government is that Marlborough did not convert himself into a Cæsar, and the security of a State is to be found in a delicate poising of the various springs and balances. 'Ponderibus librata suis' is the motto to his book; the end of legislators should be to discover perpetual motion in politics; a clock which will run on indefinitely without requiring to be wound up is his ideal of a constitution; and the ideal, as he thought, was realised in the British Constitution. 86. This, as we have seen, is the logical result of the purely empirical method. Government regarded as a piece of machinery, instead of a natural growth, is naturally valued in proportion to its stability, instead of in proportion to its capacity for favouring progress. The weights are represented by the different powers in the system. The ruler, whether king or consul, is always trying to increase the strength of the executive, and the people to diminish it. The problem is to equalise the two forces. Rousseau's scheme of identifying the ruler with the people is rejected as absurd. 'Nothing is more chimerical than a state either of total equality or of total liberty amongst mankind.'" Power, wealth, and position tend to concentrate themselves; but a skilful legislator may reduce the conflict to a perpetual drawn battle, and a perfect constitutional government will resemble the celebrated situation in Sheridan's 'Critic' where the three duellists each threaten each other with drawn swords, and each is unable to strike. The ideal state is a permanent deadlock. 87. The British Constitution, as matters then stood, might be taken to represent this state of things; and some of Delolme's ingenious theories remind us very forcibly of later doctrinaires. Historically speaking, he holds that our liberty was due to the early concentration of the central power, which produced a corresponding concentration of the popular power. The seed of liberty, stamped deeply into the soil, received a richer nourishment, and finally rose with a stronger growth. The Commons, protected by their various privileges, the liberty of the press, the independence of the judges, the power of the purse and the power of impeachment, are able to make head successfully against the concentrated power of the Crown. They enjoy that 'freedom of the con 1 Delolme, pp. 214, 409. 2 Ib. p. 489. 3 Ib. p. 21. stitution which is no more than an equilibrium between the ruling powers of the state.'' Meanwhile the concentrated royal power is a precise 'counterpoise'' to the popular power. But why does not one power increase at the expense of the other?-a question which implies, by the way, a curious non-recognition of the most obvious facts. Delolme answers by explaining that 'masterpiece '3 of the British Constitution-the identification of the interests of the legislators with the people. The representatives are a select class, not easily misled by demagogues like the ruling bodies of the old republics, whilst their exclusion from any share in the executive power prevents them from setting up for themselves, and keeps them in strict dependence on their constituents. The king cannot originate laws, nor is his name (a very important point) even mentioned in the deliberations of members. Thus the popular power is unassailable. But how can the king, without a standing army, maintain his compensating power sufficiently to enforce the laws? 5 How is this side of the balance to be maintained? The great secret is the division of the legislature into two bodies, which, as is shown by various cases, brings into play the natural jealousy of the two Houses, and thus induces each to restrain any assaults made by its rival on the power of the Crown. The legislature is thus a complex apparatus—a kind of compensating balance or fly-wheel, in which a too violent motion of one part of the machinery spontaneously sets up a counteracting force in another. King and people are pulling at the two ends of a lever, so contrived that, as soon as one is gaining an advantage, the fulcrum shifts and brings it back to the other. And thus, not to follow into details a speculation of which the general nature is only too familiar, Delolme satisfies himself that all the political passions of mankind' find a natural vent in our constitutional forms; and is even able, like Montesquieu, to deduce the system by reasoning from first principles. The English government, indeed, cannot be immortal more than any other piece of human machinery; and, as Montesquieu declared that the constitution would perish when the legislature was more corrupted than 1 Delolme, p. 195. 2 Ib. p. 202. Ib. p. 259. ♦ Ib. p. 269. Ib. p. 391. • Ib. p. 399. the executive power, so Delolme declared that a fatal symptom would be the power of the Crown to raise supplies without Parliament, or the concession to Parliament of a share in the executive authority. Either event would show that the balance was fatally disturbed. 88. Delolme, like other observers from without, was naturally apt to assume that the forms of the constitution accurately corresponded to its real spirit. He was unable to detect the now obvious fact of the gradual encroachment of the legislature upon the executive authority, and the tendency, already sufficiently marked, of making the ministers of the Crown a committee of the House of Commons. Had he been inore behind the veil, he might have been led to recognise the importance of the great social forces which his theories implicitly ignore. Yet it would be unjust to dismiss him without acknowledging that he shows great ingenuity, and that the germ of some useful thoughts may be detected in his crude appeal to experience. 