Observe first, then, that in the earUer stages of civilization, before the process of adaptation has yet produced much efi'ect, the desire for political equahty does not exist. There were no agitations for representative government amongst the Egyptians, or the Persians, or the Assyrians; with them all disputes were as to who should be tyrant. By the Hindoos a similar state of things is exhibited to the present hour. The Eussians, too, are still under this phase; and, in their utter carelessness of civil Uberty, shun any one who preaches justice and condemns tyranny, as a perverse malcontent. The like mental condition was sho\vn during the earUer stages of our own progress. In the middle ages fealty to a feudal lord was accounted a duty, and the assertion of personal freedom a crime. Eights of man were not then dreamed of. Eevolutions were nothing but dynastic quarrels; not what they have been in later times • — attempts to make government more popular. And if, after glancing at the changes that have taken place between the far past and the present, we reflect upon the character of modern ideas and agitations, on declarations of rights, liberty of the press, slave emancipation, removal of religious disabilities, Eeform Bills, Chartism, &c., and consider how through all of them there runs a kindred spirit, and how this spuit is manifesting itself with constantly-increasing intensity and universality, we shall see that these facts imply some moral change; and exphcable as they are by the growth of this compound faculty responding to the law of equal freedom, it is reasonable to consider them as showing the mode in which such faculty seeks to place social arrangements in harmony with that -law; or, in other words, as illustrating the efforts of the moral sense to realize the democratic state.
If a democracy is produced by this agency, so also is it rendered practicable by it. The popular fonn of government as contrasted with the monarchical, is professedly one ■which places less restraint upon the individual. In speaking of it we use such terms as free institutions, civil liberty, self-government, all implying this. But the diminution of external restraint can take place only at the same rate as the increase of internal restraint. Conduct has to he ruled either from without or from within. If the rule from within is not efficient, there must exist a supplementary rule from without. If, on the other hand, all men are properly ruled from within, government becomes needless, and all men are perfectly free. Now the chief faculty of self-rule heingthe moral sense (Chap. V.), the degree of freedom in their institutions which any given people can hear, will be proportionate to the diffiision of this moral sense amongst them. And only when its influence greatly predominates can so large an instalment of freedom as a democracy become possible.
Lastly, the supremacy of tins same faculty affords the only guarantee for the stabihty of a democracy. On the part of the people it gives rise to what we call a jealousy of their liberties— a watchful determination to resist anything like encroachment upon their rights: whilst it generates amongst those in power such a respect for these rights as checks any desire they may have to aggress. Conversely, let the ruled be deficient in the instinct of freedom, and they will be indifferent to the gradual usurpation of their privileges so long as it entails no immediate inconvenience upon them; and the rulers in such case, being deficient in sympathetic regard for these privileges, will be, to a like extent, unscrupulous in usurping. Let us observe, in detail, the different modes in which men thus contradistinguished comport themselves under a representative form of government. Amongst a people not yet fitted for such a form, citizens, lacking the impulse to claim equal power with each other, become careless in the exercise of their franchise, doubt whether it is of any use to them, and even pride themselves on not interfering in pub- E •<!42 THE CONSTITQTIOX OF THK STATE.
lie affiiirs^. Provided tlieir liberties are but indirectly affected, they will watch the passing of the most insidious measures with vacant unconcern. It is only barefaced aggressions that they can perceive to be aggi'essions at all. Placing as they do but little value upon their privileges, they are readily bribed. When tlu-eatened, instead of assuming that altitude of dogged resistance which the instinct of freedom dictates, they ti-uckle. If tricked out of a right of citizenship, they are quite indifferent about getting it again; and indeed when the exercise of it conflicts with any immediate interest are glad to give it up, — will even petition, as in times past did many of the corporate towns, both in England and Spain, that they may be excused from electing representatives. Meanwhile, in accordance with that law of social homogeneity lately dwelt upon, those in authority are in a like ratio ready to encroach. They intimidate, they bribe, they plot, and by degrees estabhsh a comparatively coercive government. On the other hand, amongst a people sufficiently endowed with the faculty responding to the law of equal freedom, no such retrograde process is possible. The man of genuinely democratic feeUng loves liberty as a miser loves gold, for its own sake and quite irrespective of its advantages (p. 9o). What he thus highly values he sleeplessly watches; he quickly detects any attempt at diminution of it; and he opposes aggression the moment it commences. Should any assume undue prerogatives, he straightway steps up to them, and demands their authority for so doing. Transactions that seem in the remotest degree underhand awaken his suspicions, which are not be laid so long as anything remains unexplained. He scents out an abuse with instinctive sagacity, and having found one, never rests until it is abolished. If in any proposed arrangement there be a latent danger to the liberties of himself and others— any germ of irresponsible power, he instantly discovers it and refuses his consent. He is alarmed " Instance the behaviour of the Prasaian electors since the late revolution.
