260 FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. [ESSAY III. in the Book of Common Prayer. Why should these persons be required to promise not to endeavour an alteration in church government, when, probably, some of them thought the endeavour formed a part of their Christian duty? Upon similar grounds, it may be doubted whether the Roman Catholics of our day ought to declare, as they do, that they will not endeavour any alteration in the religious establishments of the country. To promise this without limitation is surely promising more than a person who disapproves that establishment ought to promise. The very essence of peculiar religious systems tends to the alteration of all others. He who preaches the Romish creed and practice does practically oppose the Church of England, and practically endeavour an alteration in it. And if a man thinks his own system the best, he ought, by Christian means, to endeavour to extend it. And even if these declarations were less objectionable in principle, their practical operation is bad. Some invasion or revolution places a new prince upon the throne,-that very prince, perhaps, whom the people's oath of allegiance was expressly designed to exclude. What are such a people to do? Are they to refuse obedience to the ruler whom, perhaps, there are the best of reasons for obeying? Or are they to keep their oaths sacred, and thus injure the general weal? Such alternatives ought not to be imposed. But the truth is, that allegiance is commonly adjusted to a standard very distinct from the meaning of oaths. How many revolutions have oaths of allegiance prevented? In general a people will obey the power whom they prefer, whatever oaths may have bound them to another. In France, all men were required to swear "that they would be faithful to the nation, the law, and the king." A year after these same Frenchmen swore an everlasting abjuration of monarchy! And now they are living quietly under a monarchy again! After the accession of William III. when the clergy were required to take oaths contrary to those which they had before taken to James, very few in comparison refused. The rest "took them with such reservations and distinctions as redounded very little to the honour of their integrity." Thus it is that these oaths, which are objectionable in principle, are so nugatory in practice. The mischief is radical. Men ought not to be required to engage to maintain, at a future period, a set of opinions which, at a future period, they may probably think erroneous; nor to maintain allegiance to any set of men whom, hereafter, they may perhaps find it expedient to replace by others. CHAPTER VI. FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. THERE is one great cause which prevents the political moralist from describing, absolutely, what form of government is preferable to all others, which is, that the superiority of a form depends, like the proper degree of civil liberty, upon the existing condition of a community. Other doctrine has indeed been held: "Wherever men are competent to * Smollett's History of England. CHAP. 6.] GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 261 look the first duties of humanity in the face, and to provide for their defence against the invasions of hunger and the inclemencies of the sky, there they will, out of all doubt, be found equally capable of every other exertion that may be necessary to their security and welfare. Present to them a constitution which shall put them into a simple and intelligible method of directing their own affairs, adjudging their contests among themselves, and cherishing in their bosoms a manly sense of dignity, equality, and independence, and you need not doubt that prosperity and virtue will be the result."* There is need to doubt and to disbelieve it,--unless it can be shown from experience that uncultivated and vicious men require nothing more to make them wise and good than to be told the way. "Present to them a constitution." Who shall present it? Some foreign intelligence, manifestly; and if this foreign intelligence is necessary to devise a constitution, it will be necessary, to keep it in operation and in order. But when this is granted, it is in effect granted that an uncultivated and vicious people are not "capable of every exertion that may be necessary to their security and welfare." But if certain forms cannot be specified which shall be best for the adoption of every state, there are general principles to direct us. It is manifest that the form of government, like the administration of power, should be conformable to the public wish. In a certain sense, and in a sense of no trifling import, that form is best for a people which the people themselves prefer: and this rule applies, even although the form may not be intrinsically the best; for public welfare and satisfaction are the objects of government, and this satisfaction may sometimes be ensured by a form which the public prefer, more effectually than by a form essentially better which they dislike. Besides, a nation is likely to prefer that form which accords best with what is called the national genius; and thus there may be a real adaptation of a form to a people which is yet not abstractedly the best, nor the best for their neighbours. But when it is said that that form of government ought to be adopted for a people which they themselves prefer, it is not to be forgotten that their preference is often founded upon their weaknesses or their ignorance. Men adhere to an established form because they think little of a better. Long prescription gives to even bad systems an obscure sanctity among unthinking men. No reasonable man can suppose that the government of Louis the Fourteenth was good for the French people, or that that form could be good which enabled him to trifle with or to injure the public welfare. And yet, when his ambition and tyranny had reduced the French to poverty and to wretchedness, they still clung to their oppressor, and made wonderful sacrifices to support his power.