MODERN THEORIES OF GOVERNMENT.

NUMBER ONE.

"Je le dirai toujours, c'est la moderation qui gouverne les hommes et non pas les exces." Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois. L. xxii. c. 22.

“A revolution is always the fault of the Government, never of the people." Goethe.

Modern Geologists are agreed that nothing is so unstable as the surface of our (so-called) "firm-fixed earth." The solid crust on which we tread with so much confidence, and which we have been taught to believe coeval at least with our race, is in a continuous state of oscillation; now rising by a slow and gradual elevation, now sinking by a similarly progressive depression; now lifted by subterranean throes that shake to atoms the "insubstantial pageants" of human greatness, and, anon, settling in its unstable bed until the waters of the ocean roll over the habitations of man. Even when gradual, these changes, in the course of countless ages, modify the seasons, the flora, the animated life of the surface affected. At one period, the polar ice and the grizzly bear descend from the Arctic Circle to the confines of the Torrid Zone, and enormous glaciers plough their way and sow their moraines where subsequently wave the olive and the vine. The Saurian and Megatherian give place to the fossil Mastodon and Elephant, and, they, in turn, yield to the existing fauna. The Tiber is no

1 This article, and succeeding articles under the same title, will be compiled from notes made in Europe in the year 1863, during a course of political readings resorted to, to relieve the tedium of exile. They may be considered as a review of the writings and theories of some of the leading writers on government-such as De Lolme, Sismondi, and De Tocqueville. The theme is, perhaps, not so foreign to the student of law as to be deemed inappropriate to the objects of this REVIEW. In this country, more than any other, owing to the constitutional basis of our general and state governments, the law is blended more or less with politics, and it behooves the lawyer to make himself familiar with the principles that underlie all governments. If these memoranda shall be found of any service to the younger members of the profession, the space they occupy will not be entirely lost, and the writer will be amply rewarded.

longer frozen over asi n the days of the early Romans, and the inhospitable clime of the Ultima Thule is now tempered by the warm breath of the Gulf Stream. The incessant changes of the outer world are not confined to inanimate nature or the lower forms of animal life. The Finn and the Esquimaux retire before the Celt and Algonquin, and they subsequently yield to the Teuton and the Anglo-Saxon. Distinct races of men, like the lower orders of mammalia, have their rise, progress, and decline. The builder of the Pyramids becomes the naked Copt; the worshipper at the Temple of Solomon sells old clothes in all the marts of commerce; the "noble old Roman" begs paolis in the very streets of the "eternal city;" and the flexible Greek, if he retains the fickleness of Alcibiades, has lost the song of Homer, the pencil of Apelles, the chisel of Praxitelles, and the tongue of Pericles. High civilization, when attained, seems to be confined to a limited race, and a narrow circle of territory. Can we anticipate its incessant progress, or even its permanent continuance? Have we any assurance that the next wave of life may not overwhelm western civilization in a Cossack ocean? A few degrees increase of temperature and the energy of the now dominant races might degenerate into the listless apathy of the Moor or the Hindoo. A few degrees less of heat, and the large brain of the Caucasian might dwindle into the contracted cranium of the Lapp. The profoundest modern seekers into the mystery of existence seem to have come to the conclusion that all life is intimately connected, and sprung from the same germ. Is it possible, as one learned ethnographer' suggests, that the progress of animate nature is not always forward, but sometimes backwards, and, that as we have ascended from the monad, we may, by a natural retrogression, return to the same starting point? The Sclave, says this writer, nature's last form of humanity, is a woful descent from the old Hellenic type!

In the present state of our knowledge of the past, outside of all theoretical reasoning and all hopes founded on revelation, the fears arousel by these interrogatories seem to be purely gratuitous. The solid earth has oscillated, but each new development of life has certainly been from a lower to a higher type. So, too, notwithstanding the degeneracy of particular races, the progress of humanity has been upwards and onward. The oscillations of the human world may be as startling and fearful as those of our mother earth; they may shake to fragments all our most cherished institutions,

'Knox.

and overwhelm the civilization of ages in one wild wave of revolution; but, if our experience from the past affords any criterion from which to draw deductions for the future, the new creation from the ashes of the old will rise with a purer life, and a fresher vigor.