THE CONSTITUTION OF THK STATE. 243 by sucli a proposal as the disfranchisement of a constituency by the legislature; for it at once occurs to him that the measure thus levelled against one may be levelled against many. To call that responsible government under which a cabinet minister can entangle the nation in a quarrel about some paltry territory before they know anything of it, he sees to be absurd. It needs no chain of reasoning to show him that the assumption, by a delegated assembly, of the power to lengthen its own existence from three years to seven, is an infraction of the representative principle; he feels that it is so; and no plausible professions of patriotism, no boasting of honourable intentions, can check his opposition to the setting up of so dangerous a precedent. Still more excited is he when applied to for grants of pubhc money, with the understanding that on a future occasion he shall be told how they have been spent. Fhmsy excuses about " exigencies of the state," and the like, cannot entrap him into so glaring an act of self-stultification. He listens to them frowningly, and maintaining as he does that the protection of men's rights is the chief, or rather the sole, " exigency of the state," sternly negatives the request. Thus is he ever on the watch to extirpate incipient oppression; to nip abuses in the bud; or, if such an expression is allowable, to stop encroachment before it begins. And when a community consists of men animated bythe spirit thus exemplified, the continuance of liberal institutions is certain.
Political freedom, therefore, is, as we say, an external result of an internal sentiment — is alike, in origin, practicability, and permanence, dependent on the moral sense; and it is only when this is supreme in its influence that so liigh a form of social organization as a democracy can be maintained.
And thus we arrive at the true answer to that question at present so widely agitated — Is a purely popular form of government practicable now? For, as the sentiment by which a State of perfect political liberty is generated, is also the one by which it is upheld, there immediately suggests itself the corollary that, when the sentiment is strong enough to generate it, it is strong enough to uphold it. Whenever, therefore, a people calmly arrives at the conclusion that democratic institutions are right; whenever they dispassionately determine that they shall be adopted; or, in other words, whenever the circumstances show that the setting up of such institutions is not an accident, but results from the ascendancy^ of the aforesaid sentiment; then, and then alone, are such institutions permanently possible.
In the opinion, now happily so prevalent, that the pacific mode of working out political changes is the only efficient one, we have a collateral expression of this truth. Men see that freedom achieved by the sword is uniformly lost again; but that it is lasting when gained by peaceful agitation. Hence they very properly infer the propriety of carrying reforms solely by means which the moral law recognises — means wliich do not involve violations of it. Eight as this conclusion may be, however, it is not philosopliicaUy understood. Men do not see why the thing is so. There is no truth in the usual supposition that the loss of liberties obtained by violence is a kind of retribution. It is not that bloodshed vitiates the free institutions it may help to set up; nor is it that when peacefully established such institutions are preserved by virtue of their being so estabUshed; but it is that the manner in wliich the change is wrought itidicates the national character, and proves it to be respectively unfit or fit for the new social form. A brief examination of tlie moral conditions impUed by these different kinds of revolution -will show this.
