THEORY OF POLITICS: AN INQUIRY INTO THE FOUNDATIONS OF GOVERNMENTS, CAUSES AND PROGRESS OP POLITICAL REVOLUTIONS- BY RICHARD HILDRETH, AUTHOR OF " THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA," ETC. NEW YORK : HARPER & BROTHERS, 329 & 331 PEARL STREET. 1854. - Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by RICHARD HILDRETH, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. THEORY OF POLITICS Bi-utus. Another general shout I I do believe thnt these applauses are For some new honors that are heaped on Cwsar. Camus. Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world lake a Colossus ; and we petty men Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves dishonorable graves. Men at some time ore masters of their fates : The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, lint in ourselves, that we are underlings. Brutus and Caesar I What should be in that Caesar ? Why should that name be sounded more than yours ? Write them together, youra is as fair a name ; Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well ; Weigh them, it is as heavy ; conjure with them, Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Ca?sar. Now, in the name of all the gods at once, Vixm what meat doth this our Caesar feed, That he is grown so great ? JULIUS C.ESAB, acti. sc. 2. ADVERTISEMENT. THE following treatise, substantially as it now appears, was composed about twelve years ago. The views it contains having been confirmed in the author's mind by subsequent reading and re- flection, it is now published, with a few alterations and additions, principally suggested by occurrences since the date of its original composition. The THEORY OF WEALTH referred to in it, and forming a necessary part of the design, was written at the same time. Should a demand for it be in- dicated by the reception of the present volume, it will speedily be forthcoming. The author specially commends this treatise to the attention of such critics as have complained that his History of the United States has no " phi- losophy" in it. R. H. BOSTON, January 31, 1853. 1* (5) CtNTENTS. PART FIRST. ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL POWER. CHAPTER I. THE POLITICAL EQUILIBRIUM CALLED GOVERNMENT. SECTION PAGB 1. Various Forms under which this Political Equilibrium pre- sents itself, 13 2. Forces which produce a Political Equilibrium, 16 3. Means whereby a Political Equilibrium is sustained or over- turned, 23 4. Anarchical Logical Results of the Metaphysical Theory of Natural Human Equality, 26 5. Proposed Inquiry into and Analysis of the Particular Sources of Political Authority, 29 CHAPTER II. PRIMARY ELEMENTS OP POWER, OR INTRINSIC SOURCES OF INEQUALITY. 1. Muscular Strength, 31 2. Skill, Dexterity, or Art, 33 3. Sagacity, 35 4. Force of Will 36 5. Knowledge, 37 6. Eloquence, 44 7. Virtue, 46 vii Vlll , CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. SECONDARY ELEMENTS OF POWER, OR EXTRINSIC SOURCES OP INEQUALITY. A 1. Wealth, 49 2. Traditionary Respect, 54 3. The Idea of Property in Power, 5.5 4. Influence of Mystical Ideas, 56 5. Combination, 63 6. Aggregation, 68 7. Illustration from the Hiad, 69 PART SECOND. FORMS OF GOVERNMENT AND POLITICAL REVOLUTIONS. CHAPTER I. COMMENCEMENT OF ORGANIZED GOVERNMENT. 1. Communities in which there is no Organized Government, . 71 2. Causes which lead to the Establishment of an Organized Gov- ernment War, 73 3. Accumulation of Wealth, 7., 4. Influence of Mystical Ideas, 78 CHAPTER II. DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF THE ORIGINAL MONARCHY. 1. Limited Extent of the Embryo Monarchy, . . . . . . . 81 2. Passage from the Hunter to the Shepherd State. Commence- ment of the Accumulation of Wealth, 82 3. First Effect of this Change Increase of Paternal Authority, 82 4. Second Effect Introduction of Domestic or Chattel Slavery, 84 5. Third Effect Introduction of Organized Government, . . 85 CONTENTS. lx 6. Extension given by Agriculture to Chattel Slavery, .... 86 7. Influence of Mystical Ideas a Substitute for Chattel Slavery. Mystical Form of Social Slavery, 87 8. The Chieftain becomes^, King, 88 9. Extension of the Original Kingdom by Conquest 89 10. Contact of Shepherd Kingdoms with Agricultural States, . 91 CHAPTER III. OLIGARCHIES, ARISTOCRACIES, TYRANNIES, SECONDARY MONARCHY. 1. Circumstances under which a Higher Political Development becomes possible, / 97 2. Illustrations from Grecian History. The Primitive Greek Kingdoms, 98 3. Greek Oligarchies, Aristocracies, Democracies, Tyrannies, . 99 4. Greek Revolutions. Secondary Monarchy, 102 5. Illustrations from Roman History, 104 CHAPTER IV. REVOLUTIONS OF MYSTICAL GOVERNMENTS, . . . 108 /* CHAPTER V. DISTRIBUTION AND DIVISION OF AUTHORITY. MIXED FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 1. State of Things that attended and followed the Downfall of the Roman Empire. Serfdom substituted for Chattel Slavery, Ill 2. Origin and Character of the Feudal System, 114 3. Monarchy as an Element in the Feudal System, 115 4. The Power of the Clergy as an Element in the Feudal System, 117 5. The Feudal Age Municipalities. Their Freedom from Chat- tel Slavery. Origin and Fundamental Ideas of Modern Democracy, 119 X CONTENTS. G. Laboring Mass of the People. Approach, during the Feudal Times, to the Introduction into Europe of the System of Castes, 124 7. Development, in the Feudal Times, of Jhe Idea of a Mixed Government, 125 8. Mutual Relations of the Several Orders during the Feudal Times, 127 9. Else and Progress of the Political Power of the Legal Body, 129 10. Distribution of the Functions of Government. Subdivisions of Authority, 134 CHAPTER VI. DELEGATED AND REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORITY. 1. Delegation of Power in Monarchies, 137 2. Delegated Authority in Republics. Representation, . . . 138 CHAPTER VII. PROCESS BY WHICH DEMOCRACIES ARE TRANSFORMED INTO ARIS- TOCRACIES, OLIGARCHIES, TYRANNIES, AND SECONDARY MON- ARCHIES, 142 CHAPTER VIII. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PATRICIAN AND Crvic ARISTOCRACIES. 1. Comparison of Civic and Patrician Aristocracies, .... 148 2. Wealth as an Element of Power. Moneyed Form of Social Slavery, 151 CHAPTER IX. ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS' FROM HISTORY. 1. What we call Universal History, 158 2. Ancient Period, 162 3. Middle Period, 166 4. Modern Period, 168 CONTENTS. XI PART THIRD. GOVERNMENTS IN THEIR INFLUENCE UPON THE PROG- RESS OF CIVILIZATION, AND UPON HUMAN HAPPINESS IN GENERAL. CHAPTER I. DEFINITION OF THE TERMS LIBERTY, SLAVERY, AND CIVILIZATION, 227 CHAPTER II. EFFECTS OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF GOVERNMENT. 1. Test of the Degree in which Governments inflict Pain, . . 232 2. Operation of Governments founded upon Conquest, . . . 234 3. Of Tyrannies, or Governments supported by Mercenary Standing Armies, 237 4. Of Theocracies, 239 5. Of Governments based on Hereditary Respect and the Idea of Property in Power, 243 6. Of Civic Aristocracies, 244 7. Of Mixed Governments, 249 8. Of Democracies, 251 CONCLUDING CHAPTER. HOPES AND HINTS AS TO THE FUTURE, . . . 267 THEORY OF POLITICS. PART FIRST. ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL POWER. CHAPTER I. THE POLITICAL EQUILIBRIUM CALLED GOVERNMENT. SECTION FrasT. Various Forms under which this Political Equilibrium presents itself. CASTING our eyes over the world with special at- tention to its human inhabitants, we find men every where, a few savage tribes excepted, living together under distinctly-organized forms of government, which, though, upon a close inspection, exceedingly various, are yet capable of being all arranged under a few general heads. 1. In a large number of communities, we see the entire legislative, judicial, and executive authority vested in a single individual, by whom it is exercised cither in person or by deputies of his own independ- ent selection. This general form, called Monarchy, admits, however, of numerous varieties, as well in 2 13 14 THEORY OF POLITICS. the extent of authority as in the grounds upon which that authority appears to rest. In some states, it is sustained by a standing army, or by a powerful mili- tia of devoted followers, who look up to the ruler as their military chieftain. In others, the monarch is revered either as an incarnate God, or else as God's chosen deputy and appointed earthly vicegerent. The power of some monarchs appears to rest on genea- logical traditions, transmitted with religious care, and received with implicit faith, according to which they represent the person and inherit the authority of some mystic ancestor, from whom the whole community traces its descent ; the power of such monarchs par- taking largely of a paternal, and their subjects' sub- mission of a filial character. Other monarchical rulers seem to owe their position, entirely or chiefly, to their superior courage, activity, sagacity, or eloquence ; sometimes to superior wealth ; sometimes to the re- spect or favor inspired by benefits, or supposed bene- fits, conferred upon the community. In very many other cases, several or all of these sources of authority combine to elevate the ruler to his station of monarch. 2. There is to be observed a small number of states, in which the form of government is not a monarchy, but an Oligarchy ; some three, four, ten, or a hundred persons sharing between them the control of public affairs. But this form is far from common, since it tends constantly to pass either into a monarchy or into that form next to be described. 3. This third form of government is that called Aristocracy; the administration of affairs being vested in a larger, but still a limited number, who, or a ma- jority of whom, appoint the magistrates, make the THE POLITICAL EQUILIBRIUM. 15 laws, and decide all cases, criminal and civil, either in person or by deputies whom they select. 4. There is still a fourth form of government, called Democracy, in which the right to legislate and to judge, as well as the appointment of executive magis- trates, who hold their offices for limited terms, rests with the majority of the male inhabitants of mature age, or with persons whom that majority, immedi- ately or mediately, appoints and displaces. But besides these differences of form, there are other differences to be noted, not less obvious, and still more essential. What has been already observed of monarchy is also true of the other forms of gov- ernment. In some states, authority is great, and submission entire ; while, in others, both authority and submission are exceedingly limited. In some govern- ments, all acts of authority are exercised according to certain fixed rules, called Laws ; while, in others, every thing almost seems to depend upon the temporary judgment or caprice of the ruling power, or its depu- ties. In some states, all the subjects stand upon a level of equality ; in others, they are arranged in ranks and orders. Turning from the present to the past, and reviewing such fragments as remain to us of the history of man- kind, we find in all ages and countries sufficient coin- cidence in the forms and varieties of governments to show that those forms and varieties must every where have been determined by the same general laws. And the same is true of the changes which govern- ments undergo, passing from one form to another, or from one variety to another of the same form, some- times by processes so slow and quiet as to be almost 16 THEORY OF POLITICS. imperceptible, sometimes by sudden and violent revo- lutions. To him who with his mind's eye runs over this various scene the question cannot but forcibly recur, What is it that causes governments to exist ? Whence the various revolutions which they undergo ? What are those sources of power, those elementary for from the balance of which springs that political equi- librium which we call Government, and from the dis- turbance and overturn of which arises what we call Revolution, ending, in its turn, by producing a new equilibrium, a new government, itself again liable to new disturbances, producing new revolutions and new governments, and so on in apparently endless succession ? SECTION SECOND. Forces which produce a Political Equilibrium. WHEN we come to scrutinize and to classify the motives by which human actions are impelled, there appears among the number one of very obvious and general operation, which may easily serve to account for the existence of governments, so far, at least, as those who govern are concerned. This motive is, the Pleasure of Superiority that pleasure which men feel, not merely in the acknowledgment by others of their superiority, but in the practical exercise of it ; an impulse of mighty moment in human affairs, great and small. In its political operation, this motive is com- monly known by the term Ambition ; and this motive it is which constantly supplies such a host of candi- THE POLITICAL EQUILIBRIUM. 17 dates for every dignity, from the paltriest village magistracy up to the stations of prime minister or king candidates who, in spite of the cares and vex- ations which such positions generally involve, are ready to incur expenses and obligations, to labor night and day, and even to submit to manifold humiliations, to obtain them. This sentiment, however, is far from being suffi- cient to account, by itself, for the phenomenon of gov- ernment ; since, by the very same force with which it impels men to seek the position of governors, it im- pels them also to avoid and escape from the position of subjects. Here, indeed, we discover the chief cause, the motive power, of all politicalre volutions a cause always active, and which, unless repressed by other more potent causes, or provided with some safer and more limited field of exercise, will be forever pro- ducing revolutions, or, if not revolutions, rebellions, anarchy, and civil commotions. There never can, indeed, be any settled obedience or quiet submission on the part of the governed, until the pain of inferi- ority, which the position of subjects naturally tends to inspire, is counterbalanced or neutralized by the operation of other sentiments. It is not in human nature quietly to submit to any merely assumed superiority ; nor is there any basis upon which such an assumed superiority can be sus- tained for a moment, except a persuasion, well or ill founded, on the part of the* subjects, as well as on the part of the rulers, of an actual superiority on the part of those rulers a superiority either substantial and permanent in its nature, or, at least, accidental and temporary; at all events, sufficient, for the moment, 2* 18 THEORY OF POLITICS. to make it folly to attempt resistance ; such resistance, if attempted under such circumstances, being sure, or, at least, likely, to end in failure a result pretty cer- tain to make the yoke heavier. This persuasion of an actual superiority, while it inspires the rulers with fresh resolution to maintain their power, produces on the part of the governed a threefold set of motives for submission first, Fears ; secondly, Admiration ; thirdly, the Idea of the moral Duty of obedience. 1. Fears, though they relate to a more or less distant future, are yet, in their character of pains of appre- hension, for such they are, present and immediate in their operation as motives, and very potent in their influence upon human conduct. These fears are of two kinds such as may be called vain, imaginary, unfounded, and such as are reasonable and just ; and though, with the progress of intelligence, vain fears, founded on imaginary dangers, by which the conduct of the rude and ignorant is so extensively influenced, die out by degrees, yet the influence of fear, thus gradually transformed into a rational dread of future consequences comprehensively foreseen, comes to have a greater and greater influence over human action ; so that the more civilized and intelligent a community becomes, and the more complicated its social relations, the greater will be the efficacy of this motive in pro- ducing submission to any existing government. Fear, however, though multifold in its operation, (since the dread of falling under certain apprehended exercises of power will constantly prompt to submit to other exercises of it, in the hope of thus obtaining protection,) is very far from being the pillar upon THE POLITICAL EQUILIBRIUM. 19 which the authority of governments most securely rests. --"That pillar is the sentiment of Admiration, and the pleasures which that sentiment affords ; sub- sidiary to which is the moral Sentiment. 2. Over the operation of the desire of superiority, as over every other emotion, habit and the apparent possibility or impossibility of its gratification have a very powerful influence. It is only with respect to those whom we have been accustomed to regard as our equals or inferiors that this sentiment exercises its full force. As regards those whose superiority over us is unquestionable and apparently irrevocable, the pain of inferiority is felt in a very slight degree, as- suming the form of embarrassment, or what is called bashfulness ; or it may be wholly superseded and dis- placed by pleasures of Admiration. In proportion as a man, or body of men, can excite these pleasures of admiration in our minds, in that same proportion do they become objects to us of be- nevolence, and in that same proportion are we dis- posed to sacrifice our own pleasure and interest to theirs. Such is the origin of what lias been, aptly enough, termed " hero worship" that loyal and self- sacrificing devotion to the interests and wishes of political and ecclesiastical chiefs of which we see every day such striking instances, and which every where constitutes the most solid and reliable basis of power and authority. 3. It is as a subsidiary support to this great original basis of power that the idea of Duty comes in. To the reflecting mind the absolute necessity of some sort of government is sufficiently obvious so obvious, indeed, that many speculative writers have assumed 20 THEORY OF POLITICS. that government took its origin in the perception of its utility, men having deliberately established it be- cause they felt its necessity. But in this case, as in many others essential to the existence of the race, mankind have not been left to the slow deductions of reason, governments having sprung up out of the very constitution of human nature, long before men had become reflective enough to perceive their practical benefits. Yet those benefits, once perceived, and espe- cially when made the more striking by the contrast of recent commotions or civil war, come to constitute a very strong argument in favor of upholding and strengthening the hands of any such government as happens to exist, since the mere fact of its existence goes very far to prove its rightfulness and legality. For, as actual superiority on the part of the rulers constitutes the only basis upon which government can securely rest, so the might to govern must of ne- cessity carry with it the right to govern ; and in this sense, and a very important sense it is, too, Might does actually make Right. Nor, when taken with its proper restrictions, will this maxim appear so very paradoxical. Those who have the might to govern have the right to govern, but not the right to govern tyrannically. As is the case of a father with respect to his children, so all rulers are morally bound to use that power which the con- stitution of nature has put into their hands, not to the injury of others, or for their own special benefit, but for the common good of the nation the joint benefit of all concerned ; not in accordance with their own arbitrary will and pleasure, but in conformity to the higher law of moral obligation ; and every exercise THE POLITICAL EQUILIBRIUM. 21 of power of a different character, from whomsoever it may come, is, and always will be, none the less, on that account, tyrannical and wicked. Yet every mere abuse of power is by no means to be made an excuse for attempts at the overturn of existing governments, which can be justified only by some fair prospect of success, and of the substitution of a better one in the place of that overturned. And, as actual success affords the best proof in fact, the only satisfactory proof that the enterprise was not rashly undertaken, hence does it mainly depend upon the ultimate result, whether the leaders in such under- takings sink into obloquy as unsuccessful rebels, or rise to renown as patriotic heroes. Thus, in the Christian theology as set forth in Mil- ton's great poem, the right of God to govern, and the duty of men and angels to obey, are made to rest upon the power of God, who is represented as having cre- ated men and angels solely for his own pleasure and glory ; while the guilt of Satan's rebellion grows out of the hopelessness of it. In the heathen mythology, on the other hand, Jupiter dethrones his father, Sat- urn, and becomes his rightful successor. His might makes and proves his right. In all cases, historical as well as mythological, an authority or possession de facto, if it continue to be maintained, soon passes into an authority or posses- sion de jure. The maintenance of it proves the might, and the might proves the right. Nor, indeed, is any very great length of time necessary to produce that rd'cot. Robespierre, having been able to maintain UK- sovereign authority for less than a twelvemonth, is rfM orally regarded as a usurper and tyrant ; while 22 THEORY OF POLITICS. Bonaparte, by holding it for sorn^ fourteen years, passes, with many of these very same persons, into the rank of a legitimate sovereign. Yet, while the moral sentiment thus contributes so powerfully to the sustentation of existing govern- ments, nevertheless there are cases, the governors grossly disregarding the higher law of moral obliga- tion, and obviously employing their power in total disregard of the public interests, and for the sole ben- efit of themselves and their favorites, the prospect also appearing of a beneficial change, in which that same moral sentiment which before prompted obedi- ence becomes one of the strongest impulses to resist- ance to authority. Nor ought we wholly to omit from the list of sec- ondary motives which may*cooperate in the minds of governors, in conjunction with the sentiment of supe- riority, to prompt to exercises of power this same moral sentiment ; since it is certainly possible that power may be sought and used as a means of grati- fying the sentiment of benevolence by conferring fa- vors on those whom we love within which purview may possibly be included the great body of the com- munity ; though, in general, the limits of the benevo- lence of the governing power are apt to be a good deal more narrow, and this motive itself, whatever the sphere of its operation, to be much more ostenta- tiously put forward than facts will warrant. A far more effectual secondary motive is, on the part of ilu> rulers or those seeking to become such, the Desire of Wealth, since political power furnishes to those who possess it the means in general, pretty effectual of securing to themselves for the most part at the THE POLITICAL EQUILIBRIUM. 23 expense of the governed wealth and all that mass of pleasures which wealth is able to procure ; and hence the compound influence of all those sentiments which wealth is able to gratify commonly unites with the love of superiority to impel those who govern to retain and to extend their power. But, as this desire of wealth on the part of the governors can, for the most part, only be gratified at the expense of the governed, this same desire of wealth operates with a corresponding impulse on the governed to impel them to resist the authority of governors, when it is obviously exercised for their impoverishment. Hence the common observation, that subjects feel most acutely through their pockets ; and hence it has happened, though many other acts of government have a much more certain and perma- nent tendency to the national impoverishment than a mere increase of taxes, yet, as taxation has that effect most palpably to the vulgar mind, that so many fa- mous political revolutions have originated, or, rather, have taken a start from the imposition of new taxes. SECTION THIRD. Means whereby a Political Equilibrium is sustained or overturned. WHENEVER the mutual play of the forces enumer- ated in the preceding chapter has resulted in the establishment of any given political equilibrium, or sysfcin of government, one of three things must of necessity follow. 24 THEORY OF POLITICS. 1. The motives by which the governed are prompted to submit to authority form an exact counterbalance to those which prompt them to resist in which case, so long as the governors attempt no new stretch of authority, the subjects quietly obey ; but should the governors attempt to increase their power, to which all governors are under constant temptation, in de- fault of some new motive to prompt to submission, these attempts will be met and resisted. Often, in- deed, from the very circumstance that such resistance is foreseen and dreaded, no sucU attempts will be made, governors, whenever the potency of their au- thority begins to be questioned, being liable to fall under the influence of fear equally with the governed. This supposed condition of things is that of a sta- tionary political equilibrium a government and state of society steady and unchanging. Among political speculatists of former times, from Plato downward, it has been a great object to discover the secret of such a stationary political equilibrium ; but, like many other secrets for which men have anxiously sought, it is, most likely, a mere chimera of the fancy, which, were it discoverable, it would by no means be desira- ble to put into practice. So far as our information extends, no instance ever actually occurred of such a stationary political equilibrium, though a pretty near approach to it has been made by some theocratic governments. 2. Or, secondly, the motives, on the part of the mass of the community, which prompt to obedience being stronger than those which prompt to resistance, the governors, impelled, as they constantly are, by the love of power to increase their authority, go on in- THE POLITICAL EQUILIBRIUM. 25 creasing it, till, by the new intensity thus given to the pain of inferiority on the part of the governed, resist- ance is roused, the encroachments of the governors are checked, and the equilibrium is restored. 3. Or, what, under such circumstances, is much more likely to happen, a movement takes place in the opposite direction ; the result being that third case, in which, the motives that prompt to obedience on the part of the governed being inferior in force to those that prompt to resistance, a resistance, greater or less, is steadily opposed to the authority of the government. This resistance is of two degrees that which is called unarmed, passive, and sometimes moral resist- ance, consisting in complaints, reproaches, petitions, and the refusal to aid in enforcing the laws ; and that which is the same in its origin, substantial nature, and tendency, though different in degree, violent and armed resistance, active opposition to the enforcement of the laws. Unarmed resistance, if sedulously persevered in, produces often, by a gradual modification in the form and character of the government, revolutions in no respect the less complete and entire because they take place by almost imperceptible degrees. Armed resistance is exhibited in revolts, coups d'etat, and civil wars, producing sudden and violent changes. Some lovers of liberty, but, at the same time, lovers of peace and social order, have attempted to draw a distinction between armed and unarmed resistance, as though the one were a lawful and commendable re- sort, and the other not. And doubtless, in what are called constitutional forms of government, ; govern- ments, that is, in which the right of the governed to resist by certain peaceful means, and to attempt to 3 26 THEORY OF POLITICS. modify the action and even the spirit and form of the government, is admitted, this distinction is sound and just. Nor, indeed, is armed resistance often re- sorted to, at least by any spontaneous impulse on the part of considerable masses of the people, however it may be with ambitious individuals and those acting under their influence, except where unarmed resist- ance is prohibited, or has been tried to no purpose. Unfortunately, there have been, and are, in the world, very few governments in which the right of passive or unarmed resistance is acknowledged. By most gov- ernments, such resistance is considered and treated as no better than open rebellion, which thus becomes the sole resource of oppressed subjects. SECTION FOURTH. Anarchical Logical Result of the Metaphysical Theory of Natural Human Equality. IT would appear, from the preceding review of the circumstances under which political equilibria that is to say, systems of government are established, overturned, and reestablished, that the secondary mo- tives to wit, the moral sentiment and the desire of wealth which impel to the exercise of power are precisely the same secondary motives which impel to resistance to it. And as the primary motive to wit, the love of superiority which leads men to seek power, and to resist the exercise of it over them, is also the same, and as the motive of fear, all other things being equal, would operate equally upon both THE POLITICAL EQUILIBRIUM. 27 sides, we should have, but for a sense of actual supe- riority on the one side, and of inferiority on the other, such a complete counterbalance of impulses as would not allow, to be either attempted or submitted to, any steady exercises of power, such as we see going on every where around us. Such being the case, we have no occasion to won- der that, among those who have adopted the meta- physical theory of the natural equality of men, the idea has been started of the possible existence of society, not only without laws and without govern- ment, but without any exertion of power by men over each other. Indeed, there have not been wanting some very refined speculators upon morals and poli- tics, who have boldly advanced the opinion that the abolition of governments, and, indeed, of all control and authority, is not only possible, but a thing practi- cally to be aimed at ; though none of these persons seem to have attained to any very distinct idea of the condition necessary to the existence of such a state of society. That condition evidently is, not only a perfect equality in all respects, an equality assumed as the natural state of the human race by the metaphysical theory above alluded to, but, in addition, the per- ception and admission of that equality by every mem- ber of the community, not merely as a theoretical possibility, but as an actual present fact. As, under such circumstances, injurious exercises of power would not take place, or would be instantly repelled and punished, remedial exercises of power from .a source exterior to the injured individual would not be needed, and the necessity for government would be superseded at the same time with its possibility. 