying +influence of _politik_. 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. + +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 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 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. + +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 _John Bull_, the unreasoned 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 +_Treatise on Civil Government_ (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 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. + +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 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. + +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 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 _tedium vitae_." 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 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 _Taxation no Tyranny_ (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. + +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 _Idler_ 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 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. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +BURKE + + + +I + + +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 power. Nor was the effort defeated without a +struggle which went to the root of constitutional principle. + +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 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. + +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 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. + +Yet the design failed; and it failed because, with characteristic +stupidity, the 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. + +Not, of course, that George ever lacked defenders. As early as 1761, the +old rival of Walpole, Pulteney, whom a peerage had condemned to +obsolescence, published his _Seasonable Hints from an Honest Man on the +new Reign_. 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 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. + +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 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. + + + +II + + +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 _Dissertation on the Sublime and the Beautiful_ (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. His earliest +production was a _Vindication of Natural Society_ (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 _Political Justice_. 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 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. + +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 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. + +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 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 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. + + + +III + + +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 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 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. + +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 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 +_Speech on Conciliation with America_ (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 _Speech on +American Taxation_ (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." "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. + +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 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 _Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe_ (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 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. + +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 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 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 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 connected with self-government. +Yet the latest lesson is no more than the final outcome of his teaching. + + + +IV + + +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 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 _Reflections on the French Revolution_ (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. + +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 _Speech on American Taxation_, "I hate the +very sound of them." "One sure symptom of an ill-conducted state," he +wrote in the _Reflections_, "is the propensity of the people to resort +to theories." "It is always to be lamented," he said in a _Speech on the +Duration of Parliament_, "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 _Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs_ (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?" + +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 _Speech on Economical Reform_ (1780) was the +prelude to a nobly-planned and successful attack upon the waste of the +Civil list. + +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 +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 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. + +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 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 _a priori_ 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." + +To abstract natural right he therefore opposed prescription. The +presumption of wisdom is on the side of the past, and 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 +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." + +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 _Speech on Economical Reform_, +"it is absurd to preserve nothing but the burden of them." "A +disposition to preserve and an ability to improve," he wrote in the +_Reflections on the French Revolution_, "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 _Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs_, +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. + +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 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 +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 _Reflections_, +"... 