When an old regime is overthrown by force, no guarantee is given that the new one put in its place will satisfy the wants of the age. The occurrence is simply a demonstration that the miseries inflicted under this old regime were no longer bearable. To j-epeat the saying of Sully, quoted by Burke, and which is perfectly true when applied to convulsions of this nature—" It is never from the desire to attack that the people rise, but from impatience under suffering." Now anger against an agent inflicting pain is a passion, exhibited by brutes as well as by men; and a social revolution wrought out by such a motive power is not likely to leave behind it a state of things specially adapted to the people's circumstances. Tliat sudden display of ill-temper with which a man dashes on the ground something that has given him much provocation, and yet the loss of which he wiU subsequently regret, serves in some measure to illustrate the conduct of a people thus excited. They are irritated, and justly so; the hold which authority has had over them is weakened; that sentiment of power-worship — that loyalty, as we term it — which was but the index of a certain adaptation between their characters and the rule they had lived under, is for the time being in abeyance — is silenced, drowned in the rising tide of their wrath; and when, after they have destroyed the old framework of things, another becomes needful, it is very improbable that the one set up during this temporary state of excitement will be one really in harmony with their natural characters. Nay, indeed, it is sure to be out of harmony with their natural characters; for consider, the institutions they set up wiU bear the impress of the feeling then prevalent — a feeling widely different from that previously exhibited, and also from that which will come uppermost again by-and-by. Stimulated by transpiring events, the germs of those sentiments destined some day to establish genuine political freedom, assume a precocious activity — seem much stronger and more general than they really are; whilst, on the contrary, those sentiments which upheld the preceding state of things are almost wholly dormant. The improvised form of government exactly answers to this exceptional condition of mind, and might work could that condition be maintained; but as fast as the popular feeling ebbs back into its ordinary channels, so fast does the incongruity between the new arrangements and the old character make itself felt; and so fast is the retrogression.
On viewing the facts, through the foregoing theory of moralsense agency, it becomes still more manifest that free institutions obtained by violence are of necessity premature. For what are the requisite antecedents to one of these social convulsions? They are the tonnents of a wide-spread and deepsea;ted injustice. And of what character is this injustice the exponent? Evidently a character deficient in those sentiments which deter men from aggression — a chai-acter in which the faculties of the social man are as yet imperfectly developed — a character, that is, by which the law of equal freedom is not duly responded to. Hence the unscrupulous trespasses on the one pai-t, and the culpable submission on the othei-, which, by their accumulated results, have induced so terrible a crisis. Well: though by a revolution the people may re-make their government, they cannot re-make themselves. Slightly changed, perhaps, they mav be in the passing through a period of such fiery excitement; but, in the main, they are still the men they were. The old process will consequently repeat itself The storm of passion having died away, there will again begin these encroachments and tliis indifference; and they wiU continue until, by a gradual imposition of fresh bonds, the nation has been reduced, not, indeed, to a condition as bad as before, but to a condition not greatly in advance of it.
Of political ameUorations pacifically wrought out, exactly the opposite is predicable. These appertain to a higher phase of civilization. In the first place they presuppose tlie popular suflFeriug to be of a comparatively mild type — no longer unbearable, maddening; and, other tilings equal, tliis indicates a diminished amount of injustice; and a diminished amount of injustice imphes a more prevalent and e^iergetic moral sense. Thus the verj^ antecedents of a peaceful agitation serve in some measure to ensure the success of the fr-ee institutions obtained by it. But it is in the process by which one of these bloodless revolutions is brought about that the existence of the needful popular character is most clearly evinced. For in what consists the vitality of such a movement? What is the secret power that originates it; to which its growth is due; and by the help of which it triumphs? Manifestly this feehng that responds to the law of equal freedom. These pertinacious demands for pohtical equality are simply the signs of its increasing activity. Not hunger, nor the anxiety to escape' from torture, nor the desire for vengeance, is now the transforming force, but a calm unswerving determination to get human hberties recognised. The carrying out one of these battles of opinion to a successful issue through long delays and discouragements, through ridicule and misrepresentation, impUes a perennial source of energy quite different from mere insurrectionary rage. In place of a passing gust of anger, a persistent and ever-strengthening sentiment is here the acting agent. Agitation is its gymnasium. Men in whom it predominates cultivate it in the rest. They address it in speeches; they wiite articles to it; they convene meetings for its manifestation. It is aroused by denunciations of injustice; it is appealed to in the name of conscience; it is conjured by all that is fair and upright and equitable. Pictures of the slave and the tyrant are exhibited to excite its abhorrence; a state of pure fr'cedom is described to it as the one to be loved and hoped for; and it is made sensible of the sacredness of human rights. After men's minds have been for many years thus exercised and stimulated, a sufficiently intense manifestation of feeling is produced, and then comes the reform. But this feeling, mark, proceeds from that same combination of faculties by which, as we have seen, free institutions are upheld and made practicable. One of these agitations, therefore, is a kind of apprenticeship to the hberties obtained by it. The power to get freedom becomes the measure of the power to use it. The law of social forms is that they shall be expressive of national character; they come into existence bearing its impress; and they live only so long as it supphes them with vitahty. Now a general dissatisfaction with old arrangements is a sign that the national character requires better ones; and for the people in pursuit of these better ones to have organised associations, maintained lecturers, and for session after session to have wearied the legislature with petitions — to have continued this, too, until the accumulated force of opinion has become irresistible, is to have given conclusive proof that the change brought about is really in haimony with the wants of the age. The new institutions do not now express an exceptional state of the popular mind, but express its habitual state, and hence are certain to be fitted to it.
