serve for weal or woe, as we have seen. Constituted evil is as much worse, as constituted good is more efficaciously good than that effected by the individual. When we know the essential nature of the institution, we shall be able to judge when, and where, and how it may be used beneficially. An institution is an arch; but there are arches that support bridges and cathedrals, and hospitals; and others that support dungeons, banquetrooms of revelry, torture-chambers, or spacious halls in which criminal folly enacts a melancholy farce with all the pitiful trappings of unworthy submission.

The greater or less degree in which the institutional spirit of different nations is manifested, furnishes us with a striking characteristic of whole nations. The Romans, the Netherlanders, and indeed all the Teutonic tribes, until the dire spirit of disindividualizing centralization seized nearly all the governments of the European Continent, were institutional nations. The English and ourselves are still so. The Russians and all the Sclavonic nations, the Turks and the Mongolian tribes, seem to be remarkably uninstitutional.

A similar remark naturally applies to different species of governments. Some do not only result from a decidedly institutional tendency of the people at large, but they also promote it, while there is in others an inherent antagonism to the institution. No absolutism, whether that of one or many, brooks institutions. The reason is, not only because all absolute rulers discountenance opposition, but because there is in every despotism an ingrained incompatibility with independent action and self-government, in whatsoever narrow circle or moderate degree it may strive to maintain itself. This is so much the case, that often despots of the best intentions for the welfare of the people have been the most destructive to

the remnants of former, or to the germs of future institutions, in the very proportion in which they have been gifted with brilliant talents, activity, and courage. These served them only to press forward more vigorously and more boldly in the career of all absolutism, which consists in the absorption of individuality and institutional action, or in levelling everything which does not comport with a military uniformity, and with sweeping annihilation of diversity.

As institutions may be good or bad, so may they be favourable or unfavourable to liberty. They may, indeed, give to the representative of the institution great freedom, but only for the repression of general freedom. The viziership is an institution all over Asia, and has been so from remote periods; but it is an institution in the spirit of despotism, and forms an active part of the prevailing system of Asiatic monarchical absolutism. The Star Chamber was an institution, and gave much freedom of action to its members; yet the patriots under the Stuarts made it their first business to break down this preposterous institution. When, in 1660, the Danes made their king hereditary and absolute, binding him by the only oath that he should never allow his or his successors' power to be restricted, the Danish crown became undoubtedly a new institution, but assuredly not propitious to liberty. Of all the Hellenic tribes the Spartans were probably the most institutional; but they were communists, and communism is hostile to liberty. They disindividualized the citizens, and, as a matter of course, extinguished in the same degree individual liberty, development, and progress. A State in which a citizen could be punished because he had added one more to the commonly adopted number of lute-strings, cannot be allowed to have been favourable to liberty.

Many of those very attributes of the institution proper which make it so valuable in the service of liberty, constitute its inconvenience and danger when the institution is used against it. It is a bulwark, and may protect the enemy of liberty. It is like the press; modern liberty or civilization cannot dispense with it, yet it may be used as its keenest enemy.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE INSTITUTION, CONTINUED. INSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY. INSTITUTIONAL LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT.

CIVILIZATION, SO closely connected with what we love in modern liberty, as well as progress and security, themselves ingredients of civil liberty, stands in need of stability and continuity, and these cannot be secured without institutions. This is the reason why the historian, when speaking of such organizers or refounders of their nations as Charlemagne, Alfred, Numa, Pelayo, knows of no higher name to give them than that of institutors.

The force of the institution in imparting stability and giving new power to what otherwise must have swiftly passed away, has been illustrated in our own times in Mormonism. Every observer who has gravely investigated this repulsive fraud, will agree that as for its pretensions and doctrines it must have passed as it came, had it not been for the remarkable character which Joseph Smith possessed as an institutor.' Thrice blessed is a noble idea, perpetuated in an active institu

The great ability of this man seems to be peculiarly exhibited in his mixture of truth and arrant falsehood, his uncompromising boldness and insolence, and his organizing instituting mind. Two men have met almost simultaneously with great success, in our own times-Joseph Smith and Louis Napoleon. Of the two the first seems the more clever. He would almost reap all the praises which Machiavelli bestows upon the founder of a new empire. And he did it against all chances, without any assistance from tradition or prestige. Whether he be also the worse of the two will not be hastily pronounced by a careful inquirer."

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tion, as charity in a hôtel-dieu; thrice cursed, a wicked idea embodied in an institution!

The title of institutor is coveted even by those who represent ideas the very opposite to institutions.

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, when he lately inaugurated his government, dwelt with pride, or a consciousness that the world prizes the founding of good institutions as the greatest work of a statesman and a ruler, on the "institutions" he had established.2

Institutions may not have been viciously conceived, or have grown out of a state of violence or crime, and yet they may have become injurious in the course of time, as incompatible with the pervading spirit of the time, or they may have become hollow, and in this latter case they are almost sure to be injurious. Hollow institutions in the state are much like empty boxes in an ill-managed house; they are sure to be filled with litter and rubbish, and to become nuisances. But great wisdom and caution are necessary to decide whether an institution ought to be amputated or not, because it is a notable truth in politics that many important institutions and laws are chiefly efficient as preventives, not as posi

2 He meant, of course, the senate, legislative corps, and the council of state. Why he calls these new institutions no one else can see; but he evidently wishes to indicate his own belief, or desired that others should believe, in their permanency, as well as, perhaps, in some degree, in their own independent action. To those, however, who consider them as nothing more than the pared and curtailed remnants of former institutions, who do not see that they can enjoy any independent action of their own, and are aware that their very existence depends upon the mere forbearance of the executive-who remember their origin by a mere decree of a dictator, whose very power by which he established them bears witness that he considers himself bound by no superior law, and who at any time may decree their cessation to those who know with what studied and habitual sneer parliamentary governments" are spoken of by the ruling party in France,-all these establishments appear in principle no more as real institutions than a tent on a stage, the outpost of an army, or the clerk's office on board of one of our steamboats.