suffered, by any private man or single community, was local and temporary; it neither spread far nor lasted long.'' 82. It would be unwise to depreciate, perhaps it would be difficult to exaggerate, the value of this steady unreasoning prejudice as a practical force in politics. Its weakness in one sense is indeed obvious. When maintained by an equally vigorous prejudice on the other side, the only appeal left was to force. The Americans replied by bullets when it was useless to invoke the rights of man. And, moreover, such theories could not permanently hold out against assaults of a speculative kind. Rousseau was not treated on Johnson's plan; and his books stirred emotions which will not be summarily repressed by simple denial. A doctrine which might be alleged on behalf of other governments, bad, good, or indifferent, was really, like the extreme of divine right which was its ancestor, an argument for none. There is, indeed, more truth than politicians willingly admit in the theory of the impotence of governments for good or ill. But it was not a truth which would impress men suffering under actual oppression, and still less could it impart the right impulse to governments decaying from within. Philosophers might console themselves with the thought; but the multitude would reject it as irrelevant; and the rulers be demoralised so far as they came to believe in it. VIII. THE CONSTITUTIONALISTS. 83. I turn, therefore, to the constitutional theorists, who endeavoured to discover some sort of scientific basis for government. In the preface to Junius's Letters the anonymous author quotes with admiration a passage from a book, then just published, which gives the fullest exposition of the Whig theory. Jean Louis Delolme is not a writer of great original power; his creed has that taint of unreality which is common to all the doctrinaires, and seems to leave out of account precisely the great forces which mould all human affairs. Yet he puts into symmetrical shape a set of propositions which long passed current with commonplace thinkers. He expounds the gospel-such as it is-of the 'Johnson's Works, viii. 85, 'The False Alarm.' P VOL. II. fossilised constitutionalists. Though very inferior in acuteness and originality to such writers as Montesquieu and Tocqueville, he may be ranked for many purposes in the same class. Like them, he was impressed by the complex machinery of the British Constitution, and tried to frame a comprehensive theory of its nature. His admiration did not meet with the reward to which, in his opinion, it entitled him. He fancied that a book, intended to meet the revolutionary sentiments of the day, should have received some recognition from the rulers whose system he glorified. If, he says, he had told them that he was preparing to boil his teakettle with the English edition, he knows not what they would have replied; but he obviously thinks that the reply would have been Boil it.' He was forced to publish by subscription, and the result was not encouraging. One noble lord did not subscribe, but graciously recommended the book to a publisher, and the consequence was that Delolme had to buy off two intending translators for ten pounds. Another noble lord did not pay until Delolme, hearing that he had received a pension of 4,000l. a year, applied, after delicately waiting till the first quarter's payment must have been received, and a week afterwards received a couple of halfcrowns. The poor man, thus discouraged, seems to have fallen into distress, and led an anonymous existence in London for many years, though he ultimately died in Switzerland in 1807. These anecdotes are but too significant of the painful contrast between the ideal and the real; between the wisdom embodied in our matchless constitution and the manners of the constitutional rulers. 84. Delolme came to England at the time of the Wilkes troubles, and published his work contemporaneously with the Letters of Junius. To most Englishmen of the time the working of our constitutional machinery under a severe strain did not seem to justify very rose-coloured views. Delolme, however, was struck, like other foreign observers, by the amount of liberty enjoyed, and especially by the discovery that in England all things not forbidden are permitted, whereas, on the Continent, all things not permitted are forbidden.2 His book records his explanation of the phenomenon. It 1 Delolme, pp. iii., iv. 2 Ib. p. 453, note. consists of a brief historical sketch of the development of the constitution, followed by a discussion of its general principles. 85. In the preface Delolme states, with a curious naïveté, the doctrine which, less clearly formulated, lies at the bottom of the whole constitution-mongering creed. A government,' he says, 'may be considered as a great ballet or dance, in which, the same as in other ballets, everything depends on the disposition of the figures.' 1 The form, that is, is everything, the substance nothing; to judge of a government you must not know what are the men of whom it is composed, what their beliefs, hereditary predispositions, traditions, or social organism, but simply what is the administrative mechanism. The political quacks of the present day, who would reform human nature by means of patent ballot-boxes, make the same assumption, but they make it tacitly. In the keen controversy between the followers of this school and the followers of Rousseau there was a common ground. Both schools agreed in assuming that the man of their speculations was a mathematical unit, whose qualities might be assumed to be substantially identical in all ages and nations. The dispute arose at the further point, whether the form of government suitable to his wants should be determined by a priori reasoning, or by observation of the experiments that had been made by legislators. If Delolme has the merit of appealing to experience, the assumptions implied in the 'ballet' theory render the appeal nugatory. Both schools, indeed, are fond of historical, and especially of classical, precedents. Rousseau and his followers fancied that they could find in the old democrat the free citizen, uncorrupted by feudalism and ecclesiasticism. Delolme regards the ancient history as a useful collection of precedents, directly applicable to modern times. A mob, he tells us, will inevitably produce a Spartacus or a Viriathus; whilst 'Pisistratus and Megacles, Marius and Sylla, Cæsar and Pompey,'' give sufficient proof, if proof be required, of the danger of a dictator. The characteristic evil of the ancient republics is their instability; they are always losing their liberties, as a man might lose his purse; the most conclusive proof of the merits of the English 2 Ib. p. 306. Ib. p. 200. Delolme, p. xi. 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.'2 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 con2 lb. p. 489. Delolme, pp. 214, 409. Ib. p. 21. stitution which is no more than an equilibrium between the ruling powers of the state.'1 Meanwhile the concentrated royal power is a precise counterpoise '2 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. 391. • Ib. p. 399. |