Here then is encouragement for timid reformers. Men of true insight need none of these detailed considerations to steady their convictions by. The mathematician does not call for a pair of compasses to test a proved theorem with; nor does the man of healthy faith wait for more evidence after he hears what the moral law says. It is enough for him that a thing is right. He will never behave that the carrying out of what is right by right means, can be injurious. And this is the only spirit worthy to be named religious. But as, unhappily, the many are not endowed with so trusting a belief, it is requisite to back the dictates of equity with supplementary arguments. The moral infidehty of the expediency school requires meeting. And it is to those infected by it that the above considerations are commended, as showing that they need not fear to exhibit whatever sympathy with democratic principles they possess — need not fear to throw thek energies at once into the popular cause, for that when equitable institutions are equitably obtained, they must necessarily prosper.
Thus the claim deducible from the law of equal freedom — the claim possessed by each citizen to hke pohtical power with the rest — is not counterbalanced by any of those prudential considerations commonly urged against it. We find that so long as selfishness makes government needful at aU, it must make every government corrupt, save one in which aU men are represented. The assertion that conceding universal suffrage would be creating a comparatively immoral constituency, proves to be quite unwarrantable; seeing that all classes are immoral, and, ■when numbers and circumstances are taken into account, apparently in an equal degree. A glance at the evidence shows that popular ignorance also is a two-edged objection; for, in the knowledge which may be supposed needful for the right use of votes, the mass of those inside the pale of the constitution are about as deficient as those outside of it. The argument that purely representative institutions have been tried and have failed, is not only based upon inappUcable instances, but would prove nothing if substantiated. Lastly, in this, as in other cases, it turns out that the possibihty of fulfilling the injunctions of the moral law is proportionate to the advance men have made towards the moral state; pohtical arrangements inevitably adjusting themselves to the popular character. So that whilst we may say to the ardent democrats — " Be sure that a democracy will be attained whenever the people are good enough for one" — we may on the other hand say to those of little faith — -"Fear not that a democracy, when peacefully attained, can be attained too soon."
CHAPTEE XXI.
CHAPTEE XXI.
As already said (pp. 207 and 208), moralitj' stands towards government only in the nature of a limitation— behaves negatively with regard to it, not positively — replies to all inquiries by silently iudicatiag the conditions of existence, constitution, and conduct, under wliich alone it may be ethically tolerated. And thus, ignoring government altogether, the moral law can give us no direct information as to what a government ought to do — can merely say what it ought not to do. That we are left with no precise knowledge beyond this, may indeed be infeiTed from a preceding chapter. For if, as was shown, every man has a right to secede from the state, and if, as a consequence, the state must be regarded as a body of men voluntaiily associated, there remains nothing to distinguish it in the abstract from any other incorporated society — nothing to determine its specific function; and we may conceive its members assigning to it any function that does not involve a breach of the moral law.
Immediate guidance in this matter being thus impossible, we must follow such indirect ways of arriving at the truth as are open to us. The question is no longer one of pure ethics, and is therefore incapable of solution by any exact methods: approximative ones only are available. Fortunately there are several of these; and converging as they do to the same conclusion, that conclusion assumes something like the character of certainty. Let us now successively employ them.