28 THEORY OF POLITICS. But where such an equality neither exists nor is believed in, every where, that is, in the world of fact, past and present, where there is an apparent and admitted inequality, not only does the motive of fear preponderate on the side of those who see themselves inferior, to produce, on their part, yielding and submission, but the perception of that inferiority produces in their minds the moral sentiment of the duty of submission so long, at least, as those in authority conform themselves, in the exercise of it, to the supereminent law of moral obligation ; while, at the same time, the contemplation of their admitted superiority gives rise to pleasures of admiration, such as tend to make obedience not a duty merely, but a delight also, and that independently of moral consid- erations. Under these influences, governments, even very oppressive governments, come to be regarded, even on the part of the subjects, not as necessary evils to be submitted to, and at the same time to be re- duced within the narrowest possible limits, such as the theorists of equality would represent government always to be, even under its best estate, but rather as an ordinance of God and nature, as much so as the change of seasons or the necessity of labor, attended, indeed, by some inconveniences, but still beneficent and fruitful in good ; at all events, an inevitable law to which society must conform itself. THE POLITICAL EQUILIBRIUM. 29 SECTION FIFTH. Proposed Inquiry into and Analysis of the Particular Sources of Political Authority. To ascertain with distinctness the precise sources of authority, their extent, and natural limits, and par- ticular methods of operation, it becomes necessary to inquire what those things are with respect to which, or by reason of which, there exists an inequality among men, intrinsic or extrinsic, and which, accord- ingly, by giving rise to pains of fear and to pleasures of admiration, prevent the motives which impel to resistance from attaining a force equal to that of the motives which impel to the exercise of authority ; in consequence of which a perfect equality, and with it the non-existence of government, are nowhere to be found ; but submission on the one side, and authority on the other, always exist, constituting, when they take on an organized form, that political equilibrium which we call a government. If we find, in the course of this inquiry, that cer- tain sources of inequality exist so permanently in the constitution of man that the state of things which would render government at once impossible and un- necessary seems to be quite out of the question, for the future as well as for the present, at least till human nature itself shall have undergone some rad- ical change, we shall also find that certain other sources of inequality, hitherto and still exceedingly influential in their effects upon human society, owe their entire or chief efficacy to error or false opinion, 3* 30 THEORY OF POLITICS. and that even permanent sources of inequality are, in practice, greatly aggravated by artificial means. Learning thus to give over the dream of any such perfectibility in human nature, even under the most favorable circumstances, as will dispense with the necessity for government, we shall, however, discover that the elements of fraud, fear, and force, which now, in most governments, play so conspicuous a part, are capable of being superseded, to a great extent, if not entirely, by those of intellectual conviction and con- sent; thus purging the exercise of authority of many of the evils by which it is usually attended, and re- ducing it to the lowest degree compatible with the nature of man and the welfare of society, for the entire development of which, the joint cooperative efforts of the whole community are no less essential than the separate individual exertions of its members. PRIMARY ELEMENTS OF POWER. 31 CHAPTER II. PRIMARY ELEMENTS OF POWER, OR INTRINSIC SOURCES OF INEQUALITY. SECTION FIRST. Muscular Strength. THE first and most obvious source of inequality, foundation of authority on the one hand, and occasion of submission on the other, is inequality in MUSCULAR STRENGTH. The original and most simple kind of government is that which exists in the family, and which, under all forms of political society, still continues to exist, with but few modifications. The father of the fam- ily, unless the municipal law interfere to restrain his authority, is its absolute head, with supreme legisla- tive and judicial functions, including the power of life and death over its members. The Chinese code for- mally sanctions this extensive authority, and the old Roman law did the same. The English law restricts the authority of the father and husband to the right of moderate personal castigation, and even that right, so far as the wife is concerned, is taken away by the American law. One chief source of this originally-unlimited power on the part of the father is his superior bodily strength apparent enough as respects the children during their infancy, and, as respects the mothers of those children, sufficiently so, in the great majority of cases, for all practical purposes. 2^ THEORY OF POLITICS. Resting, in a great degree, upon his superior strength, the authority of the father naturally termi- nates with the termination of its cause. When the sons attain a strength equal to that of their father, their subjection, unless protracted by other causes, presently to, be noticed, naturally ceases, and his rule comes to an end. Though, in the savage state, the rule of the father over his family be absolute, he seldom attempts to convert his children into a source of profit. But this does not proceed from any peculiar tenderness on the part of savage fathers, so much as from the want of means or opportunity. Where the slave trade flourishes, savages do not hesitate to sell their own children ; while, in all savage and barbarous commu- nities, the females are little better than slaves, mar- riage being, in fact, a sort of purchase. Indeed, as the inferiority of women in point of strength is not temporary merely, but permanent, and as the same may be said of their relation to men as to all the primary elements of power, hence that position of inferiority which women continue to occupy, even in the most enlightened communities ; seldom obtaining, and that only in rare and exceptional instances, and, for the most part, too indirectly, any share of political power. The order of nobles in the South Sea Islands are a taller and stronger race than the common people ; and the same has been observed in many other countries. In the ancient republics, bodily strength was assidu- ously cultivated by the exercises of the paleestra, which were esteemed, and not without reason, of the greatest political importance. The exercises of the PRIMARY ELEMENTS OF POWER. 33 tournament during the middle ages, and the prepara- tions necessary for it, were precisely of a similar character. In modern times, individual bodily strength has lost the greater part of its political importance, principally from a circumstance which will presently be adverted to. Yet, even as respects individuals, a high degree of bodily vigor, the capacity to undergo labors and fatigue, is very essential to political eminence ; while strength, not individual, but combined, or aggregated, in the manner to be presently pointed out, remains, and always must remain, the ultimate support and substratum of political authority. SECTION SECOND. Skill, Dexterity, or Art. NEXT to strength, as a natural and primary source of inequality among men, may be placed inequalities of SKILL, DEXTERITY, or ART ; this being a means whereby strength is made more available, and defi- ciency of strength is supplied. Those sorts of dexterity which have the most direct and immediate reference to political power are, first, dexterity in the use of martial weapons ; secondly, dexterity in the arts tending to the production and accumulation of wealth for the possession of wealth, as we shall presently see, is a most important element of power. 1. It appears, from the history of all nations, an- cient and modern, that, whenever the supreme polit- 34 THEORY OF POLITICS. ical power is exercised by a particular class, to the exclusion of the rest of the community, except in governments resting mainly on a theocratic basis, the members of that ruling class with some slight exceptions, the origin and occasion of which will pres- ently be explained always have arms in their hands, and sedulously employ themselves in increasing by exercise their skill in the use of them. The exercises of the palaestra, and the chivalrous exercises of the middle ages, already referred to, tended to an incr< of dexterity, not less than of strength. The declama- tions against luxury, and even against literature, with which ancient writers abound, chiefly originated in the circumstance that, with the increase of refinement, the ancient games and warlike exercises, which tended to increase strength and military skill, fell into neglect ; the ruling order seeking amusement in occupations, such as music, poetry, literature, the fine arts, the refinements of the table, &c., unfavorable, by the sedentary habits which they introduced,* to warlike dexterity, no less than to bodily strength, and which tended, therefore, to undermine and to endanger the existing political equilibrium. In the highly-civilized communities of modern times, the ruling, class do not always think it necessary to be, all of them, individually skilled in arms ; but the officers of the military, on whom, in modern warfare, every thing depends, are uniformly selected from the ruling class, and make a part of it. Thus, in British India, though the armies are largely composed of native soldiers, the officers are all British. The invention of gunpowder, and the subsequent improvements in artillery and firearms, by rendering PRIMARY ELEMENTS OF POWER. 35 war not an affair of individuals, but of aggregated masses ; by placing the strong and the weak, in many respects, almost on a level ; by superseding the neces- sity at least on the part of the soldiers for con- stant exercise, inasmuch as adequate skill in the use of these arms is easily acquired ; and especially by making war an affair of science, have destroyed, to a great degree, the influence both of individual strength, and of individual dexterity in the use of arms, as elements of warlike success, and thereby of political power. 2. On the other hand, dexterity employed in the acquisition of wealth a head embracing a great va- riety of particulars, sufficient for a treatise by itself has constantly gained in importance, as, with the diminution of the influence of some other sources of authority, wealth has constantly acquired increasing importance as an element of power. SECTION THIRD. Sagacity. WE enumerate, as a third original source of ine- quality, and primary element of power, inequalities of SAGACITY, by which term we indicate the mental capacity of comprehending the position of affairs, and of perceiving the best application, under the circum- stances, of such strength and skill as may be at one's disposal. Although this inequality depends originally upon a natural difference, in different individuals, in the force of the rational and conceptive faculties, yet THEORY OF POLITICS. it is very much aggravated by position and education. And it may be stated, as a general rule, that the gov- erning class in every community will be found to enjoy very decided advantages in point of education and mental training ; or if, in any community, these advantages corne to be equally shared by the subordi- nate class, from that moment the authority of the governing order becomes very precarious. SECTION FOURTH. Force of Will. UNDER this common head we class together the temperaments or qualities of ACTIVITY, COURAGE, FORTITUDE, SELF-CONTROL, or POLICY, and PERSE- VERANCE qualities between which there exists a certain close association and intimate connection, yet which are by no means inseparable, some of them being occasionally possessed in a high degree where others are deficient. Perhaps, from this circumstance, they ought rather to be separately enumerated, as dis- tinct elements of power. Yet they mutually strength- en each other, and their just combination is essential to that resolute, and at the same time judicious vigor of action, of so much weight in all human affairs. As respects all these qualities, a certain degree of inequality originates, no doubt, in personal idiosyn- crasies. They are, in fact, very dependent on origi- nal stamina of constitution and the state of the bod- ily health. But the inequality that actually exists, especially as regards masses of men, depends very PRIMARY ELEMENTS OF POWER. 37 much, also, as in the case of sagacity, upon position and education. To a certain extent, these qualities are natural attendants upon the possession of power and that sense of superiority by which power is ac- companied ; whilst deficiency as to all of them natu- rally results from that sense of inferiority attendant upon a subordinate position. SECTION FIFTH. Knowledge. THE aphorism of Bacon that KNOWLEDGE is power has passed into a proverb. Why knowledge is power is sufficiently evident. There may be many different ways of doing the same thing, some of which require much less strength than others. These easier ways of accomplishing any given object are discovered sometimes by accident, sometimes by superior sa- gacity. Accumulated and transmitted, they form the stock of knowledge, or a part of it ; alt knowledge being either traditionary, or else the joint result o su- perior sagacity and an enlarged experience. As there are many kinds of knowledge to the possession of which personal experience is essential, hence the su- periority, in this particular, of age over youth, and hence the distinction between book knowledge, or learning, and what is called practical knowledge, or experience. Whether received by tradition or originating with ourselves, knowledge, by pointing out to us, among several means of accomplishing an object, that which 4 38 THEORY OF POLITICS. is easiest, stands often in the place both of strength and dexterity. Indeed, what is called dexterity, or art, often mainly depends upon superior knowledge. Human strength is a limited quantity, of which the total amount can only be increased by increasing the total number of individuals a process very slow and often narrowly restricted. Human knowledge is an unlimited quantity, capable of being increased often with vast rapidity, and to an indefinite extent. Thus indefinitely increased, though combined with but a limited degree of strength, it may produce an effective power of indefinite energy. Hence it is that the increase of knowledge is so generally looked to as the chief means of diminishing the evils under which the human race now suffer, and of increasing the pleasures which they may enjoy. Reading and writing are not knowledge, but they are the means of knowledge ; and by the help of the press, especially of the periodical press, they are be- coming every day more effectual and extensive in their operation. Yet, in this climbing by the ladder of the press out of the pit of ignorance, for every three steps that are taken forward, at least two steps are generally taken backward ; since reading and writing are not only means of knowledge, but means, also, hardly less potent, for the diffusion of error, which, though it be often a necessary preliminary to knowledge, is, in many of its immediate effects, even worse than ignorance. It is customary to date what is called the revival of learning in Europe from the discovery of printing. But, to trace the course of modem science, it is neces- sary to go back to a period considerably earlier to PRIMARY ELEMENTS OF POWER. 39 the introduction of the art of paper making, which, by facilitating the multiplication of books, had pro- duced very perceptible results before types were in- vented, and but for which, their invention would have been of little use. Cotton paper, the kind first used in Europe, was a precious commodity, brought from the East. The Saracens, it is said, had derived the art. of its manu- facture from China, by way of Samarcand in Tran- oxania, to which province the conquests of both the Chinese and of the Caliphs of the dynasty of the Om- maides had extended. Its use in the west was very limited, Christendom, at that period, being overcast with the deepest ignorance, and few except the clergy being able to read. But it served to supply the place of the Egyptian papyrus, for many ages previous a principal writing material, the manufacture of which appears to have ceased soon after the Mohammedan conquest of Egypt, perhaps in consequence of being superseded by the superior article of cotton paper. Towards the end of the eleventh century, some unknown inventor discovered the art of making paper from linen ; and shortly after, that manufacture be- came flourishing in Spain, whence it gradually spread into the rest of Europe. The multiplication of books was thus greatly facilitated, and the ability to read, no longer confined to the clergy, became diffused first among the wealthier inhabitants of the towns, and presently among the feudal nobility. The popu- lar dialects of Europe began now to be reduced to writing, and to be employed first as the language of poetry, then for prose fictions and histories, and finally for religious and philosophical disquisitions. Already 40 THEORY OF POLITICS. readers had become numerous, before the art of print- ing, known long before in China, was invented in Europe. Supposing it to have been hit upon at an earlier period, it might have failed to come into prac- tical use. It was not, however, till printed books became common, that the attention of the ruling classes in Europe seems to have been much attracted to read- ing and writing, as tending both to a diffusion and to an increase of knowledge, hostile as well to that limited monopoly of science as to certain unfounded opinions, which together formed the chief support of the then existing systems of political power. As a check upon these threatened results, two very different sets of preventives were, and still are, resort- ed to. 1. The first, rudest, and most obvious was dis- couraging, and, so far as possible, preventing the diffusion of the arts of reading and writing among the mass of the governed, as things of no use to them, but, on the contrary, highly dangerous and in- flammatory, tending to discontent," sedition, and revo- lution a tendency which, in many existing states of society, they certainly have, and that, too, in a very high degree. Such was the view under which the High Church party in England, down to a very recent period, so warmly opposed the diffusion of the arts of reading and writing, and of book knowledge in general, among the laboring classes of that country. But it is some of the slave states of America that have gone furthest in this direction, by laws prohibit- ing, under severe penalties, the teaching of slaves (if not, indeed, of the free colored people) to read and PRIMARY ELEMENTS OF POWER. 41 write a kind of legislation hardly to be paralleled in any other age or country. Correlative to this process as to reading, are re- straints put upon writing, or, at least, upon printing and publishing, first by the establishment of a censor- ship of the press, and, in countries in which it has been found necessary to abandon that, by criminal prosecutions for libellous, seditious, heretical, and ir- religious publications ; to which may be added limi- tations put upon the circulation of newspapers, by means of stamp taxes and other contrivances, to en- hance their expense imposed first, perhaps, merely for revenue, but kept up afterwards from political motives ; and still, throughout the whole of Europe, in full operation, even in states professing to be the freest. 2. The other method, and a much more ingenious and deeper one, was that introduced by Calvin, Knox, and other more ultra leaders of the Protestant sects, and, among the Catholics, by the Jesuits, and fully carried out by Austria and other German states, ac- cording to which the people are all to be taught to read ; to be compelled, indeed, to send their children to school ; care, however, being at the same time taken that no books or writings shall get into their hands, except such as have received the imprimatur of the government ; reading and writing being thus made in- struments for preoccupying and impressing the minds of the young with opinions favorable to the existing system thus giving new energy to those secondary elements of power, to be hereafter enumerated, de- pendent upon opinion. It is their just sense of the powerful efficacy 4* 42 THEORY OF POLITICS. of this means which has made the clergy, every where throughout Christendom, Protestant as well as Catholic, so exceedingly anxious to secure, and so tenacious to retain, the exclusive control and direc- tion of all seminaries of education, from universities down to infant schools ; and it is, in part at least, to the same cause that is due that disgraceful spectacle exhibited by the British nation, in the face of Europe, the great mass of the population being suffered to lack the very first rudiments of knowledge, for fear lest the church of England on the one hand, or the dissenters on the other, might gain or lose a portion of influence, according as the instruction of the masses in the arts of reading and writing is or is not placed under the control of the established clergy. Of these two methods of suppressing the increase and diffusion of knowledge, and of keeping the con- trol of the element of power in a few hands, the latter, as it is by far the least effectual, so it is the least pernicious in its operation. For, as has been most sagaciously remarked,* " It is one of the pecu- liarities of the human mind, thatit will ultimately derive truth even from the instruction of error ; that however carefully developed for any particular pur- pose, the development itself will go beyond that purpose. A child educated in bigotry is more likely to obtain a large perception of religious truth than a child not educated at all. It is impossible to teach ignorance, for the light that invades and illustrates at the same time dispels the darkness." * Edinburgh Eeview, No. 160, April, 1844. Custine's Russia. PRIMARY ELEMENTS OF POWER. 43 Of the relative operation of these two systems, we may observe an instructive example in the United States of America. The New England common schools were originally established chiefly for the maintenance of religious orthodoxy ; or, in the terms of the law by which they were made general, (1649,) to counteract the projects of that "old deluder, Sathan, in persuading men from the use of tongues," giving thereby the greater scope to " the false glosses of saint-seeming deceivers, in clouding the true sense and meaning " of the Scriptures. The school system was thus but a part of the machinery of the early New England theocracy, and the schools were long, and still are, very much under clerical influence. And yet the fact is unquestionable, that the free schools of New England have been the fountain whence has flowed the whole stream of American heresies, from those of Edwards down- ward ; at least all which tend, like those of Edwards, in a freethinking direction. Nor is it less certain that a freedom of speculative inquiry is beginning plainly to develop itself in that same quarter, from which, in the next fifty years, some fruits may be expected worthy of notice. In Virginia, on the other hand, which, with many points in common, may yet be considered, in Ameri- can affairs, as the antitype of New England, the other system has prevailed. In answer to certain in- quiries from England, in 1671, Governor Berkeley thanked God that Virginia' had " no free schools nor printing," and hoped she might not have for a century, since " learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, 44 THEORY OF POLITICS. and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both." The hopes of this loyal and pious governor have been, alas ! but too literally fulfilled ; and the consequence is, that Virginia, to this day, prints nothing but a few partisan news- papers, while, in activity of intellect, and freedom of speculative inquiry, and even in learning, the present generation is vastly behind that of three quarters of a century ago. There were more ideas in the head of Thomas Jefferson alone than in all Virginia at this moment. SECTION SIXTH. Eloquence. BUT sagacity, knowledge, even strength of will, are often to a great extent unavailing, unless aided by ELOQUENCE, which is the power of exciting in other men's minds conceptions, and with them pleasures, pains, and desires ; that is to say, motives of action. Eloquence is of two kinds spoken and written. Written eloquence depends entirely upon the unas- sisted power of words to call up ideas. Spoken eloquence avails itself likewise of modulation and action. But this is a subject which belongs more particularly to the theory of Taste the name em- ployed to designate a sentiment, or combination of sentiments, generally regarded as lying somewhat out of the line of ordinary life, but with a much more direct bearing upon it, and a more predominating in- PRIMARY ELEMENTS OF POWER. 45 fluence over it, than is commonly thought of, and which might well form by itself \he subject of a separate treatise. Of spoken eloquence, the clergy have, in most countries of Christendom, and indeed throughout the world, a complete monopoly. They alone are ac- customed or permitted to address promiscuous as- semblies. It is only in Great Britain, the British colonies, and the United States of America, that spoken eloquence is employed to any considerable extent for lay purposes. As to written eloquence, the freedom of the press is absolutely necessary to its complete operation, in- deed, almost to its very existence ; it being of course limited to those topics upon which freedom of expres- sion is allowed. Where it has free scope, or even a scope partially free, it is capable of producing immense effects. The eloquence of Rousseau and Voltaire occasioned results vastly greater, as well as more per- manent, than the eloquence of Demosthenes and Cicero. What, indeed, would have been the repu- tation even of those famous orators had they not been writers as well ? The restraints which have been put upon the liberty of the press have been intended not only to prevent the diffusion of knowledge, and so to keep the community ignorant, weak, and obedient ; they have aimed equally at preventing those who possess the gift of eloquence from exercising that gift, and obtaining thereby an influence which might endanger, if not upset, the existing distribution of power. The power which mere eloquence, unsupported by either 46 THEORY OF POLITICS. superior sagacity or knowledge, is able to exert, is sufficiently evinced by the fact, that of all the prod- ucts of the press, and especially of the periodical press, for one page that aims at enlightening the under- standing, there are a hundred, of which the sole object is to stimulate to action by inflaming the imagination and rousing the passions, with very little regard either to fact or reason ; and it is in this un- deniable state of the case that the most plausible arguments have been found in favor of restrictions upon the liberty of the press. SECTION SEVENTH. Virtue. THE seventh and last of the primary elements of power is VIRTUE, by which word we here intend, not those qualities, often so called, ac- tivity, courage, fortitude, policy, and perseverance hitherto enumerated, but Virtue in its proper moral sense, that compound sentiment, which prompts to the performance of disinterested actions. But, in order to become an element of political power, this sentiment, not confining itself to mere private life, must be displayed under the form called Public Spirit, or Patriotism ; that is, in conferring disin- terested benefits on the community. Hitherto this has been one of the weakest of all the elements of power ; indeed, many have denied that it is an element of power at all. The sagacious and PRIMARY ELEMENTS OF POWER. 47 keen-sighted Machiavel remarks, that he who aims at power has no need of virtue itself, but only of the appearance of it; the appearance of virtue being a help, while the reality is a mere impediment. And there is a great deal of plausibility in this observation ; for it is sufficiently certain, that while a reputation for virtue is, in many states, an essential element of power, and in all states a help, the actual possession of it proves often a great apparent stum- bling block to the attainment of political eminence. But then there are two things to be considered ; first, that sensible observation of Xenophon, in his Cyro- paedia, that the most certain means to obtain a repu- tation for virtue, is to be actually virtuous ; and secondly, that what passes as political advancement is often not so much the actual obtaining and ex- ercise of power, as it is the attaining of a certain official station and administrative dignity, power at second hand, by becoming the instrument of others ; a sort of power at the best more like that influence which an adroit and supple servant may acquire over his master, and his master's underlings, than like the power possessed by the master himself. Compare, for instance, the power of Washington one main support of which was virtue with the power of the younger Pitt, or of Canning, both men of superior genius and great accomplishments, but who threw the sternness of virtue overboard as an impediment, and so rose, indeed, to the head of affairs ; but only by becoming the conscious instru- ments of a bigoted aristocracy, which, in their secret hearts, they hated and despised, and by which they 48 THEORY OF POLITICS. were constantly thwarted, whenever they desired to act in conformity to their own more liberal ideas. It will indeed often be found, that more actual power influence, that is, over the progress of events is exerted, in free states, by those whose stubborn virtue prevents them from ever becoming heads of administration, than by those supple personages, who, under the names of chief magistrates, or prime minis- ters, are but the tools of a faction, a party, or a class. It has been no less well than wittily observed, that her majesty's opposition form a not less important and essential part of the machinery of the British govern- ment than her majesty's ministers. SECONDARY ELEMENTS OF POWER. 