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 _Present Discontents_, "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 passages in which he urges the consequent +special representation which the adequate defence of property requires. + +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 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." + +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 +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 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. + +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 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 _Reflections_, "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. + +A year after the publication of the _Reflections_ he himself perceived +the narrowness of that judgment. In the _Thoughts on French Affairs_ +(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 "_patrie intellectuelle_" 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 that, despite themselves, they came rather to +destroy than to fulfil. Napoleon, as Burke prophesied, reaped the +harvest of their failure. + +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 _Reflections_, "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 Sieyes' 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. 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. + +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 war than in the temper of a statesman confronted +with new ideas. Yet even the _Letters on a Regicide Peace_ (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. + + + +V + + +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 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. + +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, +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. + +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 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. + +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. 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. 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 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. + +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 _Speech on the East India Bill_, "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 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. + +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 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. + +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 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 formulae. 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 +metaphysics, to the _Reflections_, 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. + +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 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. + +That lack of insight must, of course, be given some explanation; and its +cause seems rooted in Burke's metaphysic 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 +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 _Letters on a +Regicide Peace_ 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. + +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, +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. + +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 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 _Reflections_ 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 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.[18] + +[Footnote 18: Cf. my _Authority in the Modern State_, pp. 65-9.] + + + +VI + + +No man was more deeply hostile to the early politics of the romantic +movement, to the _Contrat Social_ of Rousseau and the _Political +Justice_ of Godwin, than was 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. + +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 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. + +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 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 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. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMIC LIBERALISM + + + +I + + +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 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. + +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 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 religious grace, and poverty the proof of God's disfavor. Books +like Steele's _Religious Tradesman_ (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. + +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 +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,[19] "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 _laissez-faire_. + +[Footnote 19: Sermon of June 19, 1621. Works (ed. of 1847), p. 28.] + +Such summary, indeed, abridges the 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 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. + +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 _Discourses upon Trade_. Therein he clearly +sees that commercial barriers between Great Britain and France are +basically as senseless as would be commercial barriers between Yorkshire +and 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 _Considerations on the East India Trade_ (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 him in it, and they show that the older philosophy +was attacked on every side. + +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 _status quo_; 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 +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. + + + +II + + +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 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 _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, 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 _Wealth