Is not our government as busy still as though the work of lawmaking commenced but yesterday? Has it made any apparent progress toward a final settlement of social arrangements? Does it not rather each year entangle itself still further in the web of legislation, confounding the already heterogeneous mass of enactments into still greater confusion? Nearly every parliamentary proceeding is a tacit confession of incompetency. There is scarcely a bill introduced but is entitled "An Act to amend an Act." The "Whereas" of almost every preamble heralds an account of the miscarriage of previous legislation. Alteration, explanation, and repeal, form the staple employment of every session. All our great agitations are for the abolition of institutions purporting to be for the public good. Witness those for the removal of the Test and Corporation Acts, for Catholic Emancipation, for the repeal of the Corn Laws; to which may now be added, that for the separation of Church and State. The history of one scheme is the history of all. First comes enactment, then probation, then failure; next an amendment and another failure; and, after many alternate tinkerings and abortive trials, arrives at length repeal, followed by the substitution of some fresh plan, doomed to run the same course, and share a like fate.

The expediency-philosophy, however, ignores this world full of facts. Though men have so constantly been balked in their attempts to secure, by legislation, any desired constituent of that complex whole, "greatest happiness," it nevertheless continues to place confidence in the unaided judgment of the statesman. It asks no guide; it possesses no eclectic principle; it seeks no clue whereby the tangled web of social existence may be unravelled and its laws discovered. But, holding up to view the great desideratum, it assumes that after an inspection of the aggregate phenomena of national life, governments are qualified to concoct such measures as shall be "expedient." It considers the philosophy of humanity so easy, the constitution of the social organism so simple, the causes of a peo

ple's conduct so obvious, that a general examination can give to "collective wisdom," the insight requisite for law-making. It thinks that man's intellect is competent, first, to observe accurately the facts exhibited by associated human nature ; to form just estimates of general and individual character, of the effects of religions, customs, superstitions, prejudices, of the mental tendencies of the age, of the probabilities of future events, &c., &c.; and then, grasping at once the multiplied phenomena of this ever-agitated, ever-changing sea of life, to derive from them that knowledge of their governing principles which shall enable him to say whether such and such measures will conduce to "the greatest happiness of the greatest number."

If without any previous investigation of the properties of terrestrial matter, Newton had proceeded at once to study the dynamics of the universe, and after years spent with the telescope in ascertaining the distances, sizes, times of revolution, inclinations of axes, forms of orbits, perturbations, &c., of the celestial bodies, had set himself to tabulate this accumulated mass of observations, and to educe from them the fundamental laws of planetary and stellar equilibrium, he might have cogitated to all eternity without arriving at a result.

But absurd as such a method of research would have been, it would have been far less absurd, than is the attempt to find out the principles of public polity, by a direct examination of that wonderfully intricate combination-society. It needs exçite no surprise when legislation, based upon the theories thus elaborated, fails. Rather would its success afford matter for extreme astonishment. Considering that men as yet so imperfectly understand man-the instrument by which, and the material on which, laws are to act and that a complete knowledge of the unit-man, is but a first step to the comprehension of the mass-society, it seems obvious enough that to educe from the infinitely-ramified complications of universal humanity, a true philosophy of national life, and to found thereon a code of rules for the obtainment of "greatest happiness" is a task far beyond the ability of any finite mind.

§ 4.