49 CHAPTER III. SECONDARY ELEMENTS OF POWER, OR EXTRINSIC SOURCES OF INEQUALITY. SECTION FIRST. Wealth. So obvious is the connection between the distribu- tion of power and the distribution of wealth, that the ingenious Harrington was led to maintain, in his Oceana, that WEALTH is the only just and true basis of power. That book, published in the last year o f the English Commonwealth, undertook to show, that wealth had become so diffused in England, that monarchy could never be restored. But, as Hume has remarked, the falsehood of Harrington's assump- tions, either as to facts or theory, or both, was abundantly proved by the quiet reestablishment of the monarchy within that very year. The circumstance, indeed, that political power is so generally used as a means of accumulating wealth, so that wealth and power are almost always found in company, has led to the idea of a more intimate relation between them than actually exists. Nor is there any more fruitful source of error, whether in philosophical inquiries or in the ordinary affairs of life, than the disposition to refer every effect to a single cause ; whereas almost all the phenomena of human society result from a combination, and often a very complicated combination, of causes. That wealth is 5 50 . THEORY OF POLITICS. one, and a very potent element of power, cannot be questioned; and yet history affords many instances in which power, having been originally founded upon something else, as, for example, upon muscular strength, and military skill and combination, and having, subsequently, been made a means of ac- cumulating wealth, this very accumulation of wealth, tending in its operation to weaken the original basis of the power, has proved unable to supply the defi- ciency thus occasioned, so that a new revolution has been the consequence. What Sidonius Apollinaris writes of the Vandals in Africa, Spoliisque potitus Immensis, robur luxu jam perdidit omne Quo valuit dum pauper erat, Possessed of spoils immense, Through luxury, the force was quickly lost, So potent in the poor, will equally apply to most of the barbarian invaders of the Roman empire. It was, indeed, the perception of this operation of wealth upon some of the other sources of power, especially upon muscular strength and martial skill and endurance, which led many of the ancients to look upon the increase of wealth as a positive political evil. Even Machiavel was so struck with the supe- riority of the French, Swiss, and German troops a set of hardy barbarians, like the Cossacks of the present day over the more civilized inhabitants of Italy, as displayed in the Italian wars of his time, that he was led to controvert the maxim which had become common in Italy, that money is the sinews of war, and to maintain that the true sinews of war SECONDARY ELEMENTS OF POWER. 51 were the sinews of men's arms. Yet modern ex- perience serves to confirm the truth of the Italian maxim. Why wealth is an element of power is sufficiently obvious. There are many things that cannot be done, or, more correctly, there are very few things that can be done, without a certain supply of the means of comfortably sustaining life, while the process is going on necessary to their accomplishment a process which often demands, through a protracted period, the most devoted and undivided attention. A certain degree of leisure, of freedom from the con- stantly-pressing necessity of daily labor to provide for daily wants, is essential to afford an opportunity for the primary elements of power to come into play. Besides, there are comparatively few things which can be accomplished by the mere unassisted faculties of man. Tools to operate with, and materials to operate upon, are necessary ; and the possession of these is wealth. So much for the connection between wealth and power in general. The connection be- tween wealth and political power that is, power over other men is not less obvious. He who pos- sesses the means of conferring pleasures, or inflicting pains, upon others, possesses a power over them pro- portioned to the potency of those means. Thus the rich are able to purchase up, and to appropriate to their own use, the assistance and service of strength, dexterity, sagacity, knowledge, eloquence, in fact, every one of the primary elements of power except virtue, and if not that, the appearance of it, which many times answers the same purpose. And 52 THEORY OF POLITICS. in addition to this process of aggregation, the nature and operation of which will be more fully expiated hereafter, the rich, also, from the com- parative smallness of their number, and for other reasons, possess great facilities for combination, which, as we shall presently see, is another of the secondary elements of power. There is still anotherway in which wealth operates, to no inconsiderable extent, to procure or to cor- roborate political power ; and that is, by exciting in the minds of the multitude, by a judicious display, agreeable feelings, compounded of admiration and of those pleasures arising from the perception of the beautiful and the harmonious, intermingled with that moral pleasure which arises from the contemplation of the polite and decorous, the lesser morality ; which compound pleasure the subject class derive from contemplating, at a distance and at intervals, the splendid and polished life of their superiors. Hence the shows and formalities of courts, and that pomp of dresses, equipage, and ceremonials, regarded, and not without reason, as a potent means of influencing and ruling mankind. This, surely, is one of the most innocent means of augmenting power, since it confers no inconsiderable amount of pleasure upon the admiring multitude ; but, unfortunately, it hap- pens that the admiring multitude seldom enjoys this pleasure of admiration for nothing, being made to pay for it, not only an equivalent in submission, but too often an equivalent of money also, since such shows are commonly exhibited at the public expense. It would seem, then, that wealth must always tend SECONDARY ELEMENTS OF POWER. 53 to increase, in certain very important particulars, the political power of its possessors. When it operates to diminish their power, that operation is always indirect, through the tendency of wealth, after the accumulation of it has passed a certain limit, to diminish, by the indulgences of which it furnishes the means, the strength, skill, and self-control, and even the sagacity, knowledge, and virtue, but especially the activity, courage, perseverance, and fortitude, of those who possess it. This operation is very remarkabfe, and is worthy of particular attention. All the other sources of power combine and play, as it were, into each other's hands. But when to all these sources of power great wealth is added, all those other sources being employed as means to accumulate wealth, that very wealth, thus accumulated, by the indolence and luxury to which it leads, sooner or later weakens and undermines all the other sources of power, and thus, by an operation the least expected, often produces political revolutions. This consideration, duly weighed, ought surely to diminish the rapacity of the ruling classes a ra- pacity which tends doubly to revolution ; first, by exciting violent pains of inferiority and disappoint- ment, if not pains of hunger and disease, and along with them a high degree of malevolence in the subject class ; and secondly, by producing a concentration of wealth in the hands of the ruling class, which, in the end, produces, as to them, a great diminution of the primary intrinsic elements of power, thus sac- rificing the substance to the shadow. 5* 54 THEORY OF POLITICS. SECTION SECOND. Traditionary Respect. WHERE a father, from any cause^ias been in pos- session of a high degree of power, by that law of the association of ideas which may be called the law of contiguity, men are led to expect the same qualities in his child ; and, till experience prove the contrary, and often, indeed, in spite of experience, to give the child credit for possessing them ; an association which becomes stronger as the period increases during which power has been in the family. There is com- monly, also, a certain external resemblance between fathers and children, and, indeed, between ancestors and descendants much more remote ; and that law of the association of ideas, which may be called the law of resemblance, leads us to expect a resemblance in other particulars also. Moreover, the child, growing up under the roof of its father, and being its father's well beloved, shares, from infancy, some portion of that admiration and respect which belong to the father ; so that the habit of respect and admiration becomes established long before it appears whether there is any just foundation for them or not. Upon this basis rests the influence of family, blood, descent ; an influence which has operated, and which still operates, to a very considerable extent, even in com- munities reckoned the most democratic. SECONDARY ELEMENTS OF POWER. 55 SECTION THIRD. The Idea of Property in Power. PROPERTY has been most ingeniously, and at the same time justly, denned by Bentham as merely a basis of expectation the expectation of deriving certain advantages from a thing which we are said to possess in consequence of the relation in which we stand towards it ; the idea of property consisting, not in any mere circumstances of physical control, which may be present or absent, but in the per- suasion of being able to draw such or such an advantage from the thing in question, according to its nature. Now, this idea of property this ex- pectation is just as able to attach itself to political power as to any thing else. Where the exercise of power has, for any length of time, become fixed in the hands of certain families, or in those of a par- ticular caste, or in the possessors of certain landed or other property, or even in the mere members of a certain party or religious sect, there soon springs up an expectation that this order of things will be continued. Those who have the qualification of birth, or property, or party connection, soon come to look upon office as their freehold, the possession of power as their moral right, and obedience as the moral duty of the subject class ; and this opinion is often adopted by, and exercises a powerful influence over, the subject class itself. It is doubtless true, that property in power is a sort of property detrimental to the community, and which ought not to be allowed 56 THEORY OF POLITICS. to exist. But the same is true of property in slaves, which, however, is a kind of property which has had an existence almost universal, and which still con- tinues to be very generally recognized. SECTION FOURTH. Influence of 'Mystical Ideas. WE come now to the consideration of an element of power very much overlooked by writers upon politics, but which has exercised, nevertheless, mi influence more potent and extensive, perhaps, than any, if not than all others. In a community in which mystical ideas prevail, and as they spring from obvious sources innate in man, their prevalence is universal, if any individual can succeed in persuading the rest that he is the chosen favorite and selected messenger of the Deity, it is evident that he will at once be raised to a position of infinite superiority over them, since to his other titles to power he is able to add, at least in the opinion of his associates, an opinion, for all practical pur- poses, equivalent to reality, all the attributes of Deity itself. What more calculated to subdue at once, by the combined operation of admiration and fear, all opposition ? Those governments which have exercised the most unlimited authority have all been theocracies governments, that is, of which the administrators claimed to be the special favorites, and representatives, and chosen vicegerents of the Deity ; among which number are to be reckoned SECONDARY ELEMENTS OF POWER. 57 some of the most splendid empires which the world has seen. With respect to the founders of theocratic em- pires, and others, who, without founding empires, rise, by similar means, to a greater or less degree of power of which the instances are innumerable, the hypothe- sis, which has been maintained y some writers, of pure hypocrisy and imposture on their part, (as in the noted instances of Mohammed and Cromwell,) is utterly untenable. The well-known maxim of Hor- ace, that he who would move others must first be moved himself, is perfectly applicable to these cases. For a man to be able to impress others to any extent with the idea that he has received a special divine commission to command, direct, and teach, it is es- sential that he should first persuade himself of the same thing ; which easily happens whenever an un- hesitating and zealous reception of the mystic hypoth- esis is united to a lively imagination, a contemplative disposition, and the influence of the sentiment of self- comparison, operating in an extraordinary degree upon souls to whom the paths of secular ambition do not lie open. Tacitus has set forth the true character of this remarkable class of men in three words : Fingunt simul credunlque they feign and believe simultaneously. To impress their pretended revelations upon others, mere asseveration will not suffice. They must them- selves set the example of implicit belief in their own inventions an example pretty sure to be efficacious, since there is nothing more contagious than credulity. Belief, in such cases, is, indeed, seldom or never an act of reason. So great is sometimes the fear, and sometimes the admiration, but oftener both, excited 58 THEORY OF POLITICS. in susceptible minds by the suggestion or contempla- tion of ideas adapted to affect them, that these excited emotions prompt at once to headlong action, without leaving time, capacity, or disposition to distinguish between facts and chimeras. In such cases, the bare suggestion of a doubt is resented as an injury, by those who imagine, themselves the possessors of a wonderful discovery, a special divine communication, which elevates those intrusted with it into a superior order a spiritual aristocracy. This sincerity, however, this belief in their own divine mission, on the part of these mystic leaders, so far from preventing the frequent employment, on their part, of craft, downright falsehood, and presently of force, so soon as they are in a position to resort to it, justifies, in their view, the use of any means what- ever which may seem necessary for the accomplish- ment of their purposes. He who considers himself the special agent and selected vicegerent of the Deity, and not only so, but himself able to control, at least to a certain extent, the divine actions, for to that full length go the commonly-received notions among all nations of the efficacy and power of prayer, any person possessed of these notions, and educated in that mystical theory of morals so generally prevalent, which makes the divine pleasure the foundation of all moral distinctions, very easily imagines his own will and that of the Deity to be the same, and very easily substitutes his own will, under the idea of its being the divine will, as the true foundation and actual test, for the time being, of right and wrong. Hence the power which all these mystical leaders have, to a greater or less degree, assumed of forgiving sins, SECONDARY ELEMENTS OF POWER. 59 dispensing with the moral law, and of relieving from the obligation of oaths and promises. We may observe, however, of mysticism, as of all the other secondary elements of power, that being essentially secondary in its operation, in order to become of any consequence in politics, it must be conjoined with those primary elements activity, courage, fortitude, policy, and perseverance. Disjoined from these qualities, mysticism subsides into a mere dreamy, idle, contemplative state, changing men into hermits and devotees, absorbed in prostrate and hum- ble adoration, without the hope, or, indeed, the wish, of affecting, in the slightest degree, the course of events, regarded by the mystic hypothesis as im- mediate and inevitable emanations from the divine will, which men, more inclined to reflect than to act, absorbed in admiration and awe, are too reason- ably humble to presume to wish to control. It is worthy of observation, also, that mystical founders of new sects and empires very seldom call upon their followers to disbelieve any thing. What they ask of their converts is, not to believe less, but to believe more. It was thus that Mohammed ad- mitted the truth of both Judaism and Christianity, and to a certain extent, also, of that system of pagan- ism which prevailed throughout Arabia prior to his time. Nor have Protestant critics failed to point out how the corrupt Papal church gradually absorbed and recognized all the preexisting creeds of the various countries and nations to which Christianity spread. There seems, indeed, to be very little doubt that the Orthodox view of the mystery of the Trinity, as finally settled by the decisions of the earlier general councils, 60 THEORY OF POLITICS. took its origin with speculatists who regarded Plato with little, if any, less reverence than Christ ; and it still remains a curious object of historical research, how far the doctrine of the incarnation is to be traced to the influence of Buddhist missionaries, w T ho, at or before the Christian era, appear to have penetrated towards Europe, as well as into China. What is more certain is, that, as the Christian religion spread through the Roman provinces, it not only adopted a large part of the pagan ceremonies, converting the pagan festivals into saint days, but that it admitted the whole heathen mythology, with the trifling modi- fication, that the heathen gods were not gods, but only demons, or devils ; the famous Magian doctrine of the two principles being thus employed to reconcile the pagan and Christian creeds an idea, of which Milton admirably availed himself, first in his Christ- mas Hymn, and afterwards more elaborately in the first book of Paradise Lost. As the Christian religion spread among the German and Celtic tribes, it adopted also a large part of their mythology ; and among the northern nations, at least, the doctrine of witchcraft and of fairies, derived from those sources, became so ingrafted into the Christian faith, that to ridicule or to deny the existence of witches was looked upon, down to a very recent pe- riod, as little better than atheism. In like manner, in later times, those who have at- tempted to establish new views in religion in those countries in which the Christian doctrine is generally received, as in Great Britain, Germany, and America, have admitted the supernatural origin of Christianity, and built upon it as the Quakers, the Moravians, SECONDARY ELEMENTS OF POWER. 61 the Swedenborgians, the Shakers, the Irvingites, the Mormons. In modern France, where Christianity among the educated has, in a measure, died out, the new sects, such as the St. Simonians, have attempted to build upon the prevailing system of Deism. Mystical ideas, in their influence upon politics, present themselves under three very distinct forms. First, as Superstition, that influence of mysticism which keeps those under it in a state of abject, unquestion- ing, willing submission, at the feet of those claiming to be God's vicegerents. Secondly, as Bigotry, the influence of mystical ideas over those whose superi- ority rests upon them an influence which makes them look with fear and hatred upon every thing which has a tendency to diminish the power of those ideas. Thirdly, as Fanaticism, that influence of mystical ideas which, in leading men to believe that they themselves have received a special and peculiar inspiration and commission from the Deity, induces them to set up first as religious reformers, teachers, and messengers of Heaven, and presently as founders of theocracies for, wherever the least opening for it appears, there is seldom a failure to act upon the doc- trine that the saints shall inherit the earth. Though in some points very divergent, and even hostile, yet all these operations of mystical ideas are also more or less coincident, and very easily run into each other. But if mysticism has been one of the greatest sources of inequality among men, greater, indeed, we may say, than all the other secondary elements of power combined, and, in consequence, one of the chief supports of government, it has also been, 6 62 THEORY OF POLITICS. from that same circumstance, one of the most tremen- dous agents of revolution. So long as there exists a coincidence or harmony between the religious and the political heads of a nation, superstition and bigotry are the firmest supports of the government ; and even fanaticism sometimes, as in the case to a partial extent at least of the founders of the mendicant orders in the Romish church, and of the Society of the Jesuits, may lend its powerful aid to the same side. But whenever, from any cause, this harmony is destroyed, whether by changes of opinion taking place on the part of the governors or of the governed, superstition, bigotry, and fanaticism become alike the most dangerous enemies of those in power. Thus we can easily understand how the English High Church party are such violent denouncers in Ireland of superstition and bigotry, and at the same time such zealous promoters of them in England; and also how it happens, in English history, that almost all of the enthusiasts in religion have been of the liberal party in politics. Hence, also, we may see why it is, that states governed theocratically, although the power of the governors and the submission of the governed be most unlimited, are still liable to sudden and vio- lent revolutions. For the mystical ideas upon which the political and social institutions of such states rest may, at any time, assume a fanatical operation, as frequently happens in Mohammedan states, and so may produce an entire reconstruction of the whole political fabric. SECONDARY ELEMENTS OF POWER. 63 SECTION FIFTH. Combination. THERE remain to be considered two other elements of power, which may be regarded as secondary, not only in respect to those which we have classed as primary, but also in regard to the four secondary elements already enumerated. These are COMBINA- TION and AGGREGATION, by means of which a smaller united force, acting under one head and guidance, is able to overcome a far larger force, dispersed, un- combined, and acting without concert. It is by virtue of these principles that a small band of soldiers, drilled, disciplined, and acting together, is able to keep under a vastly greater body of men dispersed, and without mutual understanding or cooperation. The increase of force gained by combination will enable us to understand why so many despotic gov- ernments take such extraordinary means to prevent and suppress combinations among their subjects ; whence have originated laws against the right of petition, laws against public assemblies, laws against associations, and a portion of the laws in restraint of the liberty of the press. A petition to the governing authority, setting forth alleged grievances and praying for redress, is not only an appeal to the moral sentiment of the governors, it is also a method of combination, a means of exhibit- ing the numerical force of the petitioners, and of making their strength known to each other, as well as to the government. Where the petitioners are very ()4 THEORY OF POLITICS. numerous, what is a petition in form may assume, in fact, the character of a rally or a threat. This is the reason why, at times, the right of petition has been denied or resisted, and why attempts have been made to suppress it by law. So long as petitions come from one only, or a few, no government ever makes any attempt to suppress the right ; on the other hand, it is rather encouraged, those who possess the political authority making a sort of ostentatious exhibition of their readiness to listen to complaints. It is only when the petitioners are numerous, when it becomes evident that there are a large number combined and acting together, that those in authority take the alarm, and attempt to defeat or abridge this privilege. The conduct of the English House of Commons, respecting petitions for parliamentary reform, in 1817 and 1818, and that of the American Congress, in 1835 and subsequently, respecting petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, afford illustrations of this fact. Much more formidable than petitions, however numerously signed, are assemblies of the people, held for the discussion of political topics. Great masses of men, thus brought together, may perhaps break out into sudden rebellion, and may employ their combined strength for the overthrow of the government. Such musters of the popular militia tend strongly to remind the people of their strength, and may prove more than a match for the standing army of the con- stituted authorities. Organized political associations are even more formidable than public meetings, because in this way a regular plan may be matured, and all the means SECONDARY ELEMENTS OE POWER. 65 may be arranged and provided, for transferring the authority of government into new hands. The ex- perience of the last sixty years has shown very fully how much may be accomplished by the combined force of affiliated clubs and organized associations. We need not wonder, therefore, at the extreme jealousy with which, in all despotic governments, all such combinations are regarded, and have been suppressed, from the period of the Roman empire downward. The liberty of the press on political topics, besides the other purposes which it serves, is also a grand means of political organization. It affords a medium where- by those having common interests and sympathies may, however scattered and separated, keep up a constant communication with each other. A news- paper is a sort of speaking trumpet, whereby the leaders of a party communicate with their followers ; directing them how to act, and stimulating their zeal and courage by constant exhortations. This circum- stance alone would be sufficient to explain the fierce hostility of so many governments to the liberty of the press. Of the effect of combination a striking instance is afforded by the "caucus system" of America. No doubt something of the same sort has existed in most democratic governments ; but, owing to the large scale on which elections are held in America, (a wide extent of territory and a large population participating often in the choice of a single officer,) it has attained there a special development. Though, by an ap- proach to universal suffrage hardly to be paralleled elsewhere, almost the entire free adult male popu- 6* 66 THEORY OF POLITICS. lation of the United States possesses the right, and nominally the equal right, to participate in the choice of legislators and magistrates, yet that selection, by a process wholly unknown to the written law, though none the less on that account a part of the system as it exists in practice, is in fact substantially determined by a very limited number. The designation of can- didates for office, whether municipal, state, or national, is assumed by certain voluntary affiliated associations, under the name of parties, as many generally as there are considerable portions of the people, taking differ- ent view* of the public interest ; and it is only by joining and acting with one of these parties, and as the candidate of it, that any body can hope to be elected to any office. These parties are led and managed, in fact constituted, by a small number of men, commonly known as politicians, who feel, or at least who profess, a special concern in the public wel- fare, which, in general, they are not at all indisposed to promote by serving the public themselves in sta- tions of honor and profit. There are, indeed, among these politicians by profession, a large number of pure mercenaries, ready to act with any party that will give them office, and anxious only to discover and to attach themselves to the strongest side, upon which side, of course, the larger part of them may be expected to be found. Each of these parties has its nominating committees, or conventions, township, city, county, district, state, and national, appointed, according to certain unwritten " party usages," by primary meetings commonly known as caucuses, which, however, are composed in general only of the more active politicians, and the action of which is SECONDARY ELEMENTS OF POWER. 67 chiefly determined by the secret contrivance and management of a still smaller number. In the con- stitution of these committees r the grossest frauds, and even open violence, are occasionally employed ; es- pecially where, by the predominancy of the party which it represents, the committee has many lucrative offices at its disposal usurpations which it is not uncommon for parties in America to submit to, as quietly and coolly as have the French people to the usurpations of the Bonapartes, and, for the sake of peace, and union against a rival faction, to confirm them too, in like manner, by their votes. By committees, or caucuses, thus constituted, all nominations to office are made ; all that is left to the body of the citizens being the choice between gen- erally not more than two individuals, neither of whom, as it often happens, would, apart from this preliminary nomination, have any special hold on the electors. The caucus system thus becomes a contrivance for the distribution of offices among men more distin- guished for intrigue than for talent, who, by mutual combination and support, and by serving each other's turns, are often raised to elevations, sometimes very high ones, to which, by their own unassisted efforts, they could scarcely have attained. Yet, while these caucus politicians thus take upon themselves the aristocratical function of dictating to the people, they play, at the same time, a democratic part, by humbling and restraining within due limits those possessors of the natural elements of power, whom the strong tendency to " hero worship," even in the most democratic communities, might otherwise be likely to^fevate to a dangerous authority. 68 THEORY OF POLITICS. So potent, however, are the natural elements of power, that even these caucus combinations are obliged to respect them, being not only made to feel the force of them in their own internal constitution and procedures, but in their nominations, also, to pay a certain respect to that inevitable admiration with which the body of the people always regard men of superior endowments, real or reputed. SECTION SIXTH. Aggregation. WHERE there is a voluntary union of strength for the accomplishment of a common object, we call it Combination. AGGREGATION is an element of power similar in its nature and effect, and still more general in its operation and influence, but differing in one important particular. In the case of combination, the parties stand upon a certain level of equality, or something approaching towards it, the combination being on their part a thing more or less voluntary, and for the mutual benefit of all the parties to it. Aggregation is where one, or a number of individuals, having established an influence and control over others, more or less com- plete, through the agency of the other elements of power, or some of them, are able, by means of that influence and control, to use the strength of those others as if it were their own, and to employ it in giving to their influence and control a still further extension. By this aggregation of power, one single SECONDARY ELEMENTS OF POWER. 