-Now, though it might have been both. improper and unjust to give a new constitution to the French when they preferred the old, yet such examples indicate the sense in which only it is true that the form which a people prefer is the best for them; and they indicate, too, most powerfully, the duty of every citizen and of every legislator to diffuse just notions of political truth. The nature of a government contributes powerfully no doubt to the formation of this national genius; and thus an imperfect form sometimes contributes to its. own duration. In the present condition of mankind, it is probable that some species * Godwin's Enq. Pol. Just. vol. i., p. 69. 262 MONARCHY. [ESSAY III. of monarchy is best for the greater part of the world. Republicanism opens more wide the gates of ambition. He who knows that the utmost .extent of attainable power is to be the servant of a prince is not likely to be fired by those boundless schemes of ambition which may animate the republican leader. The virtue of the generality of mankind is not sufficiently powerful to prompt them to political moderation without the application of an external curb; and thus it happens that the order and stability of a government is more efficiently secured by the indisputable supremacy of one man. Now, order and stability are among the first requisites of a good constitution, for the objects of political institutions cannot be secured without them. I accept the word monarchy in a large sense. It is not necessary to the security of these advantages, even in the existing state of human virtue, that the monarch should possess what we call kingly power. By monarchy I mean a form of government in which one man is invested with power greatly surpassing that of every other. The peculiar means by which this power is possessed do not enter necessarily into the account. The individual may have the power of a sultan, or a czar, or a king, or a president: that is, he may possess various degrees of power, and yet the essential principle of monarchy and its practical tendencies may be the same in all,-the same to repress violence by extent of power, the same to discountenance ambition by the hopelessness of gratifying unlimited desire. It is usual to insist, as one of the advantages of monarchy, upon its secrecy and despatch: which secrecy and despatch, it is to be observed, would be of comparatively little importance in a more advanced state of human virtue. Where diplomatic chicanery and hostile exertions are employed, despatch and secrecy are doubtless very subservient to success; but take away the hostility and chicanery,-take away, that is, such wickedness from among men, and secrecy and despatch would be of little interest or importance. We love darkness rather than light, because our deeds are evil Thus it is that unnumbered usages and institutions find advocacy, rather in the immoral condition of mankind than in the direct evidences of their excellence. "An hereditary monarchy is universally to be preferred to an elective monarchy. The confession of every writer on the subject of civil government, the experience of ages, the example of Poland and of the papal dominions, seem to place this among the few indubitable maxims which the science of politics admits of."* But, without attempting to decide upon the preferableness of hereditary or elective monarchy, it may be questioned whether this formidable array of opinion has not been founded upon the mischiefs which actually have resulted from electing princes, rather than from those which are inseparable from the election. The election of the kings of Poland convulsed that unhappy country, and sometimes embroiled Europe. The election of popes has produced similar effects; but this is no evidence that popes and kings cannot be elected by pacific means: cardinals and lords may embroil a nation, when other electors would not. I call the President of the United States a monarch. He is not called, indeed, an emperor, or a king, or a duke, but he exercises much of regal power. Yet he is elected; and where is the mischief? The United Paley Mor. and Pol. Phil. p. 3, b. 6, c, 6. CHAP. 6.] BALANCE OF INTERESTS AND PASSIONS. 263 States are not convulsed: civil war is not waged: foreign princes do not support with armies the pretensions of one candidate or another :-and yet he is elected. Who then will say that other monarchs might not be elected too? It will not be easy to show that the being invested with greater power than the President of America necessarily precludes the peaceable election of a prince. The power of the President differs, I believe, less from that of the King of England, than the power of the king differs from that of the Russian emperor. No man can define the maximum of power which might be conferred without public mischief by the election of the public. Yet I am attempting to elucidate a political truth, and not recommending a practice. It is, indeed, possible, that when the genius of a people and the whole mass of their political institutions are favourable to an election of the supreme magistrate, election would be preferable to hereditary succession. But election is not without its disadvantages, especially if the appointment be for a short time. When there are several candidates, and when the inclinations of the community are consequently divided, he who actually assumes the reins is the sovereign of the choice of only a portion of the people. The rest prefer another: which circumstance is not only likely to animate the hostilities of faction, but to make the elected party regard one portion of the people as his enemies and the other as his friends. should be the parent of all the people. But he Fox observed, with respect to the British constitution, that "the safety of the whole depends on the jealousy which each retains against the others, not on the patriotism of any one branch of the legislature."