It is not alone as individuals, but in their collective capacity as nations, that human progress has been marked. Nature, in fact, acts upon the mass even when she seems to confine her gifts to individuals. The morals and manners of a people are far more important than their laws and forms of government. The latter may be the work of a day and a particular ruler; the former are always the growth of time and place, and are the collective representatives of the civilization of the mass. The real prosperity and happiness of a nation are dependent less on the one than on the other. Men have been slow to find out this fact, and have, therefore, laid much more stress on outward forms than they deserved. The violent disputes between philosophers as to the best form of government have turned out to be quarrels about words not facts. It is not the form of a government, but its aim and object as directed by the manners and morals of the whole nation, which constitute its essential elements. England has had substantially the same form of government for nearly a thousand years, and yet she has gone through every phase from a pure despotism, where the voice of the Sovereign was all powerful, to that of a republic where the voice of the people is the controlling element. It may safely be said that, although the forms may be the same, the object and aim of the government of all civilized nations are very different now from what they were in former times. In the old world, nay, we may say in the whole world, until a very recent date, the principal aim of every government was so to wield its strength as to enable it the better to aggress on its neighbors. War was the normal condition of the human race, and conquest the main object of every people. Subsidiary to this primary aim, the pandering to the worst passions of the populace by largesses and public amusements, the luxury of an aristocracy, or the glory of a monarch were the ends had in view, according as the popular, aristocratic, or monarchical element prevailed. Now, the happiness and progressive improvement of the whole people are the acknowledged aim of all political institutions. Even in the most despotic countries, the prosperity of the public is kept in view, the success of the government depending upon the extent to which this end can be attained. The Czar of all the Russians is subject to this modern rule of policy, if not to

so great an extent, yet as certainly as the Congress of the United States. The Emperor of France and the aristocracy of England govern by this rule. The throne of the one and the power of the other depend upon their substantial conformity with its requirements. Whatever may be the form of government, therefore, or the means resorted to by the ruling power of different nations to effect the object-the aim is the same. "All the political theories," says Sismondi (Etudes Sur les Constitutions des Peuples Libres), "which are avowed now-a-days, all those which any one dares to promulgate, are founded upon the beneficent and generous feelings of humanity. The partisan of this or that political theory looks only to the general benefit, and urges his views upon the ground that they ensure greater advantages to the largest number of human beings." Upon this ground, as the same author well suggests, all the different systems of government may be sustained in good faith, and by honest and disinterested partisans. Instead of abusing each other, the advocates of these systems should rather remember that they are students of the same great theme, animated by the same lofty desire, and seeking the same profound truth. They may, perhaps, mutually enlighten each other by their opposing schemes, their sagacious suggestions, and their independent deductions.

A person raised up under one set of political institutions, with his attention directed only to their particular operation, when he sees how admirably they work, is apt to think that the same institutions would do equally as well everywhere else. And, if he is fortunate enough to live under a free government, he may feel surprised that other nations do not at once avail themselves of the advantages, as they seem to htm, of free institutions. The Englishman is at a loss to underst and how the French can submit to a government which interferes so largely with the freedom of individualaction. The American, again, while he acknowledges the protection afforded to life, liberty and property by English institutions, can with difficulty conceive how the English people can tolerate the forms of Joyalty and the sway of a "bloated aristocracy." One great advantage of travelling is the enlargement and correction of our ideas on such subjects. We soon find that human nature, although substantially the same all over the world, is largely modified by race, climate, location and circumstances; that you can not make a particular people conform to institutions, but must adapt institutions to the morals, manners, and prejudices of the people. The revolution of 1640 in England did not effect in the least the aristo

cratic element of the nation. Nor did the French revolution of 1789 alter the character of the people one jot in reference to the power of self government. Any form of government forced suddenly upon England would tend to an aristocracy. Any change of form in France leads inevitably to despotism. You can not eradicate in a day instincts which are the growth of a thousand years. Changes may be wrought-are wrought in any nation-but gradually. The enlightened traveller soon learns to appreciate these facts, and then it becomes a most interesting study to see the merits and defects of each particular system in its actual workings. He will find, if I mistake not, that nature in its operation upon masses, as upon individuals, is compensatory. If there are defects in every system, there are also compensating advantages. Such a traveller was Mr. Jefferson, and he never exhibited profounder sagacity and more thorough good sense than when he advised the leaders in the first French revolution to retain hereditary monarchy as a part of the proposed new government. No man had a higher sense of what the philosophers of the eighteenth century called the "rights of man," than the great American Democrat, and no one was more anxious to see the principles deduced from those rights carried into practical operation wherever it could be done with safety. But he was too sagacious an observer not to see that the French by nature, or by immemorial usage, are reverencers of authority, and need a permanent head to ensure public quiet. His advice, therefore, to Lafayette and his friends was to be content with the extension of the elective franchise, representative legislation, free press and the habeas corpus. Other things, he said very truly, would come when the people were ripe for them—and to grasp at more would endanger the whole. Every person who undertakes to criticise foreign governments, should have a modicum, at least, of Mr. Jefferson's impartiality, even if deficient in his sagacity.

The civil war in America has had a tendency to direct the attention of thinking men to a more careful study of the form of government under which it has occurred. Heretofore, its friends have seen few or no defects in the complicated machinery, and have been eulogists rather than enlightened critics, while its opponents have concurred in treating it as a mere experiment, wonderfully favored by a concurrence of circumstances. Both friends and foes have

been inclined to trace the existing conflict to the peculiar institutions of the country. But while concurring in this common view, they differ radically as to the defective element of the machinery.