69 individual as in the case of Napoleon Bonaparte may come to control an entire community, nay, a vast empire. Power has indeed a tendency to in- crease in a triplicate ratio. As it becomes greater, not only does it inspire the greater dread in those who might otherwise be inclined to resist it, but the admiration it excites and the favors it can confer both increase in the same proportion. So much indeed is the multitude disposed to admiration and reverence, so profound is the worship paid to power, that we need not wonder that some conquerors and others have been persuaded, by the abject devotedness ex- hibited in their service, to regard themselves as children of destiny, sons of God, indeed as them- selves gods. SECTION SEVENTH. Illustration from the Iliad. THE poem of the Iliad presents quite a complete illustration of the operation of all the elements of power, both the primary and the secondary, being in this respect no less true to nature than in so many others. Activity, courage, fortitude, and perseverance are qualities common, in a greater or less degree, to all the heroes of that poem. They all also owe a part of their consequence to traditionary respect, to the idea of property in power, and to the influence of mystical ideas ; for they are not only chieftains by descent, but are descended from the gods, who still remain interested in their welfare. Ajax personifies 70 THEORY OF POLITICS. bodily strength and courage ; Achilles, strength, courage, dexterity in the use of arms, and force of will ; Ulysses, sagacity, policy, and eloquence ; Nes- tor, eloquence, sagacity, and knowledge ; Agamem- non, wealth and traditional respect in a particular degree ; Hector, patriotic virtue. The union and disunion of the chiefs exhibit the effects of combina- tion ; while their individual consequence at the same time depends, not merely upon their personal charac- ter, but upon the aggregation of power, the number of men and ships, which the extent of their several dominions places respectively at their disposal. PART SECOND. FORMS OF GOVERNMENT AND POLITICAL REVOLUTIONS. CHAPTER I. COMMENCEMENT OF ORGANIZED GOVERNMENT. SECTION FIRST. Communities in which there is no Organized Gov- ernment. THERE are many communities, small and savage, an aggregation of families which live and hunt or fish together, in which government, under any organized form, can be hardly said to exist. The authority of each man over his family is well estab- lished and perfectly definite ; but there is no general authority. Each family protects its own persons or property; except when aggressions come from some other tribe or community, when all unite for the common defence. The women are held in a con- dition of servitude ; but among the men a high degree of equality prevails, and, if this community enjoy the advantage of a genial climate and abun- dance of game, a considerable degree of ease and comfort also ; such a degree, in fact, of equality, 71 72 THEORY OF POLITIC^. ease, and comfort, especially of equality, when, com- pared with the condition of the great mass of the people in highly-civilized states, as has deeply im- pressed the minds of many speculative inquirers, who have thus been led to doubt whether, after all, civilization, as compared with this, which they have denominated the state of nature, is really favorable to the happiness of mankind. In such a community, when any matter occurs interesting to the whole, such as the proposal of a hunting excursion, a migration, or a military ex- pedition, all the men meet together to talk it over. But whatever decision is come to, it is only binding upon those who assent to it. The dissentients are not bound. There is no general authority constrain- ing individuals, whether they will or no. The non-existence of an organized government in such communities is evidently owing to the high degree of equality among the adult male members of it, which prevents any individual, or number of individuals, from attaining a decided leadership or control, at the same time that it induces a general respect for, or, more properly speaking, an indisposition to violate, the rights of each other ; because such violation would certainly be resisted, and perhaps severely revenged ; so that the same cause which pre- vents government from being established prevents the want of it from being felt. In such communities, the accumulation of wealth is almost unknown. Property exists only in a few articles of daily use, and being very equally shared, all those temptations to inflict injuries upon others, which grow out of the accumulation of wealth, are also unknown; and in COMMENCEMENT OF ORGANIZED GOVERNMENT. 73 the ratio that opportunities for injurious exertions of power are less frequent, in the same ratio is there the less occasion for remedial exertions of power. But this equilibrium, in which the forces not only counterbalance but nullify each other, is, ex- cept in the fancy of political romancers, never perfect. The old men, by reason of their superior knowledge, the fruit of experience, sole source of knowledge in such a community, exercise a certain controlling influence over the rest. Those who, by nature's endowment, or by practice and exercise, possess a superior degree of strength, dexterity, sa- gacity, activity, perseverance, fortitude, self-control, and disinterestedness, attain also a degree of in- fluence. Even among the most barbarous tribes, eloquence becomes a source of power, the orator enjoying a distinction next to that of the eminent huntsman and warrior. SECTION SECOND. Causes which lead to the Establishment of an Organ- ized Government War. WHEN a community, such as that above described, has no neighbors, or remains, for the most part, at peace with them, or attains no new ideas, this non- existence of an organized government may continue for an indefinite period. There are, however, three causes, which may come into operation at any time ; each potent enough by bringing into play one of the secondary elements of power in itself to give rise to the establishment of regular authority ; and all 7 74 THEORY OF POLITICS. three of which frequently combine to the same end. These causes are, first, WAR, to which a degree of combination if not of aggregation is essential ; second, ACCUMULATION OF WEALTH ; third, INFLUENCE OF MYSTICAL IDEAS. Every war expedition consists of combined strength. It must also have leaders in whom power is aggregated, and, to be conducted with success, a single and su- preme leader. Before organized governments are fully established, any warrior distinguished by his strength, skill, sagacity, activity, and courage, and strongly impelled by the love of authority and distinction, proposes himself as a leader, and sets out with such followers as choose to accompany him. Such seems to have been the state of things among the German tribes described by Tacitus, and such is still the case in many of the aboriginal communities of America. Where war has become habitual, as seems to be the case with most of the African tribes, this leadership acquires a more regular and permanent character, and the authority of the head war chief and his subor- dinates becomes firmly established and universally recognized. If, in intervals of peace, that authority remains quiescent, it is because peace, in a tribe in which there is no accumulation of wealth, affords little occasion or opportunity for the exercise of au- thority. COMMENCEMENT OF ORGANIZED GOVERNMENT. 75 SECTION THIRD. .1 Accumulation of Wealth. THERE is no community, however rude and poor, in which the idea of property is not as fully estab- lished as in the most refined society. Every where, even the most completely savage expect to derive a special and individual advantage from the bows and arrows they have made, the huts they have built, the canoes they have laboriously hollowed out or in- geniously fabricated, the fruits they have gathered, the beasts they have slain, the furs they have dressed, and the roots or grain they have planted. It is this expectation of advantage in which, as we have seen, the idea of property consists an expectation not arising merely from convention, as many have al- leged, and therefore solely created by law, nor founded merely upon strength and art exerted to maintain an actual possession, as others have argued, but to a great degree, based, also, on the ordinary force of the moral sentiment restraining men from the unprovoked in- fliction upon others of the pain of disappointed ex- pectation. So long, in fact, as property is limited to the objects above enumerated, the temptations to plunder are, in general, so slight, that, as between members of the same tribe, they are sufficiently repressed by this sen- timent of benevolence, or, where that fails, by the fear of that resistance to robbery which every man is able to make for himself. The relations of property, in such a state of society, are, in general, far from 76 THEORY OF POLITICS. complicated. For the most part, things are in the actual possession of those to whom they belong ; and the V ^ht of the possessor is generally so clear as to give few occasions for dispute. Thus, during peace, there is little preceilce or opportunity for the ex- ercise of authority, which circumstance sufficiently explains why it is that, in such communities, the existence of regular authority becomes evident only dujing war. /But when such a community advances from the hunter to the pastoral or agricultural state, the neces- sity is felt of a distribution or allotment of land, per- manent or periodical ; and, simultaneously, the need of some authority to maintain that allotment, and of some arbiter to settle disputes. The accumulation of wealth, in consequence of these new exercises of in- dustry, tempts, also, more and more to violations of the rights of property, not only by offering new and seducing objects of plunder, but by now first giving origin to the desire to accumulate. Under these cir- cumstances, the necessity for some civil authority becomes obvious ; and no sooner does the opportunity of exercising such authority present itself, than it is immediately availed of by the chiefs, who, from being leaders in war, become now also judges and magis- trates in peace. The final settlement of controversies, no less than the leadership of warlike enterprises, demands a sovereign authority ; and as the bravest, most sagacious, and enterprising of the warriors be- comes the war leader, so one and generally the same chief rises to the head of civil affairs./ For some time, this chieftaincy remains open to be assumed by him whose ambition prompts him to take COMMENCEMENT OF ORGANIZED GOVERNMENT. 77 it, and whose ability enables him to keep it. But gradually traditional respect and the idea of property in power supervene, and fix in a single family the headship of the tribe, which begins to descend from father to son; or when, as is frequently the case among savage tribes, the descent is through the female line, from the uncle to the nephew; liable, however, to constant interruptions whenever the heir is an infant or an imbecile. Such is the simplest form of monarchy ; and, gen- erally speaking, until this form be reached, an organ- ized government can hardly be said to exist. Such was the form which prevailed among the Greeks previous to the introduction of republicanism, in the times when the Iliad and Odyssey were composed, and more recently among the Scotch and Irish clans. Under this form, the whole authority judicial, under which the legislative is also included, and executive is vested in a single chief, at once judge, legislator, and himself often executioner also. But his power is very far from despotic ; the inequality in such com- munities between the chief and the clansmen does not yet reach a very high degree ; and his authority can only be maintained by a general conformity, in the exercise of it, to the ideas of the governed. Should the chief attempt to act in decided opposition to those ideas, he would soon find himself deposed from his office, which would, in general, be conferred upon some other member of the ruling family. Not unfrequently, however, in such cases, the chieftaincy is transferred to some new family ; or, if matters are ripe for it, the form of government is changed, and monarchy ceases. The consciousness of his own weakness operates, in 7* 78 THEORY OP POLITICS. such governments, to keep the chief within certain bounds ; and the consciousness of their own power still preserves to the clansmen a bold and manly bearing. SECTION FOURTH. Influence of Mystical Ideas. WE may, however, frequently observe, among com- munities no further advanced in civilization than the Grecian, Scottish, and Irish clans above referred to, (as, for instance, among the inhabitants of the Sand- wich Islands and other islands of the Pacific, as they appeared to the discoverers a century or less ago, and among some of the savage American tribes,) the ex- istence of a government perfectly despotic, of which the origin is to be sought and found in the influence of mystical ideas. These ideas, under one form or another, exist among all savage tribes ; nor are there often wanting individuals, at once visionary and fond of superiority, in whom the twin spirits of credulity and imposture are mingled in such degrees as to fit them for claiming a special knowledge of spiritual matters, and even an intercourse and an influence with supernatural beings. In all savage and barba- rous tribes, persons of this description, known among the North American Indians as "powwows" or "med- icine men," and among the Africans as " obeah men," exert an influence greater or less, and contend for power with the chiefs, whose authority is founded upon the forensic basis above pointed out ; and occa- sionally it happens that some one of them COMMENCEMENT OF ORGANIZED GOVERNMENT. 79 in establishing so firmly the belief in his supernatural power as to be able to subject his whole tribe to implicit submission of which a remarkable, and, in the United States, familiar, instance occurred less than half a century ago, in the ascendency established over the Indian tribes north-west of the Ohio by the celebrated Shawanese prophet. It is in this influence of mystical ideas that we must seek for the origin of the Mexican and Peruvian empires in America, presenting, in the abject servitude of the mass of the people, so marked a contrast to the free spirit and general equality prevailing among the greater part of the American aborigines. The theocratic governments of the old world those of Egypt, Gaul, India, and Central Asia no doubt arose from similar beginnings. We have authentic historical proof that such was the origin of the splen- did empire of the caliphs, and of the theocratic states of Christendom, the Popedom included. Despotic authority, thus established upon a mysti- cal basis, proves very effectual in subduing the vio- lence and indolence of barbarous and savage tribes, and for introducing among them a regular and settled industry. This was strikingly exhibited in the Jesuit settlements in Paraguay, and in the missions among the wild Indians (Indios bravos) of Central America, and of the north-western provinces of Mexico ; and the same effect has been produced, though much less strikingly, by the Protestant, especially the Moravian, missions among the American aborigines. This influence of mystical ideas, as there will be occasion hereafter to show more at length, exists 80 THEORY OF POLITICS. with very different degrees of intensity in different communities. It is frequently intermingled, to a cer- tain extent, with the other elements of power, the chieftains being priests by virtue of their office, and often claiming a descent from the gods. Govern- ments founded, in whole or in part, upon this influ- ence, like those founded upon a purely forensic basis, always assume, in the first instance, a monarchical form. In proportion as the mystical element becomes more predominating, they take on a more despotic character ; the obedience of the subjects becoming, at the same time, the more unhesitating and entire. DEVELOPMENT OF THE ORIGINAL MONARCHY. 81 CHAPTER II. DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF THE ORIGINAL MONARCHY. SECTION FIRST. Limited Extent of the Embryo Monarchy. THE original monarchy, whether mystical or forensic, is, in its embryo state, very limited in extent, a mere chieftaincy, embracing only one of those small tribes or clans into which we always find men in the hunter state divided, that method of life not allowing the liv- ing together in considerable numbers. Nor, so long as men remain in the hunter state, does this embryo monarchy admit of any enlargement, beyond a recog- nition of his superior authority, which some chieftain more energetic than his neighbors may obtain from a number of neighboring clans, which are thus united into a confederacy, of which he is acknowledged as the head. Such was the state of things among the aboriginal inhabitants of America, (those of the great tropical plateaus excepted,) whose largest tribes hardly embraced more than three or four thousand persons ; and whose most potent confederacies, though often occupying territories not inferior in extent to the British Islands, could not count more than twenty or thirty thousand. 82 THEORY OF POLITICS. SECTION SECOND. Passage from the Hunter to the Shepherd State. Com- mencement of the accumulation of Wealth. ON those broad steppes, savannas, prairies, which compose so considerable a portion of the surface of the globe, and which are so well adapted to the sup- port of graminivorous animals, the diminished sup- ply of wild game no longer affording sufficient food, men have been driven ; or, finding that method more convenient and certain, have been thence led to adopt the breeding of certain animals found ca- pable of domestication. Changed thus from hunters to shepherds, these tribes become masters of large herds of cattle, sheep, goats, horses, asses, camels, some or all of them, according to the nature and climate of the country which they inhabit. These animals, thus domesticated and appropriated, con- stitute wealth, a thing unknown in the savage state ; and the introduction of this new element does not fail to be attended with important results, as well social as political. SECTION THIRD. First Effect of this Change Increase of Paternal Authority. THE hunter, as we have already seen, has no means of influence over his children, or over any body else, beyond those which he derives from his superiority DEVELOPMENT OF THE ORIGINAL MONARCHY. 83 in the intrinsic elements of power; and in such a state of things, the father's control over his male children naturally ceases when they attain to matu- rity. Bat the accumulation of wealth introduces a new element The shepherd father possesses in his flocks and herds, and in his power of regulating the distribution of them among his children, either during his life or at his death, a new means of controlling their actions, and of keeping them obedient to his wishes. The shepherd father also has the means which the hunter father has not of employing the services of his children, even during their early youth, in a manner profitable to himself, since these children can be made useful as herdsmen and shepherds. Among hunter tribes, the authority of the father over his male children is very limited ; nor does he often, as has already been observed, attempt to employ their services for his own benefit. In shepherd tribes, the children are subjected to a severer discipline. The character of master begins to intermingle itself with that of father. The father's power of life and death over his children, which is limited in hunter tribes to the very young, is thus often protracted among pastoral nations to the whole period of the father's life. It is too in this condition of society as among the Arabian and Celtic clans that genealogical considerations naturally acquire a new degree of force. Thus the chieftain often claims to represent as perhaps in fact he sometimes does the original remote ancestor of the whole community. 84 THEORY OP POLITICS. SECTION FOURTH. Second Effect Introduction of Domestic or Chattel Slavery. WITH the accumulation of wealth, and the desire to extend that accumulation, labor begins to acquire an exchangeable value. The prisoners taken in war, especially the women and children, more manageable than the men, instead of being murdered, and per- haps eaten, or else adopted to supply the place of lost relatives, or to replenish the scanty population of the victor tribe, begin now to be made slaves of, and to have a certain value as such. Hence a new stimulus to warlike enterprises. The hope of plunder added to the impulses which drive hunters to fight, shepherd tribes become far more pugnacious than they. Domestic slavery, in this its original form, is comparatively mild. Those slaves, especially, born in their master's house, stand almost on a level with his children, which indeed they often are* the female slaves serving as concubines to the master ; nor in general, in this primitive condition of society, is there any hesitancy in acknowledging this relationship. DEVELOPMENT OF THE ORIGINAL MONARCHY. 85 SECTION FIFTH. ect Introduction of Organized Government. THIS accumulation of wealth in herds and slaves, while it tends to increase the power of the father of the family, tends also to increase the power of the chieftain of the tribe. It has already been shown how the accumulation of wealth creates occasion and gives opportunity for the exercise of authority, as well during peace as during war ; and how he who was at first leader only in war becomes also during peace judge and arbiter for the settlement of disputes, and executioner for the punishment of wrong doers ; a permanent and regularly-organized government thus taking its first establishment. Though the pastoral state has, in several respects, great advantages over the hunter state, admitting a great increase in the number and concentration of the community, yet it falls, in these respects, far below the agricultural state ; nor do purely pastoral tribes ever pass the limit of barbarism. Whenever the rulers of pastoral empires have attained to a certain external splendor and luxury, this will always be found to have been due to their conquests over agricultural tribes. 8 86 THEORY OF POLITICS. SECTION SIXTH. Extension given by Agriculture to Chattel Slavery. THE life of the shepherd is very analogous, in many respects, to that of the hunter ; nor does the transition from the hunter to the shepherd state seem very difficult. But to convert either a hunter or a shepherd into an agriculturist is a more difficult matter; for agriculture requires a diligent and continuous appli- cation, of which men are incapable unless they be trained to it from early youth, or be goaded to it by some impulse of peculiar force. We may observe that the labors of agriculture, in its earliest rudimentary form, as it appears among savage nations, are confined to the women, who are in fact slaves. When any of the shepherd tribes by a change in their location or other causes have found it expedient to add agriculture to the keeping of flocks, this agricultural labor has been principally carried on by slaves, who, with this change of oc- cupation, begin to feel all the severities of servitude. From the first dawn of history, till within a com- paratively recent period, the soil of Europe has been cultivated when cultivated at all almost entirely by slaves or serfs ; and in consequence, oper- ative agriculture always has been, and in fact still is, considered an occupation not less degrading than laborious. The alleged honor paid to agriculture among the Romans may be cited in opposition to this statement ; but that honor if it was ever paid to operative agriculture, which is sufficiently doubtful DEVELOPMENT OF THE ORIGINAL MONARCHY. 87 was paid to it only while the Romans still con- tinued very poor. So soon as they possessed them- selves of slaves, agriculture became a servile employ- ment ; and in the days of Roman power and splendor, the whole, even of Italy itself, was tilled by servile hands. Agriculture among the Romans, as now among the English, was esteemed honorable, not to those who held the plough, but to the owners of the land, who at the utmost only superintended the labors of others. The epithet ploughman, respectable as it ought to be, is, by the usage of the English language, a contemptuous synonyme for a stupid and illiterate booby. SECTION SEVENTH. Influence of Mystical Ideas a Substitute for Chattel Slavery. Mystical Form of Social Slavery. WHERE the transition has taken place directly from the hunter to the agricultural state, the influence of mystical ideas seems to have been employed to supply the place of chattel slavery. The shepherd state does not appear to have been known in abo- riginal America. The Mexicans had no domestic animals, the Peruvians only the lama. These na- tions appear to have passed directly from the hunt- er to the agricultural state a change, however, not effected, except by first totally subduing the minds of the mass by the force of mystical terrors ; thus rendering them passive instruments in the hands of their governors, in fact the slaves, if not of individ- ual owners, at least of the governing power. The 88 THEORY OF POLITICS. history of the Jesuits in Paraguay, and of those other American missions already referred to, will help us to conjecture by what means the earlier aboriginal empires of Mexico and Peru were established. The system of social slavery, thus in its earlier form based on the influence of mystical ideas, and in that shape of very great antiquity, we shall presently find reappearing at a much more advanced period of human progress, under very different circumstances, being established and sustained by very different means, and destitute of many of the alleviations with which the earlier form of it is attended. SECTION EIGHTH. The Chieftain becomes a King-. IN making necessary the establishment of property in land, agriculture gives occasion for new exercises of civil authority ; at the same time, by increasing the means of subsistence, it increases the numbers of the community ; and the power of the chieftain thus increasing in extent and intensity, he becomes that which is described by the word KING. Thus, at length, a state of things is reached in which the original monarchy, having started an ob- scure and indistinct embryo, takes on its complete development. Thus it is that kingdoms take their origin, built sometimes on a forensic, sometimes on a mystical foundation, more frequently, perhaps, on both united. In proportion, however, as the kingly power rests upon a mystical foundation, its intensity DEVELOPMENT OF THE ORIGINAL MONARCHY. 89 is greater ; and where mysticism is its principal ele- ment, it assumes, even in the smallest communities, a character of complete despotism. SECTION NINTH. Extension of the Original Kingdom by Conquest. AFTER wealth begins to be accumulated in the shape of flocks, herds, and slaves, war assumes a new character. Generally speaking, savages engage in war merely to gratify their sympathies and their malevolence, and for the sake of certain pleasures of activity and superiority. But after wealth begins to be accumulated, however the gratification afforded by war to the sentiments of self-comparison, of ma- levolence, and of admiration may prevent its main object and intent from being discerned, it becomes, on the part of the aggressive party, very little dif- ferent in its character from highway robbery, except in the magnitude of its scale of plunder. Partly owing to the vast expenses involved in the prosecu- tion of war according to modern methods ; partly owing to the advances made in the science of wealth, or what is called political economy ; partly by reason of the limitation introduced among civilized nations, and partially adhered to, that private property is to be respected, it has come, within a very recent pe- riod, to be perceived that plunder and conquest are neither the surest nor the shortest road to opulence, nor even to power, of which opulence has become; so important an element. Hence, in part at least, 8* 90 THEORY OF POLITICS. the marked indisposition of the more civilized and powerful nations, during the last third of a century, to make war on each other ; the appeal to arms being mostly reserved for the case of semi-barbarous and comparatively helpless neighbors Caucasians, Algerines, Arabs, Caffres, Burmese, Chinese, Seiks, Mexicans ; while even as to them, the war policy comes, day by day, to be regarded as more and more questionable. In ruder times, and especially among shepherd tribes, the seizure of the property and persons of their neighbors presented itself as the shortest, surest, and least troublesome means of accumulating wealth a view which the result of a successful war would tend greatly to confirm ; the flocks of the neighboring tribes being thus added to those of the victors, their pastures extended, and their slaves multiplied. As long as conquest, in such cases, is confined to neighboring tribes of similar manners, language, and religion, the conquered are absorbed into the body of the conquerors, and the community still preserves its original homogeneous character. Even though the individuals of the conquered tribes be reduced to slavery, that slavery, owing to the actual equality upon most points, so long as the shepherd state con- tinues, of the masters and the slaves, is comparatively mild, and such slaves easily regain the position of freemen. It generally happens, however, that the beaten tribes, by submitting in time, are able, by the sacrifice of a part of their wealth, to secure their adoption into the victor tribe upon terms of equality, or something approaching to it. By this continual aggregation of numbers, the con- DEVELOPMENT OF THE ORIGINAL MONARCHY. 