* This is doubtless true; yet surely it is a melancholy truth. It is a melancholy consideration that, in constructing a constitution, it is found necessary, not to encourage virtue, but to repress vice, and to contrive mutual curbs upon ambition and licentiousness. It is a tacit, but a most emphatical acknowledgment, how much private inclination triumphs over public virtue, and how little legislators are disposed to keep in the right political path, unless they are restrained from deviation by walls and spikes. Yet it is upon this lamentable acknowledgment that the great institutions of free states are frequently founded. A balance of interests and passions is contrived, something like the balance of power of which we hear so much among the nations of Europe,-a balance of which the necessity (if it be necessary) consists in the wickedness, the ambition, and the violence of mankind. If nations did not viciously desire to encroach upon one another, this balance of power would be forgotten; and in a purer state of human virtue, the jealousies of the different branches of a legislature will not need to be balanced against each other. Until the period of this advanced state of human excellence shall arrive, I know not how this balance can be dispensed with. It may still be needful to oppose power to power, to restrain one class of interests by the counteraction of others, and to procure general quiet to the whole by annexing inevitable evils to the encroachments of the separate parts. Thus, again, it happens that constitutions which are not abstractedly the best, or even good, may be the best for a nation now. Whatever be the form of a government, one quality appears to be essential to practical excellence,-that it should be susceptible of peaceable change. The science of government, like other sciences, acquires Speech on the Regency Question. 264 CHANGES IN A CONSTITUTION. [ESSAY III. a constant accession of light. The intellectual condition of the world is advancing with onward strides. And both these considerations intimate that forms of government should be capable of admitting, without disturbance, those improvements which experience may dictate or the advancing condition of a community may require. To reject improvement is absurd: to incapacitate ourselves for adopting it is absurd also. It surely is no unreasonable sacrifice of vanity to admit, that those who succeed us may be better judges of what is good for themselves than we can be for them. Upon these grounds, no constitution should be regarded as absolutely and sacredly fixed, so that none ought and none have a right to alter it. The question of right is easily settled. It is inherent in the community, or in the legislature as their agents. It would be strange, indeed, if our predecessors five or six centuries ago had a right to make a constitution for us, which we have no right to alter for ourselves. Such checks ought, no doubt, to be opposed to alterations, that they may not be lightly and crudely made. The exercise of political wisdom is to discover that point in which sufficient obstacles are opposed to hasty innovation, and in which sufficient facility is afforded for real improvement by virtuous means. The common disquisitions about the value of stability in governments, like those about the sacredness of forms, are frequently founded in inaccurate views. What confusion, it is exclaimed, and what anarchy and commotions would follow, if we were at liberty continually to alter political constitutions! But it is forgotten that these calamities result from the circumstance that constitutions are not made easily alterable. The interests which so many have in keeping up the present state of things make them struggle against an alteration; and it is this struggle which induces the calamities, rather than any thing necessarily incidental to the alteration itself. Take away these interests, take away the motives to these struggles, and improvements may be peacefully made. Yet it must be acknowledged that to take away these interests is no light task. We must once again refer to "the present condition of mankind,” and confess that it may be doubted whether any community would possess a stable or an efficient government, if no interests bound its officers to exertion. To such a government patronage is probably at present indispensable. They who possess patronage, and they who are enriched or exalted by its exercise, array themselves against those propositions of change which would diminish their eminence or their wealth. And I perceive no means by which the existence of these interests and their consequent operation can be avoided, except by that elevation of the moral character of our race which would bring with it adequate motives to serve the public without regard to honours or rewards. It is however indisputably true, that these interests should be as much as is practicable diminished; and in whatever degree this is effected, in the same degree there will be a willingness to admit those improvements in the form of governments which prudence and wisdom may prescribe. "Let no new practice in politics be introduced, and no old one anxiously superseded, till called for by the public voice."* The same advice may be given respecting the alteration of forms; because alterations which are not so called for may probably fail of a good effect from the want *Godwin: Pol. Just. v. ii. p. 503. This doctrine is adverse to that which is quoted in the first page of this chapter, where to be able to provide for mere physical wants is stated to be a sufficient qualification for the reception of an entirely new system of politics. |