culties of language, by so treating a 'novum verbum' as to render it'notum.'

The scientific use of a term (Dr. Whewell remarks) is in all cases much more precise than the common use. The loose notions of velocity and force, for instance, which are sufficient for the usual purposes of language, require to be fixed by exact measures when these are made terms in the science of mechanics. This scientific fixation of the meaning of words is to be looked upon as a matter of convention, although it is in reality often an inevitable result of the progress of science.

Hence, it is no

valid objection to a scientific term, that the word in common language does not mean exactly the same as in its scientific use.'(28) As observation is rendered more accurate and more extensive, and as a science advances, new relations of classes are perceived, and a demand arises for a sharper and more salient outline of ideas than existed before. The popular use of words is always loose and unfixed; when they are adopted into the language of science, some deviation from the common usage is inevitable; or rather it is necessary to collect the scattered rays of popular speech into one focus, and to give it a definite circumscription. But if, as in the case just mentioned, we confine the term monarchy strictly to all governments in which one is sovereign, and if we extend the term republic to all governments in which a body is sovereign, we do not depart widely from the customary acceptation, and still less from the original and etymological meaning of these terms; we merely fix it with precision, according to the limits of the class which best fits it for scientific investigation. In fact, we merely follow out the classification recognised by popular usage itself, in the opposition between despotisms and free governments.(2)

(28) Ib. p. lxix. Speaking of technical terms, Dr. Whewell elsewhere says: It is in a great measure by inventing such terms that men not only best express the discoveries they have made, but also enable their followers to become so familiar with these discoveries, and to possess them so thoroughly, that they can readily use them in advancing to ulterior generalizations.'-Phil. of Ind. Sciences, vol. i. p. 50.

(29) Tacitus speaks of absolute monarchy and liberty as two things

The words with the required to express,

It is by the process just described that the technical vocabulary of political economy has been formed. nearest significations to those which it was were selected from the current language of men of business, in the different dealings of life, and were defined in the senses which suited the scientific discussions into which they were to enter. Hence, such words as money, credit, currency, capital, rent, profit, wages, labour, production, &c., received technical meanings, resembling, but not identical with, their popular acceptation; and were thus adapted for precise argument. (3) The merits of the English writers in this important service have been candidly recognised by the Continental economists; and the technical language which they have established has facilitated and directed economical reasoning throughout the civilized world. (31)

The rule that no two technical terms ought to be synonymous, is pretty constantly observed in the mathematical and physical sciences. A mathematician has only one name for a triangle, a sphere, a circle, or a parabola; a writer on mechanics has only one name for a lever, an inclined plane, or a pendulum ; an astronomer has only one name for latitude and longitude, for

6

naturally incapable of co-existence: Quamquam, primo statim beatissimi sæculi ortu, Nerva Cæsar res olim dissociabiles miscuerit, principatum ac libertatem.'-Agric. 3.

Essa (la libertà) può esistere con due consoli in Roma, con dieci arconti in Atene, con due re in Sparta, coll' aristocrazia in Venezia, colla democrazia a Firenze, con uno statolder in Olanda, con un re in Inghilterra, con un presidente temporario in America.'-Pecchio, Storia dell' Economia Pubblica in Italia, p. 15. None of the governments here referred to are absolute monarchies.

Montesquieu (Esprit des Lois, xi. 2) says, that liberty is generally assigned to republics, but excluded from monarchies. Limited or constitutional monarchies, however, are usually considered free govern

ments.

(30) See Senior's Definitions of Terms in Political Economy, appended to Whately's Logic; Malthus, Definitions in Political Economy, 1827; also Ganilh, Dictionnaire d'Economie Politique, Paris, 1826, 1 vol. 8vo.

(31) Ce sont les Anglais qui ont le mieux défini les mots, production, capital, concurrence, credit, et une foule d'autres non moins importants. Ils ont créé une nomenclature, qui a fini par être adoptée par tous les économistes de l'Europe, et qui servira de point de départ à leurs travaux futurs.'-Blanqui, Histoire de l'Economie Politique, tom. ii. p. 311.

declination and right ascension; the geometer in investigating the properties of the conic sections, and the astronomer in describing the orbits of the planets, does not speak sometimes of an ellipse, and sometimes of an oval, in order to avoid an inelegant repetition of the same word. In politics, however, owing to the fluctuating character of its vocabulary, and to the variety of the languages which have contributed to its formation, there are many terms which are used as nearly synonymous with one another. Thus, as we have already remarked, a king is called indifferently a monarch or a sovereign, and his power is designated by such emblematic words as crown, sceptre, and throne. Again, if monarchy is restricted to its proper sense of absolute monarchy, it becomes synonymous with despotism; and if republic is used to include all states in which the supreme power is shared by several, it becomes synonymous with free government.