91 quering tribe grows more powerful and more able to extend its conquests, and often, in a very short time, a great number of tribes originally independent be- come united under one regal head of which we have striking instances in the sudden rise and rapid progress of many Turkish, Tartar, and Mongol em- pires. The king of the conquering tribe or confederacy himself comes in for a great share of the spoils thus acquired ; as the leader in these enterprises, he is con- stantly giving new proofs of sagacity, courage, and activity ; and hence the admiration with which he is regarded constantly increases, and his power along with it. SECTION TENTH. Contact of Shepherd Kingdoms with Agricultural Stales. PRESENTLY this growing kingdom, which we may suppose to consist, as yet, merely of migratory shep- herds, begins to come into contact with agricultural communities either such as are forensically gov- erned, carrying on cultivation by means of slaves, or theocracies in which, by the force of mystical ideas, the rrtass of the people have been subdued into perfect submission, and substantially converted into the slaves of the theocratic order ; or possibly the social condi- tion of these states may embrace both of these ele- ments. These agricultural communities, by reason of their greater amount of accumulated wealth, including THEORY OF POLITICS. many articles, such as wine, oil, corn, and other luxu- ries hardly known before to the barbarian shepherds, hold out powerful temptations to the invaders, whom, at the same time, they are often ill able to resist. In agricultural states forensically governed, the free- men who keep their slaves in subjection mainly by superior force will, it is likely, be warriors, whom superior weapons, and often their better acquaintance with the science of war, will enable to make a stout resistance to their barbarous invaders. But there will be two great disadvantages under which they will labor. They have an internal enemy in the servile population ; and, from the very fact that the cultivators are slaves, the military force of the state will bear but a small proportion to the whole number. Yet it gen- erally happens, unless the increase of wealth has ren- dered those in authority luxurious and unwarlike, that forensic agricultural states, though they may yield to the first onset of the invaders, finally succeed in re- pulsing the shepherd hordes by which they may be attacked ; or, if they yield at last, they yield only to a long succession of inroads. The fate of theocratic agricultural states is gen- erally different. In theocracies, the supremacy of the rulers is chiefly sustained, not by the possession of arms and skill in the use of them, but by the influence of mystical ideas. In theocratic states, at least those of long standing, military exercises are generally dis- used, and military science little cultivated ; so that these states often fall an easy prey to barbarian in- vaders, against whom the spiritual terrors of the the- ocracy are, at first, of no avail. But even in these cases, the theocracy generally DEVELOPMENT OF THE ORIGINAL MONARCHY. 93 contrives, in the end, to regain its ascendency, and to convert its late conquerors into its instruments, or, at most, but its partners in power. The superstitious spirit of ignorant barbarians is very easily operated upon by a priesthood comparatively enlightened and learned, skilled in all the arts of mystical influence, and doubly stimulated, not only by the hope of re- gaining the position they have temporarily lost, but also by the desire of making new converts. So it happened to the barbarians who subdued the Roman empire, but who were themselves subdued by the Roman priesthood, as well as to the Turkish and Tartar hordes which successively seized upon the ruins of the caliphate. Upon the mass of the population the subject, servile class, the cultivators of the soil these revolu- tions, whether the original conquest or the reestab- lishment of the theocracy, have comparatively little effect. Subject and servile they still remain through the whole process, experiencing only a change of mas- ters. And yet, though it may not degrade their con- dition, (that condition being already as low as it can be short of chattel slavery,) still the conquest of a theocratic state by a shepherd tribe is often very disagreeable to the mass of the people as well as to the priests. The rule of the new conquerors inflicts pains of inferiority, which, instead of being neutral- ized by pleasures of admiration, are aggravated by pains of malevolence and of fear. The soothing in- fluence is no longer felt of those mystical ideas under which their theocratic masters had been submitted to as men submit without struggle, and almost without complaint, to the operation of known and familiar 94 THEORY OF POLITICS. laws of nature. Moreover, the new masters, being less cultivated, and, by consequence, less humane, than the old ones, arid being rilled with contempt for the unwarlike spirit and servile condition of their new subjects, generally exercise their power with a harsh- ness and violence unknown during the times of the theocracy. Besides those invasions of shepherd tribes from the steppes of Tartary, by which, within the period of authentic history, almost the whole of the old con- tinent, except that portion of Africa south of the Desert of Sahara, has been overrun, there are suf- ficient indications that in much earlier times, prior to the commencement of authentic history, similar invasions and conquests had already taken place. It seems to be clearly established by similarities of language, both as relates to individual words and to grammatical construction, that the Celts of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, a portion of the ancient inhabitants of Central and Southern Italy, the Greeks, the Germans, the Goths, the Sclavonic tribes, the Persians and the Hindoos, were offshoots from the same parent stock, whose original seat can only be looked for on the table land of Central Asia. Indeed, the possession, by all these nations, of horses, flocks, and herds, animals of which the primitive wild types no longer exist. and more especially the use of war chariots, tends strongly to show that their ancestors must have come from a country of grassy plains, in which only such animals would be looked for as indigenous, and where alone such instruments as war chariots were likely to be invented, to the use of which the rough mountains of Greece, and the DEVELOPMENT OF THE ORIGINAL MONARCHY. 95 woods of Gaul and Britain, were but very ift adapted. The aboriginal inhabitants of the countries seized upon by these shepherd invaders suffered, no doubt> the same fate which the Saxons afterwards inflicted on the Britons ; a part were exterminated, a part were adopted into the conquering tribes, and a part re- mained, or were made, slaves. Not improbably the Druidical religion may have been the religion of the ancient inhabitants of Gaul and Britain, imposed upon the conquering Celts, by the arts of the priests, in the same way that the Goths and Franks were, in subsequent ages, converted to Christianity. To what degree of civilization some of these nations- and perhaps the ancient Etrurians were one of them may have attained, previous to their conquest by the shepherd tribes, the analogy of Babylonia, Egypt, China, Mexico, and Peru may enable us to conjecture. When agricultural and civilized states fall into the possession of shepherd conquerors, it frequently hap- pens, amid the quarrels of contending dynasties, and the disorder and insecurity which these barbarian conquerors bring with them, that wealth, civilization, and population gradually decline ; that agriculture, except to a limited extent, is abandoned ; and that, as the fields no longer cultivated reassume their original wildness and woodiness, pasturage becomes the chief resource of the people, and the woods and mountains are again filled with wild game. This is what happened to the western provinces of the Roman empire, in consequence of repeated invasions and conquests by shepherd tribes from 96 THEORY OF POLITICS. Germany and Sarmatia ; and at a later period to its eastern provinces, in consequence of repeated Turkish invasions and conquests a consideration which will add to the probability that nations comparatively civilized might, before the period of the Celtic in- vasion, have existed in Western Europe. Though empires formed by the conquests of shep- ard tribes, like that, for instance, of Attila, have often reached a vast extent in a very short period, these empires, for the most part, except where they have become ingrafted on some preexisting theocracy, have been very short-lived. In the times of the sons or the grandsons of the original founder, they have generally split into fragments ; which again have been united by some new conqueror, and again dissevered ; and so on in rapid succession. OLIGARCHIES, ARISTOCRACIES, ETC. 97 CHAPTER III. OLIGARCHIES, ARISTOCRACIES, TYRANNIES, SECOND- ARY MONARCHY. SECTION FIRST. Circumstances under which a Higher Political Develop- ment becomes possible. THE preceding chapter embraces the complete cycle, from the earliest to the present times, of the political history of the shepherd tribes Inhabiting the broad plains of Central Asia, and of those agricultural nations, such as, in very early ages, were planted on the banks of the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Nile, the Indus, the Ganges, and the great rivers of China, exposed, with no natural barriers of defence, to the aggressive irruptions *of these pastoral com- munities. But when, in the course of its wanderings, one of these pastoral tribes becomes possessed of a 'mountain- ous and defensible country, where, by the advantage of local position, a small tribe is able to maintain itself against great numbers, and where the fertility of the soil, the mildness of the climate, and a mari- time position favorable to commerce, afford means for the development of civilization ; in these few and favored cases, t>f which the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean Sea have afforded the principal historical instances, a new series of political changes 9 98 THEOK* OF POLITICS. presents itself, which will best be illustrated by direct reference to the history of the Grecian and Roman commonwealths. SECTION SECOND. Illustrations from Grecian History. The Primitive Grecian Kingdoms. IT would seem, from the genealogical and myth- ological traditions, which furnish all the verbal me- morials that we have of the state of things in Greece previous to the establishment of the Grecian repub- lics or commonwealths, as well as from many customs and observances which prevailed subsequently to that period, that the Greeks originally consisted of a number of pastoral, migratory confederacies or clans, of which the Dorians and lonians were, or finally became, the most famous ; protected from conquest during the ante-historic 'ages, as they were during the illustrious portion of their historical-period, by the mountains and fastnesses among which they dwelt. Certain foreign adventurers fugitive priekts, pirates, merchants, or expelled princes, or persons sometimes, perhaps, combining all these characters arrived among these tribes, from Phoenicia, Egypt, and Asia Minor, countries, compared with Greece as it then was, possessing a high degree of civilization. These adventurers brought with them the use of letters, the knowledge of navigation, agriculture, and the arts ; and partly by their superior knowledge and sagacity, and partly by the influence of mystical ideas, for OLIGARCHIES, ARISTOCRACIES, ETC. 99 the Greeks, like all uncultivated people, were very superstitious, of which these foreigners seem generally to have taken advantage to represent themselves as the children oV favorites of some god, they raised themselves to the chieftaincy of the several tribes. In imitation of the countries whence they came, they built walled towns for defence against predatory in- cursions, they raised temples, established religious ceremonies and festivals, and introduced agriculture and some commencement of civilization. Such is the state of Greece, as presented to us in the poems of Homer, the earliest written memorials of that country, if not indeed of any country, which we possess, and in the traditions on which the Greek tragedies were founded ; out of which the writers of the Alexandrine school attempted to construct a regular history and chronology, commencing with the first Olympiad, (B. C. 776,) and even running back for certain ages anterior to that period. SECTION THIRD. Greek Oligarchies, Aristocracies, Democracies, Tyrannies. THE line of direct descent, in the families of the Greek chieftains of the heroic age, having come to an end, and there being no single person in the com- munity upon whom the joint influence of mystical ideas, of the notion of property in power, and of traditional respect, united to confer the successorship, the government fell into the hands of a number of 100 THEORY OF POLITICS. families, greater or less, which excelled in wealth, which claimed collateral descent from the former kings, and which, by engrossing the priesthood, and the administration of religious ceremonies, were able to avail themselves, more or less, of the influence of mystical ideas. This mystical influence, in the earlier periods of Grecian history, was very considerable ; but it never, as with the Egyptians, Etruscans, and Druidical Gauls, superseded or obtained the control of the other elements of power ; so that Greece, not- withstanding the excessive superstition of its earlier inhabitants, of which so many strong instances appear in Herodotus, was fortunately preserved from a theo- cratic government. This new form of administration, known afterwards, when the Greeks came to consider the subject philo- sophically, as an OLIGARCHY, or government of a few, continued to prevail, especially among the Dorian clans, for several generations. But, for the most part, the few ruling families found themselves constrained to admit, from time to time, other families, which had acquired wealth and influence, to share their authority ; till the government gradually became what the Greeks called, and we call after them, an ARISTOCRACY ; liter- ally, a government of the best either best in point of birth, or best in point of wealth, the phrase good being often, in the language of politics, as in that of commerce, synonymous with wealthy. Nor indeed is this confusion of terms entirely destitute of foundation in fact, since the possession of a com- petency, by relieving men from the constant and over- whelming pressure of several imperious wants, puts them into a position in which virtue becomes at least possible. ARISTOCRACIES, TYRANNY, ETC. 101 When this aristocracy, or government of the well- born and wealthy, was so extended as to admit all the free citizens to share in the administration, it was then distinguished as a DEMOCRACY. But this Gre- cian democracy, it is to be noted, was still a select class limited to those who possessed the right of citi- zenship, and excluding slaves, freedmen who had been slaves, strangers, and mere denizens ; who together often made up the bulk of the population ; such, in- deed, as would be regarded, in our day, as still a pretty select aristocracy. It would, however, occasionally happen that some individual citizen of great wealth, warlike skill and science, sagacity, eloquence, or reputation for patriot- ism, was able to obtain such an influence over the community as to concentrate the whole administra- tion of the government in his own hands ; and, in later times, the same object was frequently accom- plished by the employment of mercenary troops, by whom the citizens were kept in obedience and awe. This form of government a restoration of mon- archy equally disagreeable to the partisans of oli- garchical, aristocratic, and democratic administration was called a TYRANNY a name to which the ideas of usurpation and violence were intimately attached. It was in the hatred and dread of tyranny that the practice of ostracism and other similar con- trivances originated, by which the Greek common- wealths were enabled to rid themselves of the presence of citizens who, by reason either of their talents, their wealth, or even their virtues, appeared so influential as to threaten the concentration of all power in them- selves. 9* 102 THEORY OF POLITICS. SECTION FOURTH. Greek Revolutions. Secondary Monarchy. THE Greek oligarchical forms of government were much the most permanent, which is to be ascribed, in part, to the fact that they chiefly existed in the purely m agricultural states, in which the movement of ideas is always comparatively slow. Such was the govern- ment of Sparta. Athens, Syracuse, and many other states, made opulent by commerce, were greatly dis- tracted, and were exposed to constant revolutions by struggles for power between the poorer citizens, called the democracy, and the richer citizens, called the aris- tocracy ; these aristocracies corresponding, in fact, to the Spartan oligarchy, and generally keeping up a close correspondence and alliance with it. The dem- ocratical and aristocratical factions, as they succes- sively obtained power, treated their opponents with great severity. Death, confiscation, and banishment were frequently inflicted by either party, as it alter nately prevailed ; and the bitterness of the feud was thus constantly aggravated. Sometimes the govern- ment assumed the form of a tyranny which fre- quently happened after the advance of refinement and luxury had made the hardships of war distasteful to the rich, and had led to the introduction of mercenary soldiers, always ready to fight for any body who would pay them. At length appeared upon the stage Philip of Mace- don, a man of great sagacity, policy, skill in army, courage, activity, perseverance, and self-control, de- SECONDARY MONARCHY, ETC. 103 scended from an ancient Greek family, which had raised itself to the kingship of the Macedonians exactly as, in earlier ages, foreign adventurers had established similar kingdoms in Greece itself. Avail- ing himself of the physical force thus aggregated in his hands, and taking advantage of the decay of the military spirit, and of personal skill and hardihood, among those in the Greek commonwealths who exer- cised the political power, and especially of their do- mestic quarrels, he accomplished that in which, as to the European Greeks, the kings of Persia had failed some two centuries before ; being enabled to reduce the whole body of them, at least those of the primi- tive and central Greece, to a dependence on himself. His son Alexander, still more distinguished for his personal qualities, by the help of Greek mercenaries, who had carried the science of war to a perfection elsewhere unknown, established a vast empire, which fell, however, into fragments immediately after his death. Several of these fragments were seized upon and held by the generals of Alexander's army ; others were taken possession of or regained by the native princes. The main support of the Greek kingdoms established on the ruins of Alexander's empire was a standing army of mercenary troops trained after the Greek model, and fed and paid out of the revenues of the state ; a comparatively small body armed, disciplined, and acting in concert being an overmatch for almost any number unarmed, uninstructed, untrained, and uncombined. This form of government, for the sake of distinction, we denominate SECONDARY MONARCHY. \s in the case of the primitive monarchy, traditionary 104 THEORY OF POLITICS. respect, the idea of property in power, and, to a certain extent, mystical influences also, are presently added to the mere force out of which it at first grew ; and, in the course of time, it may take on a character hardly distinguishable from that of the original kingdom. SECTION FIFTH. Illustrations from Roman History. THE history of Rome furnishes us with a series of changes similar to those which make up the history of the Greek commonwealths from monarchy to an oligarchy of patrician families ; from oligarchy to an aristocracy, into which the plebeians were at first slowly and partially admitted, but which gradually expanded into what the Greeks called a democracy ; from that back again to an oligarchy of three or four influential individuals ; from this new oligarchy to tyranny; which, dropping by degrees republican forms, changed gradually into secondary monarchy. We may discover, howeyer, in the Roman com- monwealth a political phenomenon scarcely percepti- ble, if at all, in the Grecian states, but elsewhere much more fully developed, and of which we shall have presently more to say that of the division and distribution of power. In the case of the Roman commonwealth, this distribution took place between a narrow aristocracy represented by the senate and the comitia centuriata, (in which latter assembly the few rich decided every thing,) and a more extended aristocracy, of that kind called by the Greeks a ILLUSTRATIONS FROM ROMAN HISTORY. 105 democracy, acting through the agency of the comitia tributa. Instead of struggling for power, and alter- nately possessing it, these differently-constituted as- semblies exercised a concurrent, and, but for the trib- uriitian office, almost an independent authority. The tribunes of the people, elected by the comitia tributa, possessed, indeed, the singular right of putting a veto upon the decrees of the senate, and the acts of the magistrates elected by the comitia centuriata. In fact, however, notwithstanding this check, the senatorial power was, pending the whole continuance of the commonwealth, except during two or three temporary outbreaks, always in the ascendant. The tribunes were always overawed, bribed, or assassinated by the senatorial party. The attempts of the Gracchi and others to share among the mass of the citizens some portion of that plunder of conquest which the senators divided so liberally among themselves were promptly and violently suppressed. The temporary triumph of the popular party under Marius, in spite of the senatorial blood shed to perpetuate it, was immediately succeeded by the proscription and the dictatorship of Sylla, who restored the power again to senatorial hands. Ultimately, however, the senate fell into subjection to a triumvirate of its own mem- bers, placed, one of them by his immense wealth, and the others by prolonged and almost independent mili- tary commands, quite beyond senatorial control. That triumvirate, dissolved by the death of Crassus, was succeeded by a struggle for power between Pompey, who claimed to act for the senate, and Caesar, who intrigued with, and used for his own purposes, the tribunes of the people a struggle ending in the 100 THEORY OF POLITICS. dictatorship of Caesar, who, instead of strengthening the democracy at the expense of the senate, as Marius had done, sacrificed both to make himself perpetual dictator and tyrant. The tyrant fell by the daggers of Brutus and Cassius ; but they were unable to re- establish the senatorial authority ; and the govern- ment soon passed into the hands of a new triumvirate, ending in the sole reign of Octavius Caesar, who quietly transmitted the supreme control to a successor of his own appointment. , The authority of the Roman emperors, in the days of the first Caesars, was chiefly sustained by the arms of the legions, and of the praetorian guards ; and, down to the final termination of the empire, when- ever an emperor had fixed upon his successor, the first step was to get him acknowledged as such by the soldiers. But, in process of time, there sprung up a traditionary respect for the imperial authority, by which it was greatly strengthened in the hands of whomsoever possessed it. As in the early days of Greece, so in the earlier times of Rome, mysticism had been a great bulwark of authority. The office of priest and augur had been combined with that of magistrate, and the sen- ate had made* great use of this influence to awe or baffle the people, and to sustain its own authority. With the advance of science, and the consequent decrease of superstition among the more enlightened portions of the community, this source of power had very much diminished ; which circumstance will en- able us to understand the lamentations of certain Greek and Roman authors over the decay of religion. The earlier Roman emperors, however, took care to ILLUSTRATIONS FROM ROMAN HISTORY. 107 combine in their persons, along with all the chief civil dignities of the republic, that, also, of supreme pontiff With the subsequent decline of science, the influence of mystical ideas revived ; and the spread and growth of the Christian church introduced a new power into politics. But presently this new power, found by trial too potent to be resisted, was availed of for the support of the empire by the adoption, under Constan- tine and his successors, of the Christian religion as that of the state ; from which time forwa'rd, the in- fluence of the clergy has continued a very powerful element in European politics. 108 THEORY OF POLITICS. CHAPTER IV. REVOLUTIONS OF MYSTICAL GOVERNMENTS. HAVING thus considered the cycle of changes through which the original forensic monarchy may pass, it remains to trace the revolutions of the mys- tical monarchy, the other original type of that form of government. We have already explained how the original mys- tical monarchy springs up among savage tribes. But the same form of government; often takes its origin in a community possessing an organized system of some of the kinds already described. Sometimes this is the mere revolt of a conquered priesthood, against some foreign yoke imposed upon them ; the reestab- lishment of some old theocracy ; the high priests, upon the overturn of the foreign power, raising themselves to the position of kings. Such was the Jewish mon- archy founded by Judas Maccabeus. In other cases, the new monarchy first presents itself as a religious sect, the head of which claims a special divine author- ity sometimes as the founder of a new religion, but oftener as the reviver and reformer of an old one. Sometimes such a new sect spreads rapidly, raising its founder, or his immediate successors, to so great an influence and power, that he is able to overturn the existing government, and to establish a theocracy in its place, of which he becomes the head. Such was the case with Mohammedanism. In other instances, the new sect increases only by slow degrees, remains for a long time an imperium in imperio, and only after REVOLUTIONS OF MYSTICAL GOVERNMENTS. 109 a long struggle with the existing government, and enduring many persecutions from it, makes good its supremacy, and either supersedes that old government or else rules through it revolutions of which the history of the Christian church furnishes abundant examples. All theocracies are monarchical in their inception, and are always so in theory ; but upon the death of the founder, or any interruption in the line of his successors, they may, like the forensic monarchy, take on an oligarchical or aristocratical form, the administration being shared among a number, greater or less, of the priests or ministers, who rule in the name of the deified founder ; or, by admitting the great mass of believers to a share of authority, they may even assume a democratical shape. Such seems to have been the case in the early days of the Christian religion ; and it is perhaps in a considerable degree to this democratical element that we are to ascribe the progress of that church during the first two centuries that interesting, but very obscure, period of its history. It generally happens, however, that, by a process very similar to that to be presently described in the case of certain forensic governments, a select body, tending constantly to grow still more and more select, the professors, the elders, the priests, the bishops, sooner or later usurp the whole control, and subject the mass of the laity to a servile submission. A theocratic order of nobility, often hereditary, thus once established, by processes analogous to those already pointed out in the case of lay aristocracies, it is occasionally superseded, now by a theocratic oli- garchy, and now by a theocratic tyranny, liable to< 10 110 THEORY OF POLITICS. be again replaced by theocratic aristocracy, or theo- cratic democracy. Such was the revolution by which the power and influence of the Catholic clergy, after rising to a great height, was overturned in all the nations of Northern Europe, and superseded by a new Protestant priesthood. It is true that in some of the Protestant states as, for instance, in England, and in many of the countries which adopted Lutheranism this change was more apparent than real ; the Protestant clergy in those countries being little else than a continuation of the Popish clergy, with some trifling modifications in ceremonies and articles of belief. In Scotland and the Calvinistic states, the change was somewhat more complete ; but it was only among the Anabaptists and the English In- dependents that the revolution received its extreme democratic development. Claiming an entire spiritual equality for all' the members of the Christian brother- hood, those sects recognized, in fact, no priests. But, as in the case of other similar democratic claims, it has not been found very easy to substantiate this one in practice ; since in no single thing are men more unequal than in their capacity to be acted upon by mystical ideas and convictions. A leadership and control over their admiring and awe-struck brethren falls naturally into the hands of the specially gifted ; and the attempt to carry out the theory of absolute human equality proves still more a failure, if possible, in religious than in civil organizations. DISTRIBUTION OF AUTHORITY, ETC. Ill CHAPTER V. DISTRIBUTION AND DIVISION OF AUTHORITY. MIXED FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. SECTION FIRST. State of Things ivhich attended and followed the Downfall of the Roman Empire. Serfdom sub- stituted for Chattel Slavery. IN the slight sketch given above of the Roman history, reference was made to a curious political phenomenon, not elsewhere so clearly developed in ancient historical times that of a distribution or division of the sovereignty between two distinct orders in the state. In the period subsequent to the downfall of the Roman empire, this phenomenon became still more distinctly and remarkably de- veloped. The governments existing among the Gothic and German hordes, when they first commenced their inroads upon the Roman empire, were primitive monarchies of the kind already described, essentially the same with the Homeric monarchy of the Greeks, and the chieftaincies of the Scotch and Irish clans, the extent of the power of the rulers being greatly de- pendent on their own individual energy. % These moving bands of shepherd warriors, after being repeatedly repulsed, and as often bought off', finally established themselves within the borders of the empire, and seizing upon the lands, slaves, and 112 THEORY OF POLITICS. other property of the Roman nobles and clergy, ap- propriated them, in whole or in part, to their own use. But soon enervated by wealth and luxury, they were presently swept away by bands of more sturdy barbarians fresh from the north and east, who, in their turn, made a similar appropriation of the wealth they found ; and in their turn were subdued and swept away by new invaders. For upwards of six centuries, Goths, Vandals, Allemanni, Suevi, Lombards, Franks, Saxons, Avars, Normans, and various Slavic and Turkish tribes con- tended with each other, and with the descendants of the Roman provincial population, for the possession of Europe, or