of Nations_ 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 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 _Wealth of Nations_ 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 _Moral Sentiments_ 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 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. + +We are less concerned here with the specific economic details of the +_Wealth of Nations_ 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, +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." + +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 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 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. + +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, "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. + +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 +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 _Moral Sentiments_, "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. + +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 +there was conflict between love of the _status quo_ and a social good +which Revolution alone could achieve, he did not, at least in the _Moral +Sentiments_, 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. + +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 _Moral Sentiments_ Adam Smith was dealing with +the unselfish side of man's nature, in the _Wealth of Nations_ 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 _Wealth of Nations_ 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. 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. + +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 _Moral +Sentiments_ 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 _Wealth of Nations_ 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 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. + + + +III + + +It would be tedious to praise the _Wealth of Nations_. It may be +doubtful 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; 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. + +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 +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." + +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 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 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. + +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. + +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 +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. + +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 _a priori_ 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 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 to defend obsolete +systems. It took almost a century after the publication of the _Wealth +of Nations_ 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. + +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 +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. + +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 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. + +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 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 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. + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY + + +This bibliography makes no pretence to completeness. It attempts only to +enumerate the more obvious sources that an interested reader would care +to examine. + + + +GENERAL + + +LESLIE STEPHEN. _History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century_. +1876. Vol. II, Chapters IX and X. + +W.E.H. LECKY. _History of England in the Eighteenth Century._ + +A.L. SMITH. _Political Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth and +Eighteenth Centuries_ in the _Cambridge Modern History_. Vol. VI, +Chapter XXIII. + +J. BONAR. _Philosophy and Political Economy_. Chapters V-IX. + +F.W. MAITLAND. _An Historical Sketch of Liberty and Equality_ in +_Collected Papers_. Vol. I. + + + +CHAPTER II + + +JOHN LOCKE. _Works_ (Eleventh Edition), 10 volumes. London, 1812. + +H.R. FOX-BOURNE. _Life of John Locke_. London, 1876. + +T.H. GREEN. _The Principles of Political Obligation_ in _Collected +Works_. Vol. II. London, 1908. + +PETER. LORD KING. _The Life and Letters of John Locke_. London, 1858. + +SIR F. POLLOCK. _Locke's Theory of the State_ in _Proc. Brit. Acad._. +Vol. I. London, 1904. + +S.P. LAMPRECHT. _The Moral and Political Philosophy of Locke_. New York, +1918. + +A.A. SEATON. _The Theory of Toleration under the Later Stuarts_. +Cambridge, 1911. + +J.N. FIGGIS. _The Divine Right of Kings_. Cambridge, 1914. + + + +CHAPTER III + + +JEREMY COLLIER. _The History of Passive Obedience_. London, 1689. + +WILLIAM SHERLOCK. _The Case of Resistance_. London, 1684. + +CHARLES LESLIE. _The Case of the Regale_ (Collected Works). Vol. III, + p. 291. + _The Rehearsal_. + _The New Association_. + _Cassandra_. + _The Finishing Stroke_. + _Obedience to Civil Government Clearly Stated_. + _The Best Answer_. + _The Best of All_. + +SAMUEL GRASCOM. _A Brief Answer_. + +E. SHELLINGFLEET. _A Vindication of their Majesties Authoritie_. + +B. SHOWER. _A Letter to a Convocation Man._ + +W. WAKE. _The Authority of Christian Princes_. _The State of the Church_ +(1703). + +FRANCIS ATTERBURY. _Rights, Powers and Privileges of an English +Convocation_ (1701). + +BENJAMIN HOADLY. _Origins of Civil Government_ (1710). + _Preservative Against Nonjurors_ (1716). + _Works_, 3 vols. London (1773). + +WILLIAM LAW. _A Defence of Church Principles_ (ed. Gore). Edinburgh, +1904. + +W. WARBURTON. _Alliance between Church and State_ (1736). + +J.H. OVERTON. _The Nonjurors._ New York, 1903. + +T. LATHEBURY. _History of Convocation._ London, 1842. + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +BERKELEY. _Essay Towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain_ (1721). + +H. ST. JOHN (Viscount Bolingbroke). _Works._ 5 vols. London, 1754. + +LORD EGMONT. _Faction detected by the Evidence of Facts_ (1742). + +DAVID HUME. _Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals_ (1752). + _Essays_. (1742-1752) ed. Green & Grose. London, 1876. + +W. SICHEL. _Life of Bolingbroke_. 