89. It is needless to dwell at length upon other writers who took the temporary stagnation of the English system for a proof of its supreme excellence. One writer of considerable contemporary reputation was Adam Ferguson, who professed to be the follower, and was considered by his friends to be the rival, of Montesquieu. Ferguson himself apologises for dealing with the subject at all after so great a master, and consoles himself with the rather doubtful reflection that, being more on the level of ordinary men,' his teaching will be 'more to the comprehension of ordinary faculties.' 3 Drummond, Archbishop of York—a prelate whose claims to critical authority have long passed into utter oblivion--thought that Ferguson had surpassed his master. Hume, an intimate friend of Ferguson, and always generous in his judgments of friends, was unable to share in this eulogy. He recommended the suppression of the book, and even after its success, confessed that his opinion remained unaltered. He softened the blame indeed by reporting many favourable judgments, and telling Ferguson that Helvetius and Saurin had recommended the suppression of the 'Esprit des Lois.' Hume, in fact, was an Delolme, p. 498. 1 'Esprit des Lois,' book xi. cap. 6. excellent judge of the real merits of such a book, and, as in the case of his own Essays, a very poor judge of the popular taste. Ferguson's book has the superficial merits which were calculated for the ordinary mind. He possessed the secret of that easy Gallicised style, which was more or less common to the whole Scotch school, including Hume, Robertson, and Adam Smith. He makes elegant and plausible remarks, and the hasty reader does not perceive that the case is gained by the evasion, instead of the solution, of difficulties. Here and there we come across an argument or an illustration which seems to indicate greater acuteness. One sentence may be a sufficient, as it is a favourable, specimen of his style. 'The bosom,' he says, 'kindles in company, while the point of interest in view has nothing to inflame; and a matter frivolous in itself becomes important, when it serves to bring to light the intentions and character of men. The foreigner who believed that Othello on the stage was enraged for the loss of his handkerchief was not more mistaken than the reasoner who imputes any of the more vehement passions of men to the impressions of mere profit and loss.' Ferguson was in politics what Blair was in theology—a facile and dexterous declaimer, whose rhetoric glides over the surface of things without biting into their substance. He expounds well till he comes to the real difficulty, and then placidly evades the dilemma. 90. From Montesquieu he has learnt that history and observation are to be consulted instead of abstract theory. The 'state of nature' is everywhere, in England as in the Straits of Magellan ; 2 for all men's actions are the results of their nature, and investigation alone can tell us what that nature is. All human institutions have been developed out of the rude devices of savage life; and he makes some good remarks upon what modern observers would call the differentiation of the social organs, or what he calls 'the separation of arts and professions.' 3 But he soon slides into Montesquieu's smart theory about the principles embodied in the forms of government, and his fluent rhetoric does not give it the substance which it wanted in the more epigrammatic statements of his master. Thus, though he goes for descrip 2 Ib. p. 13. 1 Ferguson, p. 53. Ib. part iv. secs. i. and iii. tions of primitive men to Tacitus's Germany,' and to the accounts of travellers in North America, his state of nature is pretty much that of Rousseau. The Spartan and the Indian appear in their old characters. Brutus and Cato wear the accustomed drapery of eighteenth-century moralists. The fundamental doctrines of the revolutionists appear in a decorous disguise. He who has forgotten that men were originally equal,' he declares, ' easily degenerates into a slave.'' Luxury is denounced, though his vacillation between the two schools lands him in a very hopeless conclusion. Men have denounced luxury in all ages; where, then, is it to stop? 'It should stop where it is,' he replies. Considered as implying a preference for 'objects of vanity,' it is 'ruinous to the human race;' but considered as a disposition to use modern improvements, no definite standard can be fixed. This is the embodiment in politics of the facile optimism of the comfortable philosophers of the day. 2 91. I may add a few words of another writer, whom we shall meet again-Josiah Tucker, the Dean of Gloucester. He was one of those sturdy cross-grained thinkers, who are shrewd enough to see certain truths very clearly, but too short-sighted to grasp their general relations. Even when in advance of the time, their soundest doctrines appear to their contemporaries like fanciful crotchets. Tucker was full of pugnacity, capable of holding his own against all his adversaries, and willing to have adversaries on every side. He managed to take up a position in regard to the American War which had a certain foundation of sound sense, and which was yet peculiar to himself. He was equally hostile to Johnson and to Burke, to Lord North, to Chatham, and to Franklin. On the one hand, he abused the Americans as cheats and liars, and denied their claims to self-government as peremptorily as Johnson; but, instead of inferring that they ought to be conquered, he concluded that they ought to be turned adrift as a punishment. When emigration stopped and they broke up into fragmentary states-the inevitable consequence of such a policy-they would soon beg for readmission. Hitherto they had been a millstone round our necks, and the most preposterous of all policies, for a 'shopkeeping nation,' 3 was the attempt to bully its customers into 1 Ferguson, p. 147. Tucker's Tracts, ii. 132. 2 Ib. p. 414. |