Yet another fatal objection to the expediency-philosophy, is to be found in the fact, that it implies the eternity of government. It is a mistake to assume that government must necessarily last for ever. The institution marks a certain stage of civilization-is natural to a particular phase of human development. It is not essential but incidental. As amongst the Bushmen we find a state antecedent to government; so may there be one in which it shall have become extinct. Already has it lost something of its importance. The time was when the history of a people was but the history of its government. It is otherwise now. The once universal despotism was but a manifestation of the extreme necessity of restraint. Feudalism, serfdom, slavery-all tyrannical institutions, are merely the most vigorous kinds of rule, springing out of, and necessary to, a bad state of man. The progress from these is in all cases the same-less government. Constitutional forms mean this. Political freedom means this. Democracy means this. In societies, associations, joint-stock companies, we have new agencies occupying fields filled in less advanced times and countries by the State. With us the legislature is dwarfed by newer and greater powers-is no longer master but slave. "Pressure from without" has come to be acknowledged as ultimate ruler. The triumph of the Anti-Corn-Law League is simply the most marked instance yet, of the new style of government-that of opinion, overcoming the old style-that of force. It bids fair to become a trite remark that the lawmaker is but the servant of the thinker. Daily is statecraft held in less repute. Even the Times can see that "the social changes thickening around us establish a truth sufficiently humiliating to legislative bodies," and that "the great stages of our progress are determined rather by the spontaneous workings of society, connected as they are with the progress of

B

art and science, the operations of nature, and other such unpolitical causes, than by the proposition of a bill, the passing of an act, or any other event of politics or of state." Thus, as civilization advances, does government decay. To the bad it is essential; to the good, not. It is the check which national wickedness makes to itself and exists only to the same degree. Its continuance is proof of still-existing barbarism. What a cage is to the wild beast, law is to the selfish man. Restraint is for the savage, the rapacious, the violent; not for the just, the gentle, the benevolent. All necessity for external force implies a morbid state. Dungeons for the felon; a strait-jacket for the maniac; crutches for the lame; stays for the weak-backed; for the infirm of purpose a master; for the foolish a guide; but for the sound mind, in a sound body, none of these. Were there no thieves and murderers, prisons would be unnecessary. It is only because tyranny is yet rife in the world that we have armies. Barristers, judges, juriesall the instruments of law-exist, simply because knavery exists. Magisterial force is the sequence of social vice; and the policeman is but the complement of the criminal. Therefore it is a necessary evil."

✓ that we call government

What then must be thought of a morality which chooses this probationary institution for its basis, builds a vast fabric of conclusions upon its assumed permanence, selects acts of parliament for its materials, and employs the statesman for its architect? The expediency-philosophy does this. It takes government into partnership-assigns to it entire control of its affairs-enjoins all to defer to its judgment makes it in short the vital principle, the very soul of its system. When Paley teaches that "the interest of the whole society is binding upon every part of it," he implies the existence of some supreme power by which that "interest of the whole society" is to be determined. And elsewhere he more explicitly tells us, that for the attainment of a national advantage the private will of the subject is to give way; and that "the proof of this advantage * See Times of October 12, 1846.

lies with the legislature." Still more decisive is Bentham, when he says that "the happiness of the individuals of whom a community is composed, that is, their pleasures and their security, is the sole end which the legislator ought to have in view; the sole standard in conformity with which each individual ought, as far as depends upon the legislature, to be made to fashion his behaviour." These positions, be it remembered, are not voluntarily assumed; they are necessitated by the premises. If, as its propounder tells us, "expediency" means the benefit of the mass, not of the individual of the future as much as of the present, it presupposes some one to judge of what will most conduce to that benefit. Upon the "utility" of this or that measure, the views are so various as to render an umpire essential. Whether protective duties, or established religions, or capital punishments, or poor laws, do or do not minister to the "general good," are questions concerning which there is such difference of opinion, that were nothing to be done till all agreed upon them, we might stand still to the end of time. If each man carried out, independently of a state power, his own notions of what would best secure "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," society would quickly lapse into confusion. Clearly, therefore, a morality established upon a maxim of which the practical interpretation is questionable, involves the existence of some authority whose decision respecting it shall be final-that is, a legislature. And without that authority, such a morality must ever remain inoperative.

See here then the predicament. A system of moral philosophy professes to be a code of correct rules for the control of human beings-fitted for the regulation of the best, as well as the worst members of the race-applicable, if true, to the guidance of humanity in its highest conceivable perfection. Government, however, is an institution originating in man's imperfection; an institution confessedly begotten by necessity out of evil; one which might be dispensed with were the world peopled with the unselfish, the conscientious, the philanthropic; one, in short, inconsistent with this same "highest conceivable