2 vols. 1900-4. + +J. CHURTON COLLINS. _Bolingbroke and Voltaire in England_. + +J. HILL BURTON. _Life of Hume_. + + + +CHAPTER V + + +MONTESQUIEU. _L'Esprit des Lois_ (1748). + +J.J. ROUSSEAU. _Du Contrat Social_ (1762). See ed. by Vaughan, 1918. + +JOHN BROWN. _Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times_ +(1757). + +ADAM FERGUSON. _Essay on the History of Civil Society_ (1767). + +WILLIAM BLACKSTONE. _Commentaries_ (1765-9). + +JEREMY BENTHAM. _A Fragment on Government_ (1776). Ed. F.C. Montague, +1891. + +J. DE LOLME. _The Constitution of England_ (1775). + +ROBERT WALLACE. _Various Prospects_ (1761). + +JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. _Essay on the First Principles of Government_ (1768). + +RICHARD PRICE. _Observations on Civil Liberty_ (1776). _Additional +Observations_ (1777). + +WILLIAM OGILVIE. _The Right of Property in Land_ (1781). Ed. Macdonald, +1891. + +JOSIAH TUCKER. _Treatise on Civil Government_ (1781). + +SAMUEL JOHNSON. _Taxation No Tyranny_ (1775). + +M. BEER. _History of British Socialism_ (1919). + +JAMES BOSWELL. _Life of Samuel Johnson_ (1791). + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +EDMUND BURKE. _Collected Works_. London, 1808. + +JOHN MORLEY. _Edmund Burke_ (1867). _Life of Burke_ (1887). + +J. MACCUNN. _The Political Philosophy of Burke_ (1908). + +JUNIUS. _Letters_ (1769-72). London, 1812. + +THOMAS PAINE. _The Rights of Man_ (1791-2). + +JAMES MACKINTOSH. _Vendiciae Gallicae_ (1791). + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +CHARLES DAVENANT. _Works_. London, 1771. + +SIR DUDLEY NORTH. _A Discourse upon Trade_ (1691). + +ADAM SMITH. _Theory of Moral Sentiments_ (1759). + _Wealth of Nations_ (1776). + _Lectures on Justice and Police_. (Ed. Cannan, 1896). + +W.R. SCOTT. _Life of Francis Hutcheson_ (1900). + +JOHN RAE. _Life of Adam Smith_ (1895). + +W. BAGEHOT. _Adam Smith as a Person_ in _Coll. Works_. Vol. VII. + +F.W. HIRST. _Adam Smith_ (1904). + +W. HASBACH. _Untersuchungen ueber Adam Smith_ (1891). + +J. BONAR. _A Catalogue of Adam Smith's Library_ (1894). + +T. CLIFFE LESLIE. _Adam Smith_ in _Essays in Moral and Political +Philosophy_ (1879). + +E. TROELTSCH. _Die Sociallehren der Christlichen Kirchen_ (1912). + + + + +INDEX + +Addison, 69 +Andrewes, 83 +Ashley, 33-4 +Atterbury, 102 +Austin, 62 + +Bagehot, 9, 249 +Barbeyrac, 68 +Barrow, 84 +Bellarmine, 83, 121 +Bentham, 23, 62, 72, 151, 157, 175, 194 +Berkeley, 10, 129 +Blackstone, 163-4, 174f +Bolingbroke, 69, 131f +Bonald, 277 +Bonar, 300 +Bonwicke, 82 +Boswell, 209 +Bray, 307, 315 +Brown (J.), 168 +Brown (R.), 52 +Burke, 7, 8, 16, 30, 157, 159, 166, 221f, 286 +Burnet, 80, 87, 93 +Busher, 52 + +Cartwright, 97 +Chatham, 132, 167, 188, 262 +Chillingworth, 52 +Chubb, 128 +Coleridge, 277 +Collier, 84n +Cowper, 20 +Crabbe, 20 + +Dalrymple, 8 +Darwin, 67 +Davenant, 283, 287 +Defoe, 8, 128, 132 +Dicey, 175, 179 +Disraeli, 132 +Divine Right, 7, 30 +Dodwell, 82 +Dupont de Nemours, 292 + +Egmont, 142 +Eldon, 159 + +Ferguson, 172-4 +Fielding, 160 +Filmer, 7, 38 + +Galsworthy, 171-2 +George III, 13, 15, 158, 188, 213f +Godwin, 10, 163, 222, 276 +Goldsmith, 19, 223 +Goodman, 57 +Grascom, 86 +Gray, 160 +Green (T.H.), 61, 279 + +Haldane, 126 +Hales, 52 +Halifax, 8, 27 +Hall, 17, 307 +Hamilton (J.L. & B.), 19 +Harrington, 147 +Hegel, 249, 277, 212-3 +Hickes, 83 +Hoadly, 9, 22, 69, 107f +Hobbes, 8, 16, 30, 40f, 72, 91, 278, 284 +Hodgskin, 17, 307 +Holmes (O.W.), 63n, 269 +Holt, 14, +Hooker, 44 +Hotman, 57, 68 +Hume, 8, 11, 71, 92, 143f, 278, 284, 297 +Hutcheson, 11, 153, 155, 291, 297 + +Independents, 40 + +Jackson, 84 +James II, 24f, 35 +Johnson (Dr.), 18, 210f, 223, 230 +Junius, 21, 219 + +Keble, 82 +Kerr, 82 +Knox, 57, 83, 97 + +Lassalle, 313 +Laud, 285 +Law, 22, 108f +Leslie, 80, 85, 88, 90, 97, 104, 132 +Locke, 7, 11, 21, 29-76, 79, 197, 207, 273, 287 +de Lolme, 10, 183f + +Mackintosh, 269 +Madison, 63 +Maine, 66, 249 +Maistre, 91, 252, 273 +Malthus, 305 +Mandeville, 129, 284 +Mariana, 57 +Martin, 69 +Marx, 312, 315 +Melville, 121 +Mill, 157 +Milton, 52 +Molyneux, 68 +Montesquieu, 12, 63, 160f, 173, 183 +Morley, 132, 223 + +Newton, 37 +Newman, 81, 122, 125 +North, 287 + +Ogilvie, 199f +Owen, 17, 307 +Oxford Movement, 81 + +Paine, 202, 269 +Paley, 157 +Pattison, 10 +Penn, 58 +Place, 306 +Pope, 69, 128, 132 +Price, 196f +Priestley, 72, 190f +Proast, 64 +Prynne, 8, 55 +Pufendorf, 68 +Pulteney, 217 + +Quesnay, 288, 292 + +Renan, 249 +Ricardo, 305 +Richardson, 160 +Richardson (S.), 52 +Rousseau, 8, 74, 162f, 188, 197, 276 +Royer-Collard, 226 +Ruskin, 293, 301 + +Sanderson, 84 +Savigny, 249, 277 +Seeley, 312 +Selden, 9 +Senior, 304 +Separation of Powers, 63f +Shaftesbury, 11, 128, 155 +Sherlock (T.), 108 +Sherlock (W.), 87 +Shower, 99 +Sidney, 7, 57 +Smith (Adam), 9, 16, 152, 195, 258, 281f +Smith (A.L.), 140 +Snape, 108 +Social Contract, 57 +Spelman, 9 +Spence, 202 +Stammler, 60 +Steele, 284 +Stephen (F.), 65 +Stephen (L.), 108, 223 +Stillingfleet, 37, 87, 93 +Suarez, 57 + +Taylor, 52, 57 +Temple, 283 +Thompson, 307, 215 +Tindal, 123 +Tocqueville, 254 +Toleration, 52, 64 +Tucker, 71, 206f, 288 +Turgot, 288, 292 + +Voltaire, 12, 132, 160 + +Wake, 80, 100f +Wallace, 188 +Walpole, 13, 21, 128-30 +Warburton, 69, 118f, 192 +Wilberforce, 290 +Wilkes, 167, 188, 220 +William III, 25f +Williams (Roger), 52 +Woolston, 128 +Wordsworth, 277 + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Political Thought in England from +Locke to Bentham, by Harold J. Laski + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND *** + +***** This file should be named 14735.txt or 14735.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/7/3/14735/ + +Produced by David King and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. |