Good, and perfect, and complete, are words applicable to whatever is thoroughh^ fitted to its purpose; and by the word moral we signify the same property in a man. A thing which entirely answers its end cannot be improved; and a man whose nature leads him to a spontaneous fulfilment of the Divine will cannot be conceived better. To be quite self-sufficing — to have powers exactly commensurate with what ought to be done, is to be organically moral. Given the ordained object — happiness; given the conditions under which this happiness is to be compassed; and perfection consists in the possession of faculties exactly adapted to these conditions: whilst the moral law is simply a statement of that Une of conduct by which the conditions are satisfied. Hence to the rightly-constituted man aU external help is needless — detrimental even. Just as the healthy body wants no crutch, tonic, or stimulus, but has within itself the means of doing everything required of it, so the normally-developed character asks no artificial aids; and indeed repudiates them as pre-occupying the sphere for the exercise of faculties which the hypothesis supposes it to have.
When, on the other hand, man's constitution and the conditions of his existence are not in harmony there arise external agencies to supply the place of deficient internal faculties. And these temporary substitutes being supplementary to the faculties, and assisting the imperfect man as they do to fulfil the law of his being — the moral law, as we call it — obtain a certain reflex authority from that law, varying with the degree in which they subserve its requirements. Whatever may be its special function, it is clear that govei'nment is one of these artificial aids; and the most important of them.
Or the case may perhaps be more clearly stated thus: — If government has any duty at all, that duty must be to perfonn a service of some kind — to confer a benefit. But every possible benefit or service which can be rendered to a man is comprehended under the general expression of assisting him to fulfil the law of his being. Whether you feed the hungrj', or cure the diseased, or defend the weak, or curb the vicious, you do but enable or constrain them to conform to the conditions of complete happiness more nearly than they would otherwise do. And causing conformity to the conditions of complete happiness is causing conformity to the moral law. If, therefore, all benefits that can be conferred on men are aids to the fulfilment of the moral law, the benefits to be conferred by government must be of this nature.
So much being conceded, let us next inquire how the moral law may be most essentially subserved. Practicability manifestly underhes performance. That which makes an act feasible must take precedence of the act itself Before the injunction — Do this, there necessarily comes the postulate — It can be done. Before establishing a code for the right exercise of faculties, there must be established the condition which makes the exercise of faculties possible. Now, this condition which makes the exercise of faculties possible is — power to pursue the objects on which they are to be exercised — the objects of desire; and tliis is what we otherwise call Uberty of action — fireedom. But that which makes the exercise of faculties possible, is that which makes the fulfilment of the moral law possible. And fi-eedom being thus the grand pre-requisite to the fulfilment of the moral law, it follows that if a man is to be helped in fulfilhng the moral law, the first thing to be done is to secure to him this all-essential freedom. This aid must come before any other aid — is, in fact, that which renders any other aid practicable; for no faculty to which liberty of action is denied can be assisted in the performance of its function until Uberty of action has been restored. Of all institutions, therefore, which the imperfect man sets up as supplementary to his nature, the chief one must have for its office to guarantee his freedom. But the freedom that can be guaranteed to each is bounded by the like freedom to be guaranteed to all others. This is necessitated both by the moral law and by the simultaneous claims made upon the institution itself by its chents. Hence we must infer that it is the function of this chief institution which we call a government, to uphold the law of equal freedom.
To determine the duty of the state by reverting to a supposed understanding entered into by the founders of society — a social contract — we have already seen to be impracticable (p. 200). Men did not deliberately estabhsh pohtical arrangements, but grew into them unconsciously — probably had no conception of an associated condition until they found themselves in it. Moreover, were the hypothesis of an original agreement reasonable, it could not help us; for it would be folly to assume that the duties imposed by a horde of savages on their cliief, or council of chiefs, must necessarily be the duties of governments throughout all time. Nevertheless, if, instead of speculating as to what might have happened during the infancy of civilization, we consider what mws^ have happened, something may be learnt. On turning to page 203, the reader will find it argued at length that for men to have remained in the associated state imphes, that on the whole they found it preferable to the isolated one;' which means that they obtained a greater sum total of gratification under it; which means that it afforded them fuller exercise for their faculties; wliich means that it offered a safer guarantee for such exercise — more security for their claims to life and property; that is, for their rights. But if men could have continued in the associated state only because on the average it insured their rights better than the previous one, then the insurance of their rights becomes the special duty which society in its corporate capacity has to perform towards individuals. That function by which a thing begins to exist we may safely consider its all-essential function. Now, whilst those majiy aids to gratification which civilization has brought us were yet undeveloped, society must have existed only because it protected its members in the pursuit of those things which afford satisfaction to the faculties. But to protect men in the