of parts of it. At an early day of this dark period, the Western empire was overrun and for the moment almost subdued by a vast array of Huns, from the confines of China. At a later day, the same territories had almost fallen into the hands of the Saracens, who, following the south shore of the Mediterranean, and having subdued the Roman African provinces, obtained possession of Spain and Sicily, whence they penetrated into France and Italy, from which they were with difficulty repulsed. , In consequence of these perpetual struggles for the ever-diminishing remnants of Roman wealth, and the disorders and insecurities attendant upon them, the civilization and the population of Europe retrograded from century to century. The attempt of Charle- magne to build up again an empire of the West failed with his life. His dominion was soon split into numberless fragments, still further wasted by Norman, Slavonic, Saracen, and Madjar invasions, while the Holy Roman empire, by him reestablished, became, like its predecessor, ^ut an emoty name. SERFDOM IN EUROPE, I 'Ui Towards the middle of the tenth century Europe was reduced to such a state of poverty and desolation that there seemed hardly any thing left to plunder ; yet this very impoverishment appears to have been an essential step towards introducing a great social change one of the main corner stones of the new edifice of civilization about to be raised on the ruins of the old. The race of slaves, the sole cultivators of the broad and once wealthy domains of the Roman provinces, seem never to have offered the slightest resistance to any invader. It was, indeed, the lack of free men who could be turned into soldiers for which purpose the enervated town inhabitants were unfit that made it so difficult to defend the empire, which was only maintained, from the first, by the ingenious device of employing the barbarians to fight each other. With the decline of wealth, not only did the importation of new slaves come, for the most part, to an end, but the old ones, or their descendants, became attached to the soil no longer chattel slaves, but serfs, bound to the la/id, and constituting, along with it, one article of property. These serfs, from the moment of becoming such, began to acquire additional privi- leges. Some presently became tenants, at a fixed rent, in labor, produce, or money, to which the de- mands of the lord were limited. Others, escaping into the towns, became citizens there. Many circumstances, not necessary to mention here, have contributed to the gradual, though as yet very imperfect, emancipation of the laboring classes of Europe the first step towards the erection of the system of modern civilization ; a civilization, 10* 114 THEORY OF POLITICS. however, at present incomplete, yet far superior to that of the ancients ; which, in the universal enslave- ment of the laboring classes, carried within its own bosom the seeds of inevitable decay. It was in this new race of freemen having now an interest in the soil, or town hearthstones of their own to defend that the means of effectual and permanent resistance to new invasions of wandering tribes of warlike shep- herds first presented itself. SECTION SECOND. Origin and Character of the Feudal System. THIS new array of the resident population for self- defence against that tide of military spoliation which for so many ages had so resistlessly and fatally swept over Europe, gradually took on the form of what finally became so famous as the Feudal System a system in which we find comprehended many frag- ments of the organization introduced by Constantine and his successors for the defence of the later Roman empire, many barbaric usages which the invading tribes had brought with them from the plains of Sarmatia and the woods of Germany, and many customs produced by the necessities of the moment or by local convenience. The leading idea, however, was, that the possession and usufruct of the land should be in the hands of fighting men, bound to maintain it, and the lords under whom they held it, against all aggressors. As the Roman empire had been formed by the THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 115 subjection of a vast many independent communities, so, in the process by which the feudal system was arrived at, that empire had again resolved itself into elements, similar, in many respects, to those out of which it had been originally aggregated. For out of its ruins there sprung up not only a great number of feudal dukedoms or counties, nearly or quite inde- pendent, the Roman titles of dukes or counts, given originally to the imperial officers of certain territorial divisions, superseding for the most part the native appellations of the barbaric chiefs, but the wasted remnants of ancient cities now recovered again that independence which for so many ages they had lost ; and among the other various changes that were going on, and under the shelter of the walls with which those towns now began again to surround themselves, republican governments once more reappeared. Yet amid all this resolution of the Roman empire into detached and independent fragments, there still survived certain ideas of unity, constituting, indeed, an essential part of the feudal system ; ideas which tended to the reconsolidation of authority ; but upon a principle essentially different from that mere aggre- gation of conquests to which the Roman empire had owed its origin. SECTION THIRD. Monarchy as an Element of the Feudal System. As the barbarian, conquering Romans were them- selves subdued by the superior knowledge and refine- ment of the conquered nations, particularly of the 116 T.HEORY OF POLITICS. Greeks, and the communities under Greek influence, in like manner were the northern and eastern bar- barians who conquered the Roman empire sub- jugated by the language, manners, and ideas of- the people they had overrun. In imitation of the Roman emperors, the barbarian princes promulgated codes, borrowed as to many particulars from Ro- man models. Copying from those same models, they assumed new airs, dignities, and titles, claiming for themselves a certain portion of that traditionary respect and supereminent honor which not only the citizens of Rome, (and all the free subjects of the em- pire had come in time to be acknowledged as Roman citizens,) but their own predecessors also, had long paid to the Roman emperors. In the progress of darkness, barbarism, and disunion, these ideas became, indeed, almost extinct ; but presently the revival of the study of the civil law reproduced them with fresh force. It was this notion of central, imperial authority which still gave a certain unity to France, Germany, and Italy, even after they were split into an infinity of dukedoms, counties, and municipalities, many of them substantially independent ; and it is this same idea which forms the key to the struggles carried on for so many centuries between the kings on the one hand and the feudal nobility on the other the muni- cipalities and the clergy appearing, at different times, on either side ; a struggle which terminated in Ger- many in the almost complete triumph of the feuda- taries, but in England and France in the reestablish- ment of the authority of the monarch. THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 117 SECTION FOURTH. The Power of the Clergy as an Element of the Feudal System. STILL another idea, which survived the downfall of the Roman empire, and which operated to retain not single countries only, but the whole of Christendom, notwithstanding the thousand fragments into which it was divided, in a certain bond of connection, was, the idea of the unity of the Christian church. The obscure rise of the Christian sect during the first century and a half of our era, the wealth, and pres- ently the political power, which, after a certain period of slow and unnoted progress, the Christian priest- hood rapidly acquired, during the second, third, and fourth centuries, making even the imperial power but a stepping-stone for their advancement, is one of the many astonishing revolutions to be traced to the influence of mystical ideas. The successive hordes of barbarians which overwhelmed Europe were, at first, all heathens, the Saracens excepted, who were under the influence of a mystical system of their own, which rivalled, and at one time threatened to extinguish, the system of the Christian church. But, like all ignorant men, these barbarians were extremely susceptible to the influence of mystical ideas ; and though they began by plundering and murdering the monks and the bishops, they always ended by being converted and baptized, and by giving back to their ghostly fathers a great deal more than they had taken away. 118 THEORY OF POLITICS. Encouraged by this docility on the pan of their new converts, the clergy were not long content with mere gifts of lands and goods. They sometimes ob- tained by grant and concession, and sometimes they usurped, rights of jurisdiction also ; so that presently a whole host of mitred abbots and bishops appeared upon the scene of the feudal times, with the crosier in the one hand and the sword in the other, struggling with the kings and the nobles for independent polit- ical power. Very early in that age, at a period when nobody hardly but monks and priests could read, and when almost the entire intelligence of the community was to be found in the clerical order, the clergy, under the able leadership of Gregory VII. , came very near establishing a grand theocratic monarchy throughout Christendom, (from that time to this the beau ideal of the ultra Papists,) of which the pope was to be the head, the bishops and abbots the administrators, and the kings and nobles the humble and submissive instruments instruments which might presently have been dispensed with altogether. Though this magnificent scheme for a theocratic monarchy over all Christendom, and ultimately over the whole world, did not succeed, yet several bishops of the German empire, as well as the pope, were able to establish their supreme and independent dominion over extensive and populous districts, of which they became the theocratic princes. The English and French clergy, on the other hand, like the nobility of the same countries, found themselves obliged to give over the idea of independent authority, and to be content with an influential share in the general administration of the government, THE MIDDLE AGE MUNICIPALITIES. 119 SECTION FIFTH. The Feudal Age Municipalities. Their Freedom from Chattel Slavery. Origin and Fundamental Ideas of Modern Democracy. As an element in the feudal system, in addition to the power of the nobles, the kings, and the clergy, one at first obscure and humble, but gradually in- creasing in importance, must be mentioned the mu- nicipalities already referred to, many, indeed most of the older ones, erected on the very sites of ancient cities, older than the Roman conquest ; and in and by which, with the commencement of the feudal times, the idea of republicanism was, after a long interval, re- vived. In the position finally attained by these additional claimants of authority, we may observe, as with re- spect to the clergy, a different result in Italy and Germany from that which took place in England and France. In Italy, at an early period of the feudal times, and subsequently in Germany, a large number of these municipalities became, in fact, if not in name, entirely independent ; and several of them reached a pitch of opulence and power such as enabled them to contend and to take rank with popes, kings, and emperors. By a departure from the principles upon which they had been originally established, and to which they had owed, in a great measure, their rise and importance, all these feudal age republics, by a course of revolu- tions which vividly recalls the history of the ancient 120 THEORY OF POLITICS. Greeks, fell, at length, a prey to domestic tyrannies, monarchic or oligarchic, and, with a few exceptions, were ultimately swallowed up by their stronger neigh- bors, exactly as the Greek republics had been at an earlier period. In France and England, and, we might add, in Spain, the municipalities never obtained an independent authority, but were obliged to be content, like the clergy of those countries, with being admitted to a share, and at first a very moderate one, in the control of the national government. As the civilization of the ancient Greeks, as well as that still more ancient Phoenician civilization to which the early Greeks appear to have been so much indebted, and which reached its ultimate develop- ment in the republic of Carthage, took its rise in the municipal spirit, and unfolded itself, and attained its highest perfection, by means of republican organ- izations, so in the municipalities of the middle ages the origin is to be sought and found of our mod- ern civilization. If, in our time, these municipalities may seem, on a cursory view, to have become less politically prominent than formerly, it is none the less a fact that, so far from growing effete, the municipal spirit that is, the ideas and feelings to which the municipalities of the middle ages owed their rise and growth has been making, for centuries, a constant progress ; modern civilization having advanced and extended itself simultaneously with the municipal spirit, and just in proportion to it. Certain clear indications also appear that the municipal element in the mixed governments of Europe, having undergone an extension wide enough to embrace the whole com- munity, is destined, and that at no distant day, to FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. 121 swallow up all the others, and to vindicate for itself that lasting supremacy which priests, nobles, and monarchs have struggled for in vain.* In one striking and most important particular, the municipalities of the middle ages appear to have dif- fered from those ancient municipalities upon the sites of which many of them were erected a particular which seems to have produced all the difference, so very great, and, it may be said, radical, between the civilization of ancient and of modern times. In the municipalities of the middle ages, for the first time, in civilized communities, within the period of authentic history, chattel slavery was unknown. Even serfdom was not recognized ; and both slaves * Guizot, in his History of the Civilization of Modern Europe, was the first to call particular attention to the fourfold distribution of power in the middle ages, such as it is above described. Finding this distribution of power between monarchs, nobles, clergy, and municipalities coincident with the rise and progress of modem civilization, he somewhat hastily concluded that the continued existence and balance of all these classes was and is essential to that progress. Had he been a little less of a scholar, and somewhat more of a philosopher, or had he even possessed the advantage of our American point of view, a more profound and comprehensive study of history, the history of the present day as well as that of the middle ages, might have convinced him that, in the progress of modern European civilization, the monarchic, aristocratic, and clerical elements have only been so far useful as tb.ey have served to counteract and to destroy each other ; the whole of the actual progress being due to the municipal element alone. Had M. Guizot more clearly perceived this truth, his career as prime minister might have been more judicious and more fortunate. Foresight of the future is an excellent thing. Knowledge of the past is an excellent thing ; and for his contributions to it M. Guizot is well entitled to our respectful gratitude. But for the administration of affairs, there is necessary a perception of the present so strong and real as to throw both past and future quite into perspective a sufficient reason why both scholars and philosophers may occasion- ally fail as practical statesmen. M 122 THEORY OF POLITICS. and serfs, flying from the tyranny of brutal masters, found convenient refuge and protection within the walls of the towns, of which they helped to augment the population, and to increase the strength and wealth. Laborious industry, as well that of the me- chanic arts as of agriculture in the verge of territory attached to the towns, was now, for the first time, carried on by free citizens. Freedom and industry thus reconciled, the arts, under their impulse, soon made a progress which first equalled and finally sur- passed any thing known among the ancients. Com- bining trade with manufactures, to which those towns favorably situated for it, like Venice, Naples, Genoa, and Pisa, added navigation, these municipalities rap- idly accumulated wealth, which, as we have seen, is a most important element of political power ; while the compactness, as well as the superior intelligence, of their population, by facilitating combined action, gave to them a still further advantage. As these middle age municipalities first attract the notice of history, the control of their affairs by a return to the simplicity and equality of the original savage tribe appears to have rested with the body of the citizens. The actual administration seems to have been usually intrusted to a council periodically elected, which councils, in after times, by processes to be hereafter more particularly pointed out. converted themselves into hereditary senates, or else into close corporations, electing their own members ; thus con- centrating the whole political power in themselves, and gradually stripping the mass of the citizens of any right to participate in it. Nevertheless, the idea of the political equality of all the citizens always FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. 123 survived, and forms a fundamental idea of modern democracy. Along with this fundamental notion was associated, in the early days of these feudal age municipalities, another idea equally essential to modern democracy, and equally fundamental to the civilization of modern times the idea, namely, of the honorable and praise- worthy character of productive industry, whether em- ployed in agriculture, trade, or the mechanic arts *> whereas, in the Greek and Roman municipalities, as well as among all nobilities, whether clerical or lay, ancient or modern, (with some slight exceptions, to be presently pointed out, in the case of those nobilities which may be called municipal or civic,) trade and the arts, especially all handicrafts, were and are looked upon as degrading, and the actual working with one's hands as fit only for the low and servile. This latter of the two great ideas of modern de- mocracy that of the honorable character of produc- tive industry, however humble originated in, and, indeed, necessarily grew out of, the important fact, already mentioned, that there were no slaves nor serfs within these municipalities, but that all industrious occupations were carried on by freemen and citizens ; and just in proportion as the municipal spirit has diffused itself, has this idea of the honorable char- acter of productive labor also gained currency. 124 THEORY OF POLITICS. SECTION SIXTH. Laboring Mass of the People. Approach, during the Feudal Times, to the Introduction into Europe of the System of Castes. /THE three orders of the clergy, the nobles, and the burghers, or townspeople, who put forward, during the feudal times, pretensions, as against the monarchs, to a share, greater or less, of political power, included, we must remember, but a very small minority of the inhabitants of Europe. The great majority of the inhabitants were no longer chattel slaves, indeed, as in the days of the Roman empire, but still serfs, at- tached to the soil, and belonging with it to the mon- archs, clergy, and nobles, and of course destitute of any political rights. / The division of the Hindoos into the four great castes of priests, (Brahmins,) warriors, (Shatryas,) merchants, artisans, and agriculturists, ( Vaisyas,) and mere laborers, (Sudras,) with the similar division in ancient Egypt, has attracted great attention as a very peculiar social phenomenon. Yet, as many traces of the feudal system, and especially of that main principle of it which vests in the government the ultimate title to all landed property, have been discovered in India, so it seems certain that Europe, at one time, was very near reaching that same divis- ion of castes which now prevails on the banks of the Ganges. At a certain period in the history of the feudal times, we find the population of Europe divided into the four very distinct orders of clergy, nobility, MIXED GOVERNMENTS. 125 citizens, and serfs classes which correspond exactly enough to the four great castes of the Hindoos. Had the progress of modern civilization been arrested at that point, and had the priesthood become hereditary, as the other classes already were, and as the priest- hood is in most theocracies, and would have become in Europe but for the zeal of Gregory VII. to enforce the celibacy of the clergy, Europe might have become what India now is. Such is the singular connection of events that the ascetic doctrine of the meritori- ousness of virginity, however absurd in itself, or to whatever evils it may have given rise, contributed, however, in an important degree, to the progress of modern civilization. SECTION SEVENTH. Development, in the Feudal Times^ of the Idea of a Mixed Government. THE struggles for power and dominion which took place, during the feudal times, between the monarchs, the clergy, the nobles, and the burgesses, and especially the compromises which, at different periods, resulted from those struggles, gave a further and still more marked development to that idea of the division of power, and of a mixed form of government, of which the first notable historical instance had occurred in the case of the Roman commonwealth. Whenever the power of these different orders, or of any two or three of them, pretty nearly balanced each other, if any act was to be done which required the concur- rence of the whole authority of the state, such as the 11* 126 THEORY OF POLITICS. enactment of a law to bind all classes, all these vari- ous depositaries of power must be made to act to- gether. The barbarian conquerors of the Roman empire had brought with them the custom of a gen- eral assembly of the whole tribe to consult upon affairs of general interest, including the decision of controversies a custom already referred to as pre- ceding the establishment of any regularly-organized government, and which, in states forensically gov- erned, is often maintained even after the government begins to take on a clearly monarchic form. These assemblies, of which the Champ de Mai of the Franks and the Polish Diet may serve as specimens, consisted originally of all the warriors of the conquering clan, presided over by the chief or king. But the general tendency indeed, the dictate of convenience was, gradually to limit the right of attendance ; only the principal nobles appearing personally, the inferior nobles being present by a few deputies. These as- semblies also early underwent another important mod- ification a consequence of the conversion of the barbarians to Christianity in admitting the bishops and abbots to participate in their proceedings ; and as the municipalities grew into importance, they, too, were finally admitted to appear by their deputies ; and it was in this way that the English Parliament and the continental States General were gradually constituted. But the thing about these assemblies in which the idea of a mixed government was most fully developed was, that each order the nobility, the clergy, and the burgesses had to yield their separate consent to give validity to any proceeding ; or, at least, that the separate assent was required of as MIXED GOVERNMENTS. 127 many houses as the assembly was divided into, which, from a variety of circumstances, was different in dif- ferent countries ; to which was to be added the assent of the monarch also. This, indeed, was a decided improvement upon the Roman usage of an independent legislative power vested in two assemblies differently constituted, and in which different classes predominated, whose direct clashing was only prevented by the veto power of the tribunes of the people a method liable to, and in fact attended by, great practical inconveniences and abuses. SECTION EIGHTH. Mutual Relations of the several Orders during- the Feudal Times. THE pretensions of the regular clergy to unite the whole of Christendom in one grand theocracy, with Rome at its head, having failed, they were presently iced to join with the nobles in a struggle against the monarchs, in which, from taking the lead, they now came to play but a subordinate part. The nobles, though most arbitrary lords and tyrants within their own dominions, and violently opposing all at- tempts to restrain or diminish their authority there, still claimed, in virtue of this very opposition to any restraint upon themselves, to be the advocates and supporters of liberty. The sort of liberty which they advocated was, however, little else than a miserable mixture of anarchy and of tyranny on a small Scale. Greatly, indeed, is it to be lamented that a name so 128 THEORY OF POLITICS. cherished should, through long usage, nave become associated, in the European and Americo-European mind, with notions so inconsistent with the public welfare. The monarchs, on the other hand, while struggling to subdue the inordinate power of the nobles, and of the titled and the regular clergy, and to subject them to responsibility and control, claimed, and with much more reason, to be the friends of equality a thing far better than any mere anarchical liberty ; indeed, the only kind of liberty consistent with civil- ized life. And so the citizens who composed the municipal- ities seem to have thought, since, in the political struggles of the feudal age, they generally sided with the monarchs, as finding them less oppressive than the nobles, and less inquisitorial and domineering than the clergy. The municipalities, indeed, indirectly put into the hands of the monarchs that instrument by which they achieved their ultimate triumph, as well over the nobles and clergy as apparently also over the mu- nicipalities themselves. It was the free cities* of Europe that first, in modem times, employed merce- nary troops ; and it was the growing wealth, of which the towns were the centres and sources, that furnished the princes of Europe with the means of keeping up mercenary standing armies. Having once obtained that instrument of power, the monarchs were able to assume, to a certain extent, the position of conquerors, and to reduce clergy, nobles, and municipalities to political insignificance ; uniting, in fact, in their own persons, in the power they assumed of levying taxes MIXED GOVERNMENTS. 129 by their sole authority, of conferring ecclesiastical benefices, and of appointing the magistrates of the municipalities, all the power that had formerly been distributed among the component parts of the assem- blies of the states which assemblies, indeed, at this period, ceased in many countries to meet at all, or when they did meet, were converted into mere in- struments of the monarch's will. SECTION NINTH. Rise and Progress of the Political Power of the Legal Body. THE administration of justice is one of the principal functions of government. In the ancient republics, that body which possessed the controlling authority, whether an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or what was called a democracy, always reserved to itself the right of final judicial decision. During the feudal period, when the political power of the state became divided into several portions, the judicial power was divided at the same time, among the same parties. The greater nobles claimed the right of final judicial decision within their own domains. The clergy had courts of their own for the trial of members of their own order, and for settling questions relating to marriage and inheritance, of which they seized upon the jurisdiction as being connected with births and deaths, and having, therefore, something mystic about them. The municipalities also had their special civic courts for settling their local controversies. 130 THEORY OF POLITICS. All that remained to the kings was the decision of disputes between noble and noble, nobles and mu- nicipalities, municipality and municipality, and so on ; and even this jurisdiction was disputed these parties claiming the right to make private war on each other. But this ruinous practice # of private war, the monarchs, as they grew stronger, prohibited, es- tablishing their royal courts in France called Parlia- ments for the settlement of these disputes. Similar courts were established in England about the same time, forming the basis of the existing system of English and American jurisprudence ; their jurisdic- tion and forms of proceeding being fixed during the reign of Edward I. (A. D. 1272-1307.) The establishment of these royal courts gradually raised up the lawyers to be a separate profession a sort of corporate body, enjoying a high degree of con- sideration, and exercising a certain portion of political power. The various and often conflicting rights and privileges claimed by the kings, nobles, clergy, and citizens, resting occasionally upon charters or special agreements, between the kings on the one side, and the nobles, monasteries, and cities on the other, but oftener upon mere custom and tradition, made the law excessively cumbersome, complicated, and un- certain. Mere good sense and a spirit of justice were wholly inadequate to constitute a judge, since, in ad- dition to these qualifications, a great apparatus of law learning became necessary. It thus happened that the body of the lawyers, from whom, of necessity, the judges of the royal courts had to be selected, came to be regarded, not only by the kings, but by the nobles and municipalities also, as the depositary POLITICAL POWER OF THE LAWYERS. 