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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 more 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.

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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.' 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

'Esprit des Lois,' book xi. cap. 6.

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2 Delolme, p. 498.

'Essay on History of Civil Society,' p. 108.

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 be

lieved 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; 2 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.' 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 descrip2 Ib. p. 13. Ib. part iv. secs. i. and iii.

1 Ferguson, p. 53.

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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.

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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.

dealing with it. Tucker would, in our days, have been a sound Conservative, and at the same time an adherent of the Manchester school of foreign policy.

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92. His Treatise concerning Civil Government' is a vigorous, and often very shrewd, attack on the school of Rousseau, of which the chief English supporters, in his opinion, were Price and Priestley, and of which Locke was the intellectual ancestor. His object is to show that the 'social contract,' as understood by the Lockians,' implied that all government was unlawful, except so far as it rested on the voluntary consent of the governed, or that, in other words, it meant simply anarchy. As, however, he is not quite able to emancipate himself from the notion that some sort of contract was necessary, he invents the term 'quasi-contract;' which means simply that government is to be considered as a trust, but that the trustees cannot be dismissed at the arbitrary pleasure of the governed. He strikes some very shrewd blows at his adversaries, contrasts the real savage of the scalping-knife with the imaginary savage of Rousseau, and attacks the popular nostrums of parliamentary reformers as conducive to riot and corruption. He accepts the theory of the mixture of the three forms of government; and gives an antiquarian discussion of the origin of the English form of government by way of illustrating his views of its advantages, and the proper cure for its evils. He had, however, little hope of persuading his countrymen to take a sensible view of their condition. What would become, he asks, of a demagogue who should tell his best friends, the mob, that Gibraltar and Port Mahon are expensive and useless; that the ocean should be free to all mankind; that colonies had always been a useless drain, that they would only trade with the parent-country as much as their interests required, and would trade so much whether compelled or not; and that, consequently, money would be saved, jobs prevented, and undue influence limited by separating from them at once?-would not the preacher of such salutary truths be hooted as an apostate, and consequently try to gain favour by proposing-not to remedy real grievances—but to reform the king's kitchen or his dog-kennel ? 5

93. This is meant, of course, as a shrewd blow for Burke,

1 Treatise,' &c., p. 146. 2 Ib. p. 180 et seq.

Ib. p. 257 et seq.

• Ib. p. 242.

Ib. p. 252 et seq.

I must now approach the writings of that great man, incomparably the greatest man, indeed, who has ever given the whole force of his intellect to the investigation of political philosophy in England. But one remark may be premised. Doctrines, such as those expounded by Delolme and his like, had certain merits, too easily overlooked by political enthusiasts and men impatient of superficial formalities. The whole theory was barren enough, but it served to consecrate that system of compromise which has had its utility; to admit of gradual development in the sphere of practice, and to facilitate the transition to a sound historical method in the sphere of theory. On the other hand, its extreme weakness as a permanent creed may be estimated by attempting to oppose arguments of the Delolme variety to the demands which were being put forward through the mouth of Rousseau. It is a weakness of the whole school which descends from Montesquieu that they overlook the really strong passions of humanity. The very conception of a government which contemplates it as a machine to be put together by skilful devices, assumes that the materials of which it is composed are colourless and lifeless. They are mere draughts on the political chessboard, to be arranged by the fancy of the legislator. Loyalty, patriotism, and the fierce desire for equality or liberty, are disturbing elements to be left out of the calculation. These ingenious and old-fashioned statesmen were helpless when confronted by demands made in the name of justice and sympathy. Men complaining that they were naked, and starving, and oppressed were not to be pacified by the assurance that the machine of government was so delicately balanced that it might be expected to run on for Some justification of the existing order resting on deeper principles and appealing to stronger passions was urgently needed; and the most prominent service of Burke in the eyes of his contemporaries was that he supplied that want when the whole constitutional framework seemed going to pieces. And yet, it is frequently said that his opposition to the French Revolution implies a radical inconsistency in his teaching. To understand his position, and to set forth his true doctrine, however incompletely, requires a somewhat full discussion.

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