Words which are adopted into the scientific vocabulary from common use in one language, may be introduced into another as original technical terms. Such words as aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, despotism, administration, convention, stipulation, ambassador, diplomatic service, belong to this class; (3) and they have currency throughout the entire civilized world. When, however, different languages do not borrow their technical terms from one another, or from a common source, but each form their own technical terms by appropriation from popular use, then questions arise as to the equivalence of the corresponding terms in different languages. Thus, the words vóuoc,-jus, lex,-diritto, legge,—droit, loi; recht, gesetz, and law, correspond, with a general agreement, but with certain shades of difference. The three terms, knpvž, legatus, and ambassador, in its several modern forms, likewise correspond in a similar manner. Such sets of terms as Baoilɛùç, rex, re, roi, könig, king; ẞaoidis, regina,

(32) Gibbon remarks, with reference to technical terms in medicine, that many words that are now scientific were common and popular in the Greek idiom.'-Decl. and Fall, c. 43, note.

reine, königin, queen; comes, with its derivatives, conte, conde, and comte, graf and earl, may be considered as equipollent, and are treated as such in translating from one language to another. The names of the degrees of naval and military rank, as marshal, general, colonel, major, captain, lieutenant; admiral and captain, &c., are accepted as equivalents in nearly all modern languages ; but the German replaces colonel and captain with obrist and hauptmann. Nevertheless, such names of offices, though acknowledged as equivalents for the convenience of description, do not designate any constant idea.

In

Sometimes ancient terms adopted into the modern political vocabulary have been deflected from their classical signification. Thus, the term jus gentium, which was used by the Romans to signify principles of jurisprudence common to the law of many nations, has been in modern times used to signify the rules which regulate the intercourse of different nations; a confusion of meanings which has not been without its influence upon the treatises of Grotius and Puffendorf, and their followers. like manner the Greek word rúpavvos, Latinized into tyrannus, designated an absolute prince, who had acquired his power by usurpation and violence.(*) Cromwell and Napoleon afford examples of the class of rulers whom the Greeks designated by this name; and the Roman emperors were properly a series of Túpavvoi, concealed, at first, under a constitutional disguise. The king of Persia was not called by the Greeks a rúpavvoc, because, though his power was despotic, he ruled according to the laws and customs of the country. The Greeks never applied the term to any aristocratic or democratic government

(33) Speaking of Miltiades, Nepos says (c.8): Nam Chersonesi omnes illos quos habitarat annos, perpetuam obtinuerat dominationem, tyrannusque fuerat appellatus, sed justus. Non erat enim vi consequutus, sed suorum voluntate, eamque potestatem bonitate retinuit. Omnes autem et habentur et dicuntur tyranni, qui potestate sunt perpetuâ in eâ civitate quæ libertate usa est.'

If any one rules through deceit or violence, this is thought a rupavvís,' says Aristot. Pol. v. 10. It is sufficiently known, that the odious appellation of tyrant was often employed by the ancients to express the illegal seizure of supreme power, without any reference to the abuse of it."Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. 10 (vol. i. p. 357).

except metaphorically; as when they compared the Athenian empire over the subject-states to a rupavvic. In modern languages, however, tyranny signifies any harsh and oppressive exercise of political power; and the government of a body may as properly be called tyrannical as the government of one.

§ 6 When a word, taken from common use, has been engrafted into the technical vocabulary of politics, and has thus received a tolerably precise meaning, there are numerous influences at work to untechnicalize it; to blur the distinct outline which philosophy has drawn; to obliterate the landmarks which a long litigation between learned disputants has settled; and to counteract the dispensations of the scientific god Terminus. One of these is the circumstance above adverted to, that a technical word formed in this manner does not cease to be a common word, and as it necessarily occurs much oftener in popular than in scientific discussion, there is a constantly-renewed tendency to a relapse. Like an animal imperfectly domesticated, a technical term of this sort in politics is perpetually in danger of losing its refinement, and of reverting to a state of wildness. This is owing to the weakness of the scientific authority, and to the consequent force of the popular voice in political questions. Until there is more agreement than exists at present among scientific writers on politics, the standard of authority is subject to dispute, and is imperfectly recognised: hence there is, in a certain class of political terms, a constant gravitation from their technical orbit to the popular medium whence they had their origin. Such is not the case with technical terms in the physical sciences, which originate in the same manner. In these, (owing to the general agreement of men of science,) the scientific authority is paramount; there is no tendency in technicalized common terms to degenerate into their primitive meaning; but there is a perpetual reference to the new and precise canon of interpretation. Thus, the words heart, spine, brain, lungs, veins, nerves, bone, lion, cat, dog, wolf, &c., as used by the comparative anatomist, are interpreted by his standard, which is perpetually passing into general use, and supplanting the popular standard. For instance,