131 of the knowledge of their rights, and by virtue of this veneration, and as the guardians of those rights, to attain to a certain power and authority in the state. The universities which sprung up during the thir- teenth and fourteenth centuries, whose advice and opinions it was customary to ask and to urge upon clerico-politico-legal questions, were merely schools for the study of the scholastic divinity, and of the canon, feudal, and civil law. The royal courts, of which the judges were ap- pointed and removable by the kings, were, from the first, sufficiently favorable to the extension of the royal authority, coincident, for a time at least, with the extension of the authority of the lawyers ; and with the extension also of peace, security, order, justice, and equality. Thus, in England, the courts of law, by their decisions respecting the effects of fines and recoveries, completely defeated the attempts of the nobility to render perpetual the entail of their estates ; while the Court of Chancery, by its doctrines about trusts, got rid of a vast many restrictions on the alienation of landed property. Even the great measure of the emancipation of the serfs, accom- plished throughout Western Europe during the thir- teenth and fourteenth centuries, was greatly promoted by the zeal of the lawyers, who, in rescuing the rural population from the oppressive authority of their lords, amplified, at the same time, the jurisdiction of the monarchs and of the royal courts. As Europe gradually advanced in civilization, these royal courts assumed, indeed, the high authority of modifying ancient customs to suit new circumstances, and of establishing, on the basis of right reason, new 132 THEORY OF POLITICS. rules and customs where no old ones existed. So far as regarded the mo'st important because most univer- sally operating and permanent relations of society, those of the individual members of it to each other, subjects which, in those times, attracted very seldom, and only to very limited extent, the attention either of the monarchs or of the assemblies of the states, the courts of law became the chief legislators of Europe ; and from that time to this, under pretence of expounding the law, which is assumed to be a perfect and complete code, of which the different provisions are produced from the breasts of the judges, its sure though secret depositaries, as occasion arises, the Supreme Courts of Europe and of the European colonies have been constantly making new laws ; and in so doing they have accomplished, though not with- out much admixture of evil and error, a great work. This legislation, it must be admitted, abounds with flagrant defects, arising partly from the scholastic subtilties so fashionable in the feudal times, and so natural to that superficial siate of knowledge in which words are mistaken for things ; partly from the necessity the legislators were under of building upon a narrow and insufficient foundation of barbarous customs ; and in a great measure also from the peculiar nature of their legislative authority, the existence of which they have strenuously repudiated and denied, even in the very act of exercising it. It has been, however, on the whole, far better legisla- tion than could have been obtained from any other quarter ; or indeed from the courts and lawyers them- selves, had they not fortunately possessed and followed an admirable guide in the Code and Pandects of Jus- POLITICAL POWER OF THE LAWYERS. 133 tinian. The Roman praetors, it is curious to observe, had found themselves obliged to legislate for the Roman people, in the very way in which the business of legislation is still carried on by the English and American courts that is, by making new laws under pretence of expounding old ones. The Pandects are, in fact, but a compilation or abridgment of Roman reports of decisions, and of the opinions of eminent lawyers during a series of several centuries. With all its defects of execution, this collection contains a vast mass of legal principles, sifted by frequent dis- cussions and tested by a long experience. The nobles naturally made a violent resistance to a sys- tem of jurisprudence, which, as it favored the power of the prince, and placed all the subjects on a level of equality, was hostile to their pretensions. Yet, either openly or covertly, that system, with some slight modifications and exceptions, has furnished, in all the relations of life and commerce, the civil code of Christendom a result arrived at hardly less in Great Britain and her colonies than in the case of the continental states. Though the royal courts, and the body of lawyers attached to them, were, in the first instance, active and efficient aids in extending the royal authority, yet they became, in process of time, after the growing power of the monarchs had humbled the clergy, sub- jected the nobles, and subdued the municipalities, the only remaining barrier against absolute power. The nobles, the clergy, and the citizens, though stripped of their political authority, were still acknowledged to have certain rights, guarantied by the laws, and -which the courts and the lawyers upheld. In France, 12 134 THEORY OF POLITICS. the Parliament of Paris, the supreme court of that kingdom, went still further; and as the monarchs had usurped the power of imposing new taxes by edicts of their own, without consulting the States General, so the Parliament of Paris strove earnestly to convert the custom which had obtained of registering these tax edicts on its records into a right of protest, and even of veto, by refusing to register such edicts as were, in their opinion, unreasonable or unjust. Even in England, and the same is true in America, though the courts of law have been but too uniformly the supple instruments of power, the strenuous and obstinate defenders of all existing inequalities, under the respectable name of vested rights, yet there have always been found among the lawyers many of the adroitest, ablest, and most formidable opponents of arbitrary authority, and of antiquated abuses. Nor have those champions failed to derive great support to the cause they have thus espoused, from the ac- cepted doctrine of the lawyers, that law, with all the respect which it pays to precedent, is, after all, a sys- tem of right reason and pure justice, of which the judges are only the expositors, and precedents merely the records expositors and records which prove them- selves in error whenever they are found irreconcilable with reason and right. SECTION TENTH. Distribution of the Functions of Government. Sub- divisions of Authority. THE division of political power into several por- tions necessarily produces a distribution of the func- SUBDIVISIONS OF AUTHORITY. 135 tions of government. Throughout Europe, during the feudal times, the power of declaring war, calling out the feudal militia, negotiating with foreign states, and carrying the laws into execution, together with a certain indefinite right of promulgating new -laws, was vested in the kings ; the power of imposing taxes, and, by that means, of extorting from the kings enactments of general interest, ripening, in certain countries, into a full power of legislation, jointly in the kings and the assemblies of the states ; while the power of deciding controversies, and incidentally, not only of interpreting the laws, but of making new ones, so far as mere domestic and mercantile relations were concerned, (involving often in the result great political consequences,) was exercised in the name of the kings by the supreme courts, assisted by the lawyers.* It was this practical division of authority, per- petuated to our times under the British constitution, and imitated in those of America, which first sug- gested to modern writers on politics the idea of de- composing the functions of government into three elements, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial, and of intrusting each of these functions to separate and independent hands. Indeed, it has come to be a maxim very generally received among modern political writers, and which recent experience has * A very curious topic the veto upon the legislative power of the kings, exercised in England by juries, according to their original con- stitution the faint shadow of which still keeps up the reputation of the jury as the " palladium of English liberty " and the gradual loss of this right through the usurpation of the parliament and the royal courts has been handled in a masterly manner in Lysander Spooner's recent Essay on Trial by Jury. 136 THEORY OF POLITICS. tended to reenforce, that the liberties of a people can hardly be secure where these different functions of government are consolidated in the same hands. From the same source has also been derived the related idea of the division of the legislative authority among two or three bodies, acting as a check upon each other, and whose concurrence is required in all legislative acts. It is no doubt both possible and desirable, and in fact essential to constitutional freedom, that the several administrative functions of government should be exercised by different agents ; and that even to a considerably greater extent than has ever yet taken place. It is impossible, however, to make a complete separation between these functions, since they run, imperceptibly, into each other. All these agents, too, ought to be mutually dependent upon some common superior, by whose superintending authority their' action shall be ultimately harmonized ; as, otherwise, their mutual collisions and disputes might paralyze the efficiency of the government. During the feudal ages, this latter result was constantly occurring ; and it was felt to be so great an evil as ultimately to pro- duce, throughout continental Europe, a general ac- quiescence in the extinguishment of political liberty, by the concentration of all authority in the hands of the kings. DELEGATED AND REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORITY. 137 CHAPTER VI. DELEGATED AND REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORITY. SECTION FIRST. Delegation of Power in Monarchies. t THE chieftain, who, in process of time, and by the increase of the number of his subjects, finally becomes what we call a king, though he may, on important occasions, assemble the warriors and elders for consul- tation, yet usually exercises in person all the func- tions of government down even to that of executioner. This, however, is possible only so long as he remains the chieftain of a single tribe, camp, or village. When his authority includes several tribes or villages, he is obliged to share the functions of government with delegates, who act in his name and behalf. There are two ways in which this may be done. He may either appoint persons to exercise separate and independent functions, according to the method above pointed out, this man to be a judge, that man to be military chief ; this man to be collector of taxes, and that man to have the custody of the revenue, or a portion of it, or he may depute the entire powers of government, such as he himself possesses them, to be exercised within a certain district by a single in- dividual. It is this latter and ruder method that uniformly prevails in monarchies which have sprung directly from the primitive chieftaincy ; the late in- dependent chief of each successively conquered tribe 12* 138 THEORY OF POLITICS. % or some one of his family being frequently con- tinued as the subordinate ruler, under an obligation to pay tribute, and to render military aid to the su- perior chief. Wherever, in any monarchy, the former method prevails, it will probably be found to be only the continuation, or the copy, of some republican usage.- Hence its prevalence in those monarchies distinguished as tyrannies, and secondary monarchies that is, monarchies founded on the ruins of re- publics. SECTION SECOND. Delegated Authority in Republics. Representation. IN all republics, at least in all aristocracies and democracies, an absolute necessity exists for intrust- ing the administrative functions of government to delegated agents. It is impossible for any large number of persons to participate in any consul- tation to which" their personal presence is neces- sary. Any assembly which consists of more than a few hundreds loses the power of deliberation, and degenerates into a mere mob, in which the conception of the moment becomes contagious and omnipotent, and every thing is carried by the noisiest and most violent. But, though the obvious impossibility of carrying on the executive functions of government, except by intrusting them to the separate manage- ment of one or a few individuals specially appointed for that purpose, has led, in all republics, to the election of executive magistrates, the ruling body, whether aristocracy or democracy, has always shown DELEGATED AND REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORITY. 139 great reluctance to give up the personal exercise of judicial and legislative authority. In all the ancient republics we find no instance of an elective senate or council for legislation. Their senates seem always to have consisted of the wealthiest members of the com- munity, or of those who, by reason of their birth, their priestly offices, their greater experience, or their su- perior abilities, were able to exercise a power not delegated, but original in themselves. These ancient senates were, in fact, instances, not so much of the delegation of authority as of the aggregation of it in certain individuals, through the influence of the pri- mary or secondary elements of power. The assemblies of the delegates of the allied Greek cities of Asia Minor, and of those which belonged to the Achaean League, hardly form an exception, since those assemblies were rather congresses of ambas- sadors than proper legislative bodies. In those ancient republics, in which prevailed that form of government called by the Greeks a democracy, the highest acts of power, the enactment of laws, and the decision of the most important controver- sies, were reserved for the general assemblies of the citizens assemblies, for the reasons above stated, not very competent to the judicious and deliberate exercise of any such functions. In fact, they were perpetually guilty of acts of precipitate folly and in- justice, such as brought that form of government into very bad esteem with all the more considerate of the Greek historians and philosophers. The Romans made one important step towards overcoming the physical difficulty of permitting large 140* THEORY OF POLITICS. numbers to participate in legislative and judicial acts, by dividing their assemblies into distinct bodies, cen- turies, or tribes, each of which met and voted by itself. But in the later days of the republic, when the number of those entitled to the right of citizen- ship was greatly increased by the admission of all the Italian cities to that privilege, this contrivance no longer answered any good purpose, and the assemblies of the people became perpetual scenes of confusion, uproar, and violence. The simultaneous meeting, in the forum, of all the tribes and all the centuries, was, indeed, a great drawback upon the efficacy of this Roman method. As we are indebted to the municipalities of the middle ages for the first idea of a democratical equality extending to all the community, so it seems to have been in those municipalities that the appli- cation was first made of the only effectual means whereby the mass of a community can be enabled to exercise political power without tumult or violence ; namely, the delegation, not only of the executive, but also of the legislative and judicial functions of gov- ernment, to certain agents specially elected at stated periods for those purposes, and responsible to those who elect them for the proper discharge of their several duties. But, though the practice of legislation through the medium of representatives seems first to have been introduced in the local municipal govern- ments, that idea presently received a more extended application in the constitution of the assemblies of states in the middle ages, in which, though the greater nobles and clergy sat in person, the inferior DELEGATED AND REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORITY. 141 nobles and clergy, not less than the municipalities, appeared by their elected delegates. So far as relates to the decision of minor controversies, the same idea had been earlier carried out in the Greek and Roman republics, and among the Saxons and other German tribes, in the selection by lot or otherwise of a certain select number to act as judges or jurors, (originally the same thing,) instead of the general assembly of the city or canton. But it is in the United States of America that the principle of representative government has been most extensively and successfully applied. The town as- semblies of New England, including all the legal voters, exercise, indeed, a certain limited power of taxation and legislation ; but, with this exception, the entire functions of government, as well for the munici- pal districts as for the states and the Union, are vested in certain officers and bodies, elected (except a part of the judicial officers) for short terms, and, what/\ perhaps, tends still more to the prevention of abuses, \ for very limited ranges of authority ; so that any of these bodies or officers, attempting to stretch their jurisdiction, soon find themselves in conflict with their cooperates in the government, who thus act as im- portant checks upon and supervisors over each other. 142 THEORY OF POLITICS. CHAPTER VII. PROCESS BY WHICH DEMOCRACIES ARE TRANS- FORMED INTO ARISTOCRACIES, OLIGARCHIES, TYR- ANNIES, AND SECONDARY MONARCHIES. ALTHOUGH the municipal spirit and democratical ideas have, in our time, become very much diffused, forming the basis, indeed, of all the popular move- ments now, and for three quarters of a century past, going on throughout Christendom, it nevertheless has happened that almost all of those feudal age munici- palities in which that spirit and those ideas had their x origin long since lost all tinge of democracy in their own interior administration ; it being entirely super- seded there by oligarchy or tyranny. The process by which this remarkable result has been reached constitutes an important topic of inquiry. When we compare the original tribe or clan, at the moment of the first appearance in it of an organized government, with the original condition of the demo- cratic municipality, we perceive some close resem- blances and some obvious differences. In both there exists a very great equality among the members, especially as to wealth, and in both the authority exerted by the government is very limited. These are the resemblances ; and the differences are not less striking. In the original clan, the government, as it gradually takes on an organized form, assumes also a monarchical character. He who possesses the great- est influence over the determinations of the tribe, as that influence increases, takes more and more upon TRANSFORMATIONS OF DEMOCRACIES. 143 himself the office of deciding public matters and pri- vate controversies, without thinking it necessary to ask counsel or advice of the assembled community, or of the elders. Power is thus gradually aggregated / and centralized, till the control passes from the major- ity, the original depositary of it, into the hands of one man the chief or king. We have seen how the introduction of domestic slavery, by which the practice of tyranny is familiarized, tends to give new vigor to the authority of the chief ; and how the same result is still further promoted by the increased accu- mulation of wealth, a great amount of which always tends to concentrate in the chief's hands. This mo- narchical government, on the failure of the royal fam- ily, is apt to change, as we have seen, to an oligarchy, s^. thence to an aristocracy, thence to that extended kind of aristocracy which the Greeks called a democracy, from either of these forms to a tyranny, and from tyranny back to oligarchy or aristocracy, and so on ; ^alternating between tyranny, oligarchy, and aristoc- racy, with perhaps an occasional, but generally very short, restoration of the democratic form, till the state falls a prey to some conquering neighbor. Chattel slavery, so long as that root of political inequality continues to exist, seems to make it impossible for a community to escape out of this charmed circle, or to^ take on the true democratic character. In the municipal democracy, on the other hand, the government, from its very commencement, assumes a representative form, and the legal equality of the citizens is long preserved. Those who desire author- ity are obliged to exercise it through the medium of a personal influence, based on the primary and second- 144 THEORY OF POLITICS. ary elements of power, over the opinions and votes of their fellow-citizens. The institution of chattel slavery not existing, the idea of arbitrary and cruel exertions of power is abhorrent, and always remains so, to the feelings of the community. Only by slow degrees, in such a state, is despotic authority able to establish itself. The government, in a way we shall presently point out, changes gradually and almost imperceptibly into an aristocracy, which becomes, per- haps, an oligarchy. To this a tyiamojLfinally suc- ceeds, which, though often harsh and cruel towards the aristocracy ^ is generally, at least upon its .first establishment, mild and favorable towards the mass. Frequently, indeed, the multitude, sick of aristocratic insolence, lend their aid to the change, rejoicing in the humiliation and subjection of those by whom they have been themselves humiliated and subjected. When a monarchy has thus become established over what was once a municipal democracy, another cycle of changes begins. The monarchy, on failure of the royal family, or by revolutionary violence, for the Recollections of republicanism long survive, may ' change again to an oligarchy, or to an aristocracy, which, by continually expanding itself, may end, at length, in a new democracy. Or this process may go on pending the existence of the monarchy ; the king being gradually stripped of his power, which passes into the hands of a number of his nominal subjects ; and this number may go on increasing till the govern- ment becomes again an actual democracy. The non- existence of chattel slavery in such a community except, indeed, its place be supplied by the spirit of caste, (the influence, that is, of traditional respect,) or TRANSFORMATIONS OF DEMOCRACIES. 145 by mystical ideas produces, in fact, a constant ten- dency in that direction. In the original clan, the possession of power leads to accumulation of wealth in the hands of those who possess power ; which accumulation of wealth reacts to produce an increase of power. In the municipal democracy, the accumulation of wealth leads to the possession of power ; which possession of power is employed as a means of accumulating wealth. But this is a process which does not go on long, nor far ; for the aristocracy or the tyrant under whose control the community thus falls, like the greedy woman in the fable over-eager to increase her stores, soon kills, by impolitic exactions, the goose that lays the golden egg ; the whole community, governors as well as gov- erned, gradually, under the influence of bad govern- ment, sinking to poverty. The accumulation of wealth, in the original clan, takes place, as we have seen, by the introduction of chattel slavery, the case of some theocratic govern- ments, perhaps, excepted, in which the influence of mystical ideas is made to stand in the place of it, and by plunder and conquest, to which, indeed, slavery owes its origin. In the municipal democracy, the accumulation of wealth takes place, at least in the first instance, by industrious occupations ; and, as these occupations are equally open to all, somewhat of the original equality of wealth is long preserved. But commerce especially that commerce which is not confined to regular channels, but which has the character of speculation and adventure tends to pro- duce marked inequality of wealth ; and this wealth, i-rvrd '-ind transmitted in certain families, gives 13 146 THEORY OF POLITICS. to those families a preponderating influence in the community. It results from this influence that the members of the legislative council and the principal executive officers are generally selected from among a limited number of wealthy families, who soon come to consider themselves, in consequence, as having a sort of right of property in the government, and to form plans for securing the whole political power. The first step in this career commonly is, to dimin- ish the frequency of elections ; to which, as the same persons are constantly reelected, the voters are the more readily induced to consent, Thus the members of the legislative body, and perhaps the principal executive officers, from being annually elected, are first chosen for a long term of years, and then for life. Next, advantage is taken of some tumult or riot and the seldomer public assemblies are held, the more tumultuous they are apt to be to abolish popular (elections altogether, as inconsistent with the public peace. The council assumes the office of filling up vacancies in its own body, and the election, also, of all the magistrates ; and the late municipal democracy is thus converted into what is called a close corpora- tion. As power thus concentrates in a few hands, those who possess it make use of it to secure to them- selves a monopoly of the more profitable branches of trade. It is, indeed, to the great disjunction of inter- ests produced among the citizens of the middle age municipalities by the spirit of monopoly, and the . grasping at exclusive privileges by different guilds, companies, and associations, in direct violation of that idea of equality which lies at the bottom of the municipal democracy, that we must ascribe a great TRANSFORMATIONS OF DEMOCRACIES. 147 influence in the conversion of those governments into aristocracies and oligarchies. From a close corporation, possessing the right of filling all vacancies in its own body, it is an easy and customary transition to an hereditary council or sen- ate. Thus we see erected, upon the ruins of demo- cratical equality, a civic nobility in favor of which the idea of property in power and traditionary respect presently begin to operate. If the municipality, as fre- quently happens, becomes engaged in wars, and makes "conquests which it does not incorporate into itself, but governs as subject provinces, the concentration of wealth and power in a few hands proceeds at a much more rapid rate. Those who have the administration of these subject provinces always employ the arbi- trary power intrusted to them as a means of accumu- lating wealth ; while the troops which the municipal- ity is obliged to maintain therein are always highly dangerous to its own liberties. When a single family, by reason of its superior wealth added to superior talent, became able to overtop all the rest, the civic aristocracy, by which the original . municipal democracy had been superseded, is itself superseded by a tyranny, established, and, in many peases, sustained, by the basest arts and the most de- testable cruelties towards the late ruling aristocracy ; but, in general, if it does not alleviate, certainly not aggravating the yoke of the already subject mass. The revolutions of the Italian republics, especially of Venice, Genoa, Milan, and Florence ; of the Flem- ish and German free cities ; of the Swiss cantons ; and of the united Dutch provinces, will serve abun- dantly to verify all these observations. 148 THEORY OF POLITICS. CHAPTER VIII. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PATRICIAN AND CIVIC ARISTOCRACIES. SECTION FIRST. Comparison of Civic and Patrician Aristocracies. THERE is one important particular in which the* aristocracies which spring up in, and succeed to, municipal democracies, and which, for the sake of distinction, we have called Civic Aristocracies, differ from the aristocracies which succeed to the organized monarchy a difference which gives to civic aris- tocracies a power much more firm and lasting. Both admit the hereditary principle ; but aristocracies of the latter kind, which may be distinguished as Patrician, since they rest, in a great measure, upon certain tra- ditional genealogical considerations, form, as it were, a separate caste, to which the idea of intermarriage with the plebeian vulgar is utterly abhorrent, as tending to destroy that real or supposed peculiarity of blood to which the patrician order owes a large part of its consideration and influence. The civic or plebeian aristocracy, on the other hand, owes its in- fluence mainly to its wealth, which it is ready at all times to recruit, not only by intermarriages with rich heiresses of the vulgar sort, but also by admitting into its ranks all the more wealthy and able of the vulgar order, whom it thus converts from its most dangerous enemies into its warmest and most devoted supporters. PATRICIAN ARISTOCRACIES. 149 But, notwithstanding this difference in their origin and character, it not unfrequently happens that a patrician is gradually transformed, or rather absorbed, into a civic aristocracy a transformation which oc- curred in many of the Italian republics of the middle ages, and in some of the Swiss cantons ; the old nobility residing in the rural districts attached to the towns being induced or compelled to accept the right of citizenship, and to mingle in one body wJth the citizens. And this same process is now going on, if indeed it may not be said to be already completed, in England; though in that country a curious jumble still exists of patrician and civic ideas. It is no doubt true that the unequal distribution of wealth has had a great deal to do with the production . of patrician as well as of civic aristocracies. But the wealth of patrician aristocracies has been mainly founded upon conquest, plunder, and the possession of chattel slaves or serfs ; while their power has been mainly sustained by their superior personal skill in the use of arms, which they have seldom intrusted to the hands of the subject class. Such aristocracies have always despised all industrious occupations ; they have regarded the terms base and mechanical as synonymous ; and have looked upon trade, and still more upon all handicraft arts, as mean and degrading. Such were the sentiments of the Dorian Greeks, of the Romans, and of all the feudal aristocracies of Europe. They considered war and plunder the only occupations fit for gentlemen, and regarded any in- termixture or amalgamation with the laborious class, whether by marriage or participation of rights, as a thing not to be thought of. Like the American slave- 13* 150 THEORY OF POLITICS. holders of the present day, though they selected their mistresses from among the most comely of the wives and daughters of the inferior order, to have taken women of that order as their wives would have been regarded as an intolerable degradation. The story of Rousseau's Nouvelle Heloise, and indeed of a vast many of the novels and plays of modern Europe, turns upon this bar of separation between the patrician and civic orders. Civic aristocracies, on the other hand, having ac- cumulated their wealth by commerce, and by in- dustrious occupations, still continue to hold those occupations in a certain patronizing esteem ; to afford protection and countenance to them ; and, as has been already remarked, not merely to admit but to welcome into their order all of the lower ranks who amass wealth, or rise to high positions, civil or military. These civic aristocracies make, indeed, a certain approach to democracy in the circumstance that, although they do not admit equality of political rights, they yet allow to the excluded a chance or ex- pectation of obtaining a share of those rights. In fact, these civic aristocracies are capable, by a gradual extension of the circuit of the privileged order till it finally admits the whole community, of passing into democracies by almost insensible degrees. Yet they also may, and often do, proceed in the opposite direc- tion ; and by multiplying the obstacles to admission into their ranks, change, by degrees, into patrician aristocracies. CIVIC ARISTOCRACIES. 151 SECTION SECOND. Wealth as an Element of Power. Moneyed Form of Social Slavery* IT appears, from these considerations, that wealth may justly be regarded, not indeed as the sole, but still as altogether the most important, element of political power, able to purchase up the services of strength, skill, sagacity, force of will, activity, courage, knowledge, eloquence, and, to a certain extent also, the cooperation of the influence of virtue, of mysti- cal ideas, of hereditary respect, and of the idea of property in power. In addition to this aggregation of influences, wealth affords also great facilities for combination, which easily takes place among a few rich, whom the smallness of their number and their freedom from the engrossing necessity of pro- viding daily bread for themselves and their families enable to act together with energy and effect. / Even after the members of a civic aristocracy have grown too delicate and refined any longer to bear arms themselves, employing their whole lives in one ceaseless round of dissipations and amusements, their wealth still enables them to hire, from among that large portion of the community whom their policy keeps ignorant as well as poor, and whom ignorance and poverty have made abandoned and ferocious, a standing army of mercenary soldiers, mere machines in the hands of a body of officers, themselves selected from among the offshoots of the aristocracy, and them- selves also dependent on their pay for their bread ; THEORY OF POLITICS. a certain portion of the depressed multitude being thus fed and trained for the express purpose of shoot- ing down, under aristocratic guidance, any of their own class who may attempt, by force, to resist or to throw off the oppressions of the rich. The gift of public employments, and still more the control which the rich possess over all private lucrative employments, and the temptation thus held out to all the active and ambitious poor of obtaining, by the accumulation of wealth, admission for themselves into the privileged order these means enable the few ricli to seduce and buy up the greater portion of those among the mass who exhibit signs of superior energy and talent ; so that the mass, for the most part, ;uv left without leaders, or are constrained to take as such certain outcasts and renegades from the aristocracy, whom extravagance or utter profligacy has ruined, and who, as a last resort, take up the trade of patriots and demagogues. The notoriously bad character of these men, and the regular custom, which establishes itself among poor men of talents, of setting themselves up as leaders of the mass and vindicators of popular rights, in order to make a show of their abilities, and so to compel the rich to bid a high price for them these things throw a shade of suspicion over the motives of all who exhibit a disposition to favor the 'rights of the people ; while the^ leaders of the aristoc- racy, not seeming to contend so much for their own individual benefit as for that of a large body of men, their own order, are able not only to escape all sus- picion of self-seeking hypocrisy, but even to set up a claim to disinterestedness and magnanimous public Bpirit. CIVIC ARISTOCRACIES. 153 The establishment of a state clergy, who receive stipends from the public revenue, or who are sustained by the government in the possession of certain lands, tithes, and other prpperty, and still more the intro- duction of that "voluntary system," as it is called, which makes the clergy directly dependent for a livelihood on the mere benevolence of the rich, bring the influence of mystical ideas to the support of the aristocracy of wealth. Religious establishments are generally the remains of an independent, and what, perhaps, was once a controlling mystical aristocracy, but which, by the decline in the influence of mystical ideas, has lost the greater portion of its power, and has fallen into dependence upon the aristocracy of wealth, from which it borrows support, at the same time that it lends it. Thus, in Scotland, for instance, the established Presbyterian clergy, once a substantive power in the state, and but recently defeated in a new attempt to become so again, is kept up and paid by a few rich landholders, for the purpose of preaching contentment, submission, and obedience to the im- poverished mass, and consoling them with promises of future happiness and glory for present pains, pri- vations, and oppressions. Paley, in the first part of the third book of his Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, in the chapter entitled Of Property, describes, in the fol- lowing graphic manner, the existing social state of Europe : " If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn, and if, instead of each picking where and what it liked, (taking just as much as it wanted and no more,) you should see ninety-nine of them gathering all they got into a heap ; reserving nothing for them- 154 THEORY OF POLITICS. selves but the chaff and the refuse ; keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest, perhaps worst, pigeon of the flock ; sitting round and looking on all the winter, while this one was devouring, throwing about, and wasting it; and if a pigeon, more hardy and hungry than the rest, touched a grain of the hoard, all the others instantly flying upon it and tearing it to pieces ; if you should see this, you would see noth- ing more than what is every day practised and estab- lished among men. Among men you see the ninety and nine toiling and scraping together a heap of superfluities for one, (and this one, too, oftentimes the feeblest and worst of the whole set, a child, a woman, a madman, or a fool ;) getting nothing for themselves all the while but a little of the coarsest of the provision which their own industry produces ; looking quietly on while they see the fruits of all their labor spent or spoiled ; and if one of the number take or touch a portion of the hoard, the others join- ing against him and hanging him for the theft." Were the above a quotation from Louis Blanc or Pierre Leroux, it would, no doubt, be set down as rank socialism. In fact, it is but a paraphrastic anticipation of that celebrated dogma of Proudhon Property is theft. But, however faulty in theory, it is correct enough as a picture ; nor can the ninety- nine plucked pigeons be expected to detect a fallacy accepted for truth and science, not by Archdeacon Paley alone, but by almost the entire school of modern political economists. Continual exposure to pains, especially to such as are truly or falsely ascribed to human contrivance or agency, has a natural and necessary effect at once to CIVIC ARISTOCRACIES. 155 diminish the susceptibility to the sentiment of "benevo- lence, and to call into action the sentiment of malevo- lence. What cause then for wonder if the mass of the people, trodden down and ridden over by a proud and splendid aristocracy, the privations of want, and the hardships of labor, made vastly more painful by the spectacle constantly before them of overflowing wealth, abundant leisure, and the most profuse lux- ury what wonder, if, under this discipline, the mass of the poor are filled with bitter hatred of their rich rulers, become greatly demoralized, lose all respect for the rights of property, of which they themselves have so little enjoyment, and are only kept under by the severest laws and a constant display of military power ? The demoralizing effects of chattel slavery, whether domestic or predial, are very generally admitted. Yet it may be considered a doubtful question if the moral results that follow from that sort of servitude, whether as respects the masters or the slaves, are at all more \ disastrous than the results of this new moneyed form ! of Social Slavery, so much more aggravating than the earlier mystical form of it, by which the great mass of the people, throughout a large part of Europe, are subjected to the severest and most hopeless labors seemingly for the exclusive benefit of a wealthy few. So solid, however, is the basis upon which the power of civic aristocracies rests that there, would be little hope for the mass of the people did it not fortu- nately happen that such aristocracies become, from a variety of causes, almost always divided into two or more factions, which struggle with each other for the control of the state. It is usual for the defeated fac- tion to attempt to strengthen itself by professing great lOO THEORY OF POLITICS, zeal fof the mass of the people ; nor does it hesitate to purchase favor and support by promises of social reforms, and of the extension of political rights, too frequently forgotten when, by these and other means, the control of affairs has been finally obtained." Yet out of these struggles some extension of political rights inevitably results. The mass of the people, at least, acquire a participation in that liberty of as- semblage, of speech, and of the press, among the most substantial and effective of political privileges, which the faction of the " outs " for the time being always struggles to secure for itself, as essential means towards regaining a political predominance. Let us add, too, that, with the progress of knowl- edge and thought, the fact comes to be plainly per- ceived that to raise the mass of the people to a more equal participation in the goods of life is essential to the further progress of civilization ; while, with the growing force of the sentiment of benevolence, which acts always with the most energy among those in comfortable circumstances, a disposition springs up to contribute, by all feasible and promising means, to a result so much to be desired. The disposition, for example, which has so strongly developed itself in England during the last thirty years, to ameliorate the condition of the socially-enslaved laboring classes of that country, cannot but be regarded as a most hopeful omen for the future. From the above considerations, it necessarily fol- lows that the natural and artificial laws which regu- late the accumulation, and especially the distribution, of wealth are of the highest importance as regards morals, politics, indeed human happiness in general. CIVIC ARISTOCRACIES. 157 The particular investigation of those laws belongs to the TJiepry of Wealth. It is sufficient to observe here that ( great and permanent inequalities of wealth always result from and are kept up by plunder, mo- nopoly, entails, the exclusive possession of public em- ployment and handling of public money] and that, when the practice of plunder ceases, ana all special privileges are done away with, the tendency always is towards a certain degree of equalization. 14 158 THEORY OF POLITICS. CHAPTER IX. ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS FROM HISTORY: SECTION FIRST. What we call Universal History. OF the ten or twelve distinctly-marked varieties of the human family by which we find the globe at pres- ent possessed, only two that known as the Tartar and that which is called the Caucasian variety have preserved any written memorials of their history. The other races have become known only through their contact with these two, and, with respect to most of them, that knowledge goes back but to quite a recent period. The contact between the two great historical races, separated as they have been by the vast mountain chains and great barren steppes of Central Asia, has been only slight and occasional ; and, except a few violent movements from east to west, and of late from west to east, a few points where they have touched and partially intermingled, a few common influences which have been brought to bear more or less strongly upon both, the development of each appears to have been unique and distinct. It is a curious fact that the written historical docu- ments of the Chinese date back to nearly the same period with those of the Greeks ; Confucius, the fa- ther of Chinese history, as well as philosophy, having been bom a few years after the death of Solon. ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS FROM HISTORY. 159 Such, however, is our very imperfect knowledge of Chinese writings, and, it is to be feared, the immature character of Chinese literature, which, in the long period since the age of Confucius, appears to have made no real progress, that we can expect little light from this source upon any political question. What we call UNIVERSAL HISTORY is limited, at least for the present, to the history of the Caucasian race ; the . other races appearing on the scene only as they come into contact or collision with this. Before written documents can begin to exist, arid without written documents there can be nothing like chronological history, it is evident that a great ad- vance must already have been made in civilization ; and, if this advance took place by spontaneous de- velopment from the original savage tribe, in some favored spots, and under circumstances peculiarly fa- vorable, spreading thence to other communities less favorably situated, who learned and imitated what they never could have invented, it may well be' sup- posed to have consumed a goodly period. At the point of time at which chronological history may be said to begin, we find existing great cities and extensive empires, in the arts of life, and in scientific knowledge, not very materially behind the utmost limit to which, till within three or four centuries past, the race has attained under the most favorable cir- cumstances. This beginning of chronological history may be fixed at the commencement of the Persian empire founded by Cyrus, to which the date is here ascribed of 550 B. C. Not that this date can be given with any real precision, but because an even year in the 160 THEORY OF POLITICS. middle of a century serves to aid the memory by facilitating subdivisions of the subsequent period. It is possible, indeed, to trace back, by certain memorials which they have left behind them, certain portions of the Caucasian race to a period far anterior to that of the foundation of the Persian empire an empire itself formed by the conquest, and the union under one prince, of many ancient kingdoms and commonwealths Indian, Assyrian, Syrian, Egyp- tian, Lydian, Phoenician, Greek, &c. But this por- tion of our historical knowledge, consisting, as it does, of a few facts, and of a vast quantity of conjectures founded upon them, conjectures still very immature and unsystematic, must be placed under the head of ANTIQUITIES of which the materials are, first, some few written documents, such as the Iliad and Odyssey ; some fragments of the Greek lyric poets, to which we may add the labors of certain Greek scholars of the Alexandrian school, (who possessed those materials, such as they were, in greater abun- dance than we do,) to construct out of them a sys- tematic chronology ; portions of the sacred books of the Hebrews, Persians, and Hindoos, older than the date above fixed upon for the commencement of chronological history ; the inscriptions on the ancient monuments of Egypt, Nineveh, &c., which it is now so laboriously attempted to decipher, and not alto- gether without success ; those monuments themselves, and the sculptures, pictures, and other works of art found in connection with them ; and, finally, the anal- ogy of languages, which carries us back to some remote period when the common ancestors of the Greeks, the Germans, and the superior castes of th> ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS FROM HISTORY, 161 Hindoos fed their flocks on the same plains, and formed together but one community. All this period of antiquities, running back for indefinite ages, however curious and interesting on several accounts, is of little importance to the political student, whose attention must be chiefly fixed on the period of chronological history. Indeed, it is only from a thorough knowledge of the chronological period that we can hope ever to bring into connec- tion such few fragments and indications we have of previous times, so as to construct a sort of conjectural history out of them as the geologists, by the careful study of existing phenomena and comparison of them with the relics of the past, conjecturally reconstruct for us the ancient globe. Even with respect to that period, which we have designated as chronological, including twenty-four cen- turies from our assumed era of the Persian empire, down to the year 1850, our knowledge of different portions of it must obviously be very different ; and as to many counties and nations, even some which have played a very distinguished part in history, the period of their antiquities must be brought down to a much later date. To assist the memory, and to enable us the more easily to pass under review what we know of political history, let us divide our twenty-four chronological centuries into three periods of eight centuries each subdivisions which we designate respectively as ANCIENT, MIDDLE, and MODERN. 14* 162 THEORY OF POLITICS. SECTION SECOND. Ancient Period. WE include under this period the eight centuries from B. C. 550 to A. D. 250, or from the foundation of the Persian empire to the reduction of the Roman empire to one homogeneous body by the extension, to all the subjects of it, of the rights of Roman citizen- ship an era marked also as the commencement of a new order of things, by the first invasion of the bar- barians, by whom the Roman empire was finally overthrown ; and still more remarkably by the first serious and general persecution of the Christians the beginning of that great struggle between the civil and ecclesiastical powers which has since played so serious a part in European affairs. This ancient period may again be divided into two sub-periods of four centuries each, of which that from B. C. 550 to B. C. 150 may be distinguished as GRECIAN, and that from B. C. 150 to A. D. 250 as ROMAN. The Grecian sub-period may again be subdivided into the Age of the Greek Republics, B. C. 550-350, and the Age of the Greek Kingdoms, B. C. 350-150. But, as we have already had occasion to speak at considerable length of both these ages, so far as the history of the Greeks is concerned, it will not be necessary to resume that subject here. It was soon after the beginning of the second of these ages the age of the Greek kingdoms that the Roman republic, of which the early accounts must be ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS FROM HISTORY. 163 regarded as partly fabulous and partly conjectural, begins to become visible above the political horizon. Commencing with the complete and final subjection of the Latins on the immediate banks of the Tiber, the Romans proceeded, in the next three quarters of a century, to the conquest of all Italy south of the Rubicon, including the ancient Greek cities plant- ed on either coast. This extension of empire was soon followed by a struggle with the powerful com- mercial republic of Carthage of the internal policy and political history of which we are unfortunately so ignorant for the possession of Sicily ; which finally passed, A. D. 241, with all its ancient Greek cities, under the Roman rule. In the course of the next hundred years, not only were Cisalpine Gaul, (Italy, that is, between the Rubicon and the ^.Ips,) and the eastern shore of what is now called the Gulf of Venice, added to these conquests, but a second des- perate struggle with Carthage during which Italy was invaded by Hannibal, and the Roman power shaken to its very centre resulted in the complete triumph of the Romans ; in the confirmation of their authority in Italy and Sicily ; the subjection to Roman power of the provinces which the Carthaginians had conquered in Spain ; and, finally, in the capture and destruction of Carthage itself, and the absorption by Rome of its African dependencies. The Greek king- dom of Macedonia, which had been drawn into the struggle as an ally of Hannibal, and all the cities and republics of Greece, shared also a similar fate. Even a large part of the Asiatic Greeks fell at the same time under direct Roman influence, being ruled, at 164 THEORY OF POLITICS. first, by princes under their patronage, and becoming presently Roman provincials. The Roman history during this period ought to be fuller of political instruction than even the preceding age of the Greek republics, dealing as it does with larger communities and masses of power. But, limited and insufficient as our means are for ob- taining a true idea of the history of the Greeks, as regards this first historical portion of the Roman annals, our materials are still less satisfactory. Nothing can supply the loss of the greater part of the history of Polybius. We shall strive in vain to gather from the rhetorical pages of Livy any clear idea which he himself probably did not possess or even aim at of the relations of Rome to the con- quered cities and states of Italy, upon which the fate of Hannibal's invasion so essentially depended ; or, indeed, of the real political constitution of Carthage ; or even of that of Rome itself. The true political history of this whole period, hardly less than that of the primitive Roman state, can in fact be little more than guessed at. The four hundred years, designated above as the RO- MAN sub-period, B. C. 150 to A. D. 250, may also be subdivided into two ages, each of two centuries ; the first of which, that from B. C. 150 to A. D. 50, may be distinguished as the Age of the Roman City, and the other, A. D. 50-250, as the Age of the Roman Empire. For the first of these ages to the com- mencement of which belongs indeed the final sub- jection, already mentioned, of Carthage, Macedonia, Greece, and Western Asia Minor materials are more ample. Yet, in spite of the meritorious labor ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS FROM HISTORY. 165 of critics and antiquarians, who have pressed into the service every hint and scrap any where to be found, though the chronological series of events is pretty exactly ascertained, as to their springs and causes, as well as to the actual political character of those events, we remain often very much in the dark. For the whole eight centuries of what we call the ancient period, our authorities are in truth exceedingly limited, giving to them so much of the character of the still more ancient ages, that a great deal must be supplied by conjecture. For the greater part of that period no contemporary documents exist, except a few poems, orations, and letters ; while of the historical writers, on whose relations we are obliged chiefly to depend, very few are even the original compilers, from good or bad materials, of the accounts which we have ; these accounts being derived, to a great extent, from fragments of compilers at second or third hand, of whose judgment as to testimony, and much less of whose scientific knowledge of politics, it is impossible to form any very high estimate. They seem, indeed, often to have regarded forms of expres- sions and rhetorical effect as of at least quite as much importance as the matter which they had to communicate. There are no other such writers in all antiquity as Thucydides and Polybius of the lat- ter, we possess but a fragment ; and even they, with alf the light which they throw upon ancient history, suppose their readers to possess a great amount of information, the lack of which can only be supplied by guesses more or less plausible. Hence it follows that any political conclusions, founded solely upon Greek and Roman examples, 166 THEORY OF POLITICS. are to be received with great caution. In fact, it is only a thorough knowledge of the general theory of politics that can enable us to construct, from such fragments as we have, any thing like a tolerably probable skeleton of the history of the ancient period a theory, however, to which the recorded history of the Grecian and Roman republics must be admit- ted to contribute a very important aid. SECTION THIRD. Middle Period. THE eight centuries from A. D. 250 to A. D. 1050, which we have designated as the Middle Period, will also admit (to aid the memory) of a division into two sub-periods, each of four hundred years, of which the earlier, from A. D. 250 to A. D. 650, may be dis- tinguished as BARBARICO-CHRISTIAN, and the other, from A. D. 650 to A. D. 1050, as BARBARICO-MOSLEM. There are two things which these two sub-periods have remarkably in common : first, successive barbaric invasions, sweeping away and almost, or quite, de- stroying, a preexisting civilization, built on too narrow and weak a basis to be able to resist these impetuous torrents ; and secondly, the vast force of mystical ideas. In the earlier sub-period this force is exhibited, not only in the triumph of the Christian church which had originated, in the two previous centuries, from most obscure and feeble beginnings over the old super- stitions, the old philosophies, the laws, and the civil authorities of the Roman empire, which united ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS FROM HISTORY. 167 strove vainly to suppress it ; but in its triumph also over the invading barbarians, by whom the Western empire was overwhelmed. In the latter period we may observe this same mystic influence, not gradually developing itself by the cooperation of many individ- uals, through long periods of time, as in the case of the Christian church, but welling forth, as it were, a full and foaming torrent from the soul of a single individual, and inspiring into the nomadic barba- rians, who successively became its instruments and depositaries, not only the strength and courage to overrun and subdue those provinces of the Roman empire which had hitherto repelled invasion, but im- parting to them the mental energy to triumph over, to tread out, and almost or quite to extinguish, in the countries of which they became the masters, the Christian church itself, not less than other more ancient religious organizations ; making it, indeed, for ages, a doubtful question, whether Mohammedan- ism, instead of Christianity, should not overspread the world. A vast deal of important political knowledge is, no doubt, to be obtained from the study of the history of this middle period. Nor, although it includes the times commonly designated as the Dark Ages, is it by any means so deficient as the more ancient period which precedes it in original and contemporary documents ; at least in so far as relates to the history of Christen- dom. The multitudinous volumes of the Christian fathers, the codes of Theodoric and Justinian, a considerable number of barbaric codes, and many contemporary annalists in a variety of languages, be- long to these times. But it must be confessed, that, 168 THEORY OF POLITICS. in general, these writings are very little inviting, and that the direct contributions which they make to philosophy of any kind are exceedingly small. The whole period, indeed, may be aptly termed Dark, as one upon which the mind, ever anxious for progress and improvement, loves not to dwell ; of which the distinguishing feature is a succession of barbaric in- vasions, threatening to sweep away all that had been done for the elevation of the race in previous periods, to obliterate ancient knowledge and art, and to reduce the whole human family to a common level of igno- rance, poverty, and superstition a disagreeable scene, over which the imitative and imperfect science of the courts of the caliphs, and Charlemagne's ineffectual struggles after a new Roman empire, throw but a few faint and ineffectual glimmers of light. SECTION FOURTH. Modern Period. THE period of eight centuries from A. D. 1050 to the present moment, distinguished in our division as the Modern Period, admits also of an equal division into sub-periods, which may be aptly enough desig- nated as FEUDAL and COMMERCIAL. The first two centuries of the feudal ages, from A. D. 1050 to A. D. 1250, constitute, as it were, a prolonga- tion of the preceding period. The crusades, and the attempt at a theocratic monarchy over Europe in the person of the pope, supported by the religious orders, were its leading events ; and it may, in consequence, ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS FROM HISTORY. 169 be well enough distinguished as the Age of the Priests. The following age, the latter half of the feudal sub- period, from A. D. 1250 to A. D. 1450, during which Western Europe seemed in danger of being resolved into a vast number of independent and quarrelsome principalities, may be designated, from that circum- stance, as the Age of the Nobles. The political characteristics of the feudal sub-period having been already treated at some length in a previous chapter, we shall pass at once, without further comment, to that more recent sub-period which we have called the commercial. The latter half of the fifteenth century gave birth to a number of remarkable events, many of them significant of, and others tending to produce, a great change in the political as well as social condition of Christendom. Among these events were the final expulsion of the English from France, and the great extension of the monarchical power in that country by the annexation to the French crown of the re- maining great fiefs ; the war of the Roses, so fatal to the old English nobility, and the great increase of the power of the English crown which followed the union of the rival houses of York and Lancaster ; the union of the whole of Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella, and the vast extension which ensued of the mo- narchical power in that country ; the marriage of Maximilian of Austria with the heiress of Burgundy, the union of the divided possessions of the house of Hapsburg in his person, the intermarriage of his son with the heiress of Castile, and the intimate alliance which presently followed between Spain and Austria, leading to a great increase of the Austrian influence. 15 170 THEORY OF POLITICS. To these dynastic events may be added the abolition of private war in Germany, and the establishment of the Imperial Chamber for the settlement of the dis- putes of the sovereign princes, prelates, and cities ; improvements in military science, and the substitution of mercenary armies of foot soldiers in place of the mounted feudal chivalry, by which the consequence and weight of the nobility were greatly diminished ' vents tending also to the enhancement of monarchical ,,ower ; the introduction of the knowledge of the Greek ^nguage into Europe, and the new interest excited in A V MAIN CIRCULATION ALL BOOKS ARE SUBJECT TO RECALL RENEW BOOKS BY CALLING 642-3405 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW SBP 13*96 1997 ?OOB FORM NO. DD6 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY BERKELEY, CA 94720 D UO I I O U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES