ECLOGUE, in Poetry, a kind of pastoral composition, in which shepherds are introduced conversing together. The word is formed from the Greek ιxaoyn choice ; so that, according to the etymology, eclogue should be a select or choice piece; but custom has assigned to it a further signification, namely, a little elegant composition in a simple, natural style and manner.

Idyllion and eclogue, in their primary sense, are the same. Thus the idyllia, ι∕3vλλ∕α, of Theocritus, are pieces written perfectly in the same vein with the ecloga: of Virgil. But custom has made a difference between them, and appropriated the name of eclogue to pieces in which shepherds are introduced speaking; and idyllion to those written,like the eclogue, in a simple, natural style, but without any pastoral interlocutors.

Of the Idyl, as the word is generally written, Germany in particular, amongst modern nations, has produced some highly finished specimens. England can boast of comparatively few eclogues so called. Those of Collins are esteemed the best.

economists.

It is not generally known how much the science of politics, that master science, the late offspring of the improved reason of modern times, is indebted to the philosophers who are known to the world by the title of economists. They were, it is true, preceded in this country by Hobbes and by Locke, and in France by Montesquieu; but in analysing the frame of civil society, they added considerable lights to those which had been communicated by their predecessors; and they attempted to point out the mode of combining the various springs of social action in a more liberal and beneficent system than had yet been recommended to the world.

It is worthy of remark, that the merits of this sect, in the secondary department of political economy, have so much obscured their important speculations on the great questions respecting the best possible order capable of being given to society, that they are, in this country at least, wholly unknown, except in the character of political economists; though their political economy formed only a small and subordinate branch of their entire system; and, what is indeed extraordinary, we know not a book in the English language in which an account of that system is to be found.

This article is intended to contain, 1st, the history of the sect; ’ idly, an account of their system; and, idly, some observations, pointing out the principal errors into which they have fallen.

I. Μ. de Gournay appears to have been the first man in France who had formed any systematic notions on the real principles of trade. It is true, indeed, that Fenelon had recommended, on the direct suggestion of good sense, detached from theory, the practice of freedom of trade. The Marquis d’Argenson was celebrated for the sound and important maxim, Pas trop gouverner; and the memorable advice of the merchants to the meddling Colbert was well known, Laissez-nous faire. Another of the more peculiar doctrines of the economists was expressed in the famous maxim of the great Due de Sully, Que le labourage et le pâturage sont les manunelles de ľétat ; and Montesquieu had brightly but superficially run over several of the questions relative to trade.

For such lights as Μ. de Gournay did not derive from his own reflections, he seems to have been chiefly indebted to the writers of England; but there appears some reason to conclude that the best of these had not fallen in his way. We do not perceive, for example, any sign of acquaintance with the writings of Locke.

Jean-Claude-Maria Vincent, Seigneur de Gournay, was an extraordinary man for the age and country in which he was produced. He was born at St Malo, in the month of May 1712, the son of Claude Vincent, one of the most considerable merchants of the place. Destined to commerce by his parents, he was sent to Cadiz when scarcely seventeen years of age. His vigilant attention to business did not hinder him from finding time, well husbanded and diligently applied, not only for storing his mind with general knowledge, but for unravelling the combinations of commerce, and ascertaining its elementary principles. After he had raised himself to great eminence as a merchant, and to a high reputation for knowledge of the principles of commerce, the ministers of France conceived the design of turning his knowledge to advantage in the office of intendant of commerce, as they call it, to which he was raised in 1751.

No sooner was Μ. de Gournay invested with his office, than he began to wage war with the established system of regulations and restrictions, which the experience of twenty years of mercantile practice the most varied and the most extensive, discussions with the most intelligent merchants of Holland and of England, the perusal of the best writers on the subject, and the impartial application of his own philosophical thoughts, had all conspired to make him regard as a source, not of national advantage, but of continual vexation and hardship to individuals, and of poverty to the state. “He was astonished,” says Μ. Turgot, “to find that a citizen could neither make nor sell a commodity, without having purchased a privilege, by getting himself made, at a great expense, a member of some corporation; that if he made a piece of cloth, for example, of any quantity and quality different from those commanded in certain regulations, instead of being allowed to sell it to those purchasers whom such quantity and quality suited the best, he should be condemned to see it cut in pieces, and to pay a fine heavy enough to reduce a whole family to beggary. He could not conceive [7:8:399]how, in a country where the succession to titles, to estates, and even to the crown itself, rested upon custom, and ' where the application of even the punishment of death was rarely guided by any written definitions, the government should have thought proper to fix by written laws the length and breadth of each piece of cloth, and the number of threads which it ought to contain. Ĳe was not less astonished to see the government take in hand to regulate the supply of commodities; proscribe one sort of industry in order to make another flourish; shackle with peculiar restrictions the sale of the most necessary articles of subsistence; prohibit the storing of commodities, of which the quantity produced varies greatly from year to year, while the quantity required for consumption is pretty nearly the same; restrain the export and import of a commodity subject to the greatest fluctuation of price; and dream of insuring the plentiful supply of corn by rendering the condition of the labourer more uncertain and more wretched than that of any other part of the community.” (Oeuvres de Μ. Turgot, iii. 333.)

It may easily be imagined that Μ. de Gournay would find himself encountered by opposition the moment he endeavoured to introduce his beneficial views into practice. The grand instruments of this opposition were certain words and phrases, which have been used to screen misrule in every country in which the voice of reform has begun to be raised. “Μ. de Gournay," says Turgot, “was opposed, under the names of an * innovator’ and a ‘ theorist,’ for endeavouring to develop the principles which experience had taught him, and which he found universally recognised by the most enlightened merchants of every part of the world among whom he had lived. The principles marked out for reprobation, under the title of the ‘ new system,’ appeared to him to be exactly the principles of plain good sense. The whole of this system was founded upon the certain maxim, that, in general, each man is a better judge of his own interest, than another man to whom it is a matter of indifference. From this Μ. de Gournay concluded, that, when the interest of individuals is precisely the same with the general interest, the best thing to be done is, to leave every man at liberty to do what he likes. Now he held it as impossible, that in commerce, fairly left to itself, the interest of the individual should not coincide with the interest of the community.” The proof which Μ. Turgot gives of the fundamental proposition, that the interest of the individual and of the community in a free commerce are the same, we need not repeat; because it can neither be rendered more clear nor more cogent than it is already in works with which every person is familiar, who is at all conversant with political science.

“From this principle Μ. de Gournay concluded, that the sole duties of government with regard to commerce are: 1. To render to all the branches of industry that precious liberty, of which the prejudices of barbarous times, the proneness of governments to lend themselves to the gratification of individual interests, and the pursuit of a mistaken good, have conspired to deprive them: 2. To facilitate the exercise of industry and ingenuity to every member of the community, exciting thereby the greatest competition among sellers, and ensuring the greatest perfection and cheapness of the commodities sold: 3. To admit the greatest competition among buyers, by opening to the seller every possible market; the sole means of encouraging reproduction, which hence derives its only reward: 4. To remove every obstacle by which the progress of industry is retarded, by depriving it of its natural reward.”

It is to Μ. de Gournay, therefore, that Turgot ascribes the origin of political economy in France. “It is to the ardour,” says he, “with which Μ. de Gournay endeavoured to direct to the study of commerce and of political economy, all the talent which he was able to discover, and to the facility with which he communicated the lights which he himself had acquired, that we ought to ascribe the happy fermentation which for some years has been excited on these important subjects; a fermentation which arose two or three years after Μ. de Gournay was intendant of commerce, and has since that time procured us several works calculated to wipe off from our nation that reproach of frivolity, which, by its indifference for the more useful studies, it had but too justly incurred.”

Francis Quesnay was born in the village of Ecquevi)le in the year 1694. According to Μ. Dupont de Nemours, the editor and commentator of the works of Turgot, and a zealous economist, he was the son of a small proprietor, who cultivated his own little property; and he was eminently indebted to his mother for the fashion of his mind. Though he was educated as a physician, and rose to such eminence in his profession as to be first physician to the king, the early occupation of his mind on the business of agriculture had given the current of his thoughts a permanent direction; and when he was summoned to reflect on the sources of wealth, by the discussions probably to which the speculations of Μ. de Gournay had given birth, agriculture was the object on which his attention was more particularly fixed. He produced several works, on different points of the science and practice of medicine; and it was only at a late period of life that his works on political economy appeared. His chief production on this subject, Physiocratic, ou du Gouvernement le plus avantageux au genre humain, was first published in 1768. Not only had the speculations which he broached, and which he propagated with much fervour and diligence, considerable success in the world, but he had the fortune to gain a considerable number of proselytes, who exerted themselves with an ardour for the diffusion of his doctrine, and with a devotion to the opinions of their master, which more resembled the enthusiasm of the votaries of a new religion, or that of the followers of some of the ancient philosophers, than the indifference with which new speculations in philosophy have on all other occasions been received in modern Europe; and which gave to the economists more of the character of a sect or a school, than has appeared to belong to those who have in recent times concurred in any other system of philosophical opinion.

There was, in truth, in the system of Μ. Quesnay and the other economists, many things well calculated to attract attention and excite enthusiasm. From a few simple principles, they deduced, as they imagined, by a chain of very close and imposing arguments, a system of changes which would easily be introduced, without the smallest interruption to the tranquillity and happiness of the existing generation, calculated to remove from society all the deformities by which it was overspread, and to communicate to the mass of human beings a fulness of happiness hitherto altogether unknown. At this point, therefore, we may close the historical part of this article; for the success of the great work of Dr Adam Smith, in a short time, superseded the political economy of the sect; and after the political economy was discredited, the rest of their doctrines met with little regard. The memory of them, however, is well worthy of being preserved; and this task we shall now, in as few words as possible, endeavour to perform.

II. The economists proceeded upon no Utopian plan, which supposes society to be composed of beings different from those with whom we are already acquainted. They took man as he is, a being having wants, and governed by the desire of avoiding pain and obtaining pleasure.
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Man must have subsistence. Upon this ground they first took their stand. This being allowed, it followed, of course, that whatever was the best means of obtaining subsistence, would command the operations of men as soon as ever it was sufficiently known.

Of these means, the first and fundamental is the establishment of property. This they proved by convincing arguments. We cannot exist without consuming. The nature of man leads to a rapid multiplication of human beings, and the earth yields a spontaneous nourishment for only a few. To make food keep pace with population, labour must be employed upon the ground. Men would be born for no other purpose than that of destroying one another, if there were not means of increasing the quantity of food in proportion to those that were born. Labour, then, is one of the physical necessities of nature. But if labour be necessary, so is property, because, without property, there can be no labour.

The proof of this proposition is short and irresistible. Nobody would labour under an assurance that he would derive no advantage from his labour. Nobody would labour without a certain probability that he should enjoy the fruits of his labour. Now, this is property. The only question, then, which remains is, what is the degree of assurance with respect to the fruits of a man’s labour; in other words, what are the laws of property which tend most to secure the benefits which human beings derive from their labour? This, said the economists, is the object and the end of our researches.

They proceeded in their inquiry by the following steps. As a means to this labour, on which every thing depends, a man must be free to use his natural faculties of labour —his muscular powers. This freedom they called the property of his person. As another means to the same end, he must be free to use exclusively, and to preserve, what he acquires by his labour. This they call his more-able property.

Here we see the origin of that to which men have assigned the names of rights and duties. The exclusive powers assigned to the man over his person, and over the fruits of his labour, are called his rights. To allow these exclusive powers, by abstaining from every act which would impair them, is called the duties of all other men. Here we see, also, that rights and duties are reciprocal; that they imply one another, that they are created together, and that the one cannot exist without the other. Destroy the rights of property in the man, you destroy, by the βame act, the duties of other men to exclude themselves from what was called his property. Destroy, in the same manner, the duties of other men to exclude them-βelves from what was called his property, and you destroy, at the same time, his right to that exclusion. Hights and duties are, in fact, but different names given to the same thing, according as it is regarded under one or another of two points of view.

Another important concatenation is here also to be seen. Rights are advantages; things to be enjoyed. Duties are burthens, abstracted from things tobeenjoyed. Why should men accept these burthens, submit to these duties? Why, but because they find their advantage in doing so. It is plain how they find their advantage in doing so, and there is, there can be, no other reason. Men submit to the duties of respecting other men’s rights, that they may have rights themselves. It is good for them to have rights ; there can be no rights without duties. It is better to have the rights submitting to the duties, than, by renouncing the duties, to have no rights. The duties are then the price which is paid for the rights. The duties which one man yields to other men, are the price which he pays for having rights of his own. Deities, then, are in themselves evils ; and they never ought to exist, except when they are compensated by a greater good. Nobody ought to be subjected to a burthen, which is not, either to himself, or to the community in which he has clubbed his private interests, attended with a good sufficiently great to overbalance the evil which he is made to endure. Utility, then, is the exclusive foundation of duty.

Having laid this foundation, the economists proceed.

On the necessity of subsistence rests the necessity of property, and on the necessity of property rests the necessity of a certain inequality in the conditions of men. This inequality exists, because a good is obtained ’through it, which can in no other way be obtained; and that good the parent of every thing else to which the name of good is applied. “Those who complain of it,” says Mercier de la Riviere, one of the chief expositors of the doctrines of the sect, “see not that it is a link in the chain by which the human species must drag from the abyss of non-production every thing which they enjoy. As soon as I have acquired the exclusive property of a thing, another man cannot have the property of it at the same time. The law of property is the same for all men; each man, however, acquires in proportion to his faculties of acquiring: but the measure of these is different in different men. And besides this fundamental law, there is, in the whirlpool of accidents, a continual succession of combinations, some more, some less fortunate, which increase the causes of that inequality of acquisition, without which the motives to acquisition cannot exist I admit, however,” he in conclusion adds, “that in any given community, these differences in the possessions of different men may become the source of great disorders, and which augment again these same differences beyond their natural and necessary degree. But what follows from this? That men ought to establish an equality of conditions? Certainly not; for to that end, it would be necessary to destroy all property, and, by consequence, all society: it only follows that they should correct those disorders which make that which is an instrument of good become an instrument of evil: which alters in such a manner the distribution of things, that force places all the rights on one side and all the duties on the other.”

We have seen that the necessity of labour to procure the means of life and the means of enjoyment, produced a necessity of property personal and property moveable, as the two sorts were named by the economists. The necessity of raising food, as well as the first material of most of the other articles of human enjoyment, by labour upon the land, produces a like necessity of creating a property in the soil. The proof of this proposition is not less short and convincing than that which regards the other species of property. To make the land yield a produce useful to man, it must be cleared of many incumbrances, and prepared with much labour and expense. No adequate return can be obtained for this labour to the man who would bestow it, without a perpetuity of possession. It is essential for the well-being of the species that the labour should be yielded, and in the greatest degree of perfection. It cannot be yielded perhaps at all, certainly in no tolerable degree of perfection, without that exclusive possession which constitutes property. Property in land is, therefore, essential to the well-being of the human species.

We see in this manner what are the rights and what are the duties which the supply of the first wants of human nature renders it necessary to constitute; but as all mankind are not disposed to respect rights and duties, it is necessary, in order to obtain the advantages which they are destined to produce, that measures should be taken to protect them.

The measures taken to protect them are generally comprehended[7:8:401] under one name, that is, government. The protection of the rights, or, which means the same thing, the insuring of the duties, is the end, the government is the means ; and the question is, what combination of means is best adapted to the purpose?

This assuredly· is the most important question to which the human faculties can be directed; and the economists have never yet. received the credit which is their due, for the ability and success with which they laboured to resolve it. No speculations can be conceived of more importance than those in which they engaged, nor has it yet become easy to throw upon them a greater portion of light.

The grand classes of means by the skilful combination of which they conceived that the end might be obtained, were either more direct or more indirect. The more indirect were liberty and evidence; the more direct were laws exactly adapted to the end, magistrates exactly adapted to the execution of these laws, and a supreme, or, as they called it, “tutelary power'.' We shall endeavour to communicate their leading ideas on each of these particulars.

1. ∙ Liberty. We have seen that the end which is aimed at through property, as a means, is the greatest possible abundance of the things adapted for human enjoyment, and that property is a means altogether indispensable for that end. It is now to be proved that liberty is absolutely necessary to enable property to answer the purpose of a means to that end, and that, without liberty, the existence of property is deprived of almost all its advantages. In fact, the right which a man has not the liberty to enjoy is not a right. The right of property in a man’s person, in his moveables, in his land, is the right of enjoying; but the right of enjoying and the liberty of enjoying are the same thing. Liberty, therefore, cannot be hurt without damaging the right of property, and the right of property cannot be hurt without damaging liberty. “It is, 1 ’ says Mercier de la Riviere, “so inseparably connected with the right of property, that it is confounded with it, and that the one cannot exist without the other. Deprive a man,” he cries, “of all the rights of property, and I defy you to find in him a vestige of liberty. On the other hand, suppose him deprived of every portion of liberty, and I defy you to show that he truly retains every right of property.”

It is now pretty clear that liberty is necessary to produce that abundance of production which is the end aimed at by the constitution of all rights and duties. Man is excited to labour only in proportion as he is stimulated by the desire of enjoying; but the desire of enjoying can only be a motive of action in so far as it is not disjoined from the liberty of enjoying. You cannot have productions in abundance, without the greatest possible inducement to labour; you cannot have the greatest possible inducement to labour, without the greatest possible liberty of enjoyment. The chain of evidence is therefore complete.

“Let us not," say the economists, “seek in men beings which are not men. Nature has destined them to know only two springs of action, or moving powers; the appetite of pleasure and the aversion to pain. It is in the purpose of nature, therefore, that they should not be deprived of the liberty of enjoying, since, without that liberty, the first of those two powers would lose the whole of its force. Desire of enjoying, liberty of enjoying ; these are the soul of the social movements, these are the fruitful seed of abundance, because that precious combination is the principle of all the efforts made by human beings to procure it.”

2. Evidence. Property, and by consequence liberty and security of enjoying, being proved to constitute the essence of what they called the natural and essential order of society, it was seen to be in reality a chain of physical consequences, involving nothing arbitrary, nothing changeable; evident, on the other hand, simple, and resting on no other ground than that of being the most advantageous possible to the whole body of the community, and to every one of its members.

“The best possible order of society, however,” they observed, “cannot be established where it is not sufficiently known; but for that very reason, that it is the best order, the establishment of it, as soon as it is known, must become the common ambition of men; it must then introduce itself by necessity, and, once established, it must by necessity continue for ever.” These were bold promises, but the proof was correspondent. “The best possible order of society must introduce itself as soon as known, and preserve itself for ever as soon as introduced, because the appetite of pleasure, and the aversion to pain, the only moving powers within us, lead naturally and constantly toward the greatest possible augmentation of enjoyments; and the desire of enjoying implies by necessity that of the means by which enjoyment is procured. It is, then," said the economists, “impossible that men should know their best possible condition without a consequent union of all wills and all power to procure and to preserve it. Imagine not,” they cried, “that for the establishment of this essential order it is necessary to change the nature of men, and divest them of their passions; their passions, on the other hand, become auxiliaries in this establishment, and, for the most complete success, it is only necessary to place them in a condition to see with evidence that it is in this order alone they can find the greatest possible sum of enjoyments and of happiness.”

These philosophers made some admirable observations upon the nature of evidence, and the important purposes to which it is subservient. They made a distinction between those propositions which a man receives without evidence, and those which he only receives upon the strength of evidence. The first they denoted by the word opinion, the second they marked by the names of knowledge and certainty. “As error,” they said, “is every thing which is not truth, in like manner, what is not evidence is only opinion ; and whatsoever is only opinion is arbitrary, and liable to change. It is evident, therefore, that these opinions are not a sufficient foundation for the natural and essential order of societies. A solid edifice cannot be erected on a basis of sand; and that into which nothing arbitrary can enter, which is and must be unchangeable as the ends to which it is directed, can never be founded on a principle so arbitrary and various as opinion; opinion which, however just and true it may accidentally be, so long as it is not founded on evidence, is but opinion still, and liable every moment to be subverted and expelled by any other opinion, however extravagant and absurd.”

Evidence is the knowledge, clearly attained and possessed by ourselves, of all that is necessary to see the truth or falsehood of an object of belief. This excludes all doubt, all uncertainty, every thing arbitrary, all exercise of will. A man can no more help believing that which he actually holds in his mind evidence sufficient to prove, than he can help seeing the object which is painted on his retina.

From thisjrresistible power of evidence the economists deduced the most important consequences. “Not only is it,” they said, “the essential characteristic of evidence to stand the test of the most severe examination, but the most severe examination can have no other effeot than that of displaying it to more advantage; that of giving to [7:8:402]it a power more predominating and supreme; while, on the other hand, sufficient examination destroys prepossession and prejudice, and establishes in their place, either evidence, or at least suspension of judgment, where evidence on which to found a judgment is out of our reach.”

On the first of these propositions, that “evidence can stand the test of the most severe examination,” they said, “that all attempt at proof was surely unnecessary,—it was self-evident; and hence,” they said, “was evidently deduced this most important consequence, ‘ that the liberty of examining, of criticising, and of contradicting evidence, is always and necessarily without inconvenience.'”

“That a sufficient examination destroys prepossession and prejudice,” they regarded as a proposition equally indisputable; and from this it followed, as an irresistible consequence, “that the most unbounded liberty of examination and contradiction is of primary and essential importance; for no examination can be sufficient till all the reasons of doubt are exhausted.”

“That a sufficient examination establishes evidence in the place of error in the case of all questions where evidence is within our reach,” was a truth, they said, resting on the same immoveable basis; and from this it followed, as an evident consequence, “that liberty of inquiry will lead by necessity to the clear and public knowledge of what is the best possible order of human society; for on this subject evidence is undeniably within our reach.”

“We may thus regard evidence as a sort of beneficent divinity, whose pleasure consists in spreading peace on earth. Never do you behold mathematicians at war with mathematicians on account of the truths which they have established on evidence; if they enter into a momentary dispute, it is only while they are yet in the avenue of inquiry, and have investigation solely in view; butas soon as evidence has pronounced either on the one side or the other, every man lays down his arms, and only thinks of enjoying in peace the good which is thus acquired in common.”

“Pass now,” say the economists, “from the evidence of mathematical to that of social truths; to the evidence of that order of human affairs in society which would produce to men the greatest possible amount of happiness. From the known effects of evidence in the first of these cases, try to conceive what would be the effects of it in the second; what would of necessity be the internal condition of a society governed by that evidence; what would of necessity be the political and respective situation of all nations if they were illuminated by its divine effulgence; consider if men, rallied under the standard of that evidence, would have any division among them; if any motive for war would be sufficiently powerful to make them sacrifice to it their best, and to themselves evidently best possible condition: penetrate still deeper, and see if the pictures which that medium presents to you do not excite in you sensations, or rather transports, which elevate you above yourself, and appear to indicate that, by means of evidence, we communicate with the divinity.

“But to increase your sensibility to the impressions which those pictures will make upon your understanding and your heart, place in opposition all the inconveniences which, in a state of ignorance, arise from the force of opinion.

“A certain thing is forbidden under the sanction of punishments capable of inspiring the greatest terror. What power can such prohibition and punishments have against an opinion which tends to despise them? None; we have too many examples to prove it.

“A man is placed by his birth in a situation in which he might effect the happiness of a great number of other men, if he made a beneficent use of his advantages; what is it the man performs when his opinion is wrong? He sacrifices his advantages to the disorder of his opinion, lives and dies unhappy.

“One man unarmed commands an hundred thousand with arms in their hands, of whom the weakest is stronger than he. What constitutes his power? Their opinion; they obey him in obeying it; they follow their leader because they have an opinion that they ought to follow him.

“Do you wish to see other effects which characterize the force of opinion? Consider the effects of honour; of that sort of enthusiasm which prefers toil and fatigue to repose, poverty and privation to riches, and death to life, on which it finds the secret of shedding a lustre.

“ Opinion, of one sort or another, governs the world. Even when it is but a prejudice, an error, there is no power in the moral world comparable to its power. Fruitful in phantoms, it borrows all the colours of reality, in order to deceive. Source inexhaustible of good and of evil, it is through it alone that we see, by it alone that we will and we act. According as it borders upon truth or falsehood, it produces virtues or vices, the great man or the villain. No danger stops it; difficulties render it more intense; at one time it founds empires, at another destroys them.

“Every man is therefore a little kingdom upon the earth, governed despotically by opinion. He will burn the temple of Ephesus, if it is his opinion that he should burn it; in the midst of the flames he will brave his enemies, if his opinion is that he ought to brave them. Our physical powers themselves are so completely subordinate to the power of opinion, that, to have the command of our physical powers, it is necessary to begin by having the command of our opinion; but how is it possible to have the command of opinion, while it is the sport of ignorance, and its nature arbitrary? How is it possible to fix and to unite the opinions of men, but by the agency of evidence? Is it not visible that the Author of nature has appointed no other means for chaining our arbitrary will?

“We ought to look, therefore, upon ignorance as the necessary principle of all the evils which have affiicted society; and upon the knowledge, that is, the evidence of the best possible order of society, as the natural source of all the good which is destined for the inhabitants of the earth.

“But as all the physical forces in the world cannot render that evident which is not so, and as evidence can spring from nothing but adequate examination, from the necessity of that evidence clearly follows the necessity of examination, from the necessity of examination clearly follows the necessity of the greatest possible liberty of contradiction, and, in addition to that liberty, the existence of all those political institutions which are required to give to evidence its greatest possible publicity.''

The publicity of evidence was a subject on which the economists dwelt with peculiar emphasis, and which they branched out into a number of the most important consequences. “The necessity of it,” they said, “was apparent from this, that the proper order of society cannot be solidly established, but in proportion as it is sufficiently known. In any society, if some men only had knowledge and evidence of this order, while the multitude rested in other opinions, it would be impossible for this order to govern; it would in vain command; it would not be obeyed. This state would be that of a perpetual intestine war of one part of the nation with another. By intestine war they did not, however, mean,” they said, “only that which is performed with arms in the hands, and by open force; they more peculiarly referred to those disguised and clandestine ravages and oppressions, exercised under forms of law; to those dark and predatory practices, which sacrifice all the victims which artifice is able [7:8:403]to bring within their power; to all those disorders, in a word, which tend to make all particular interests enemies of one another, and thus to uphold, among the members of the same political body, an habitual war of clashing interests, the contending effects of which tear in sunder all the bonds of society. This situation is so much the more dreadful, in as much as, excepting the superior and governing force of evidence, there is no power in nature equal to that of opinion; as in its aberrations opinion is tremendous, and as no means exist by which we can make sure of retaining it always within proper limits, when it is once given up to its own inconstancy, and to seduction.

“From the publicity, which is an indispensable condition to possession of evidence respecting what is best in the social order, we are conducted to the necessity of public instruction. Though faith,” said the economists, “be the gift of God, a peculiar grace, which cannot be the work of men alone; nevertheless it is held that the preaching of the gospel is peculiarly necessary to the propagation of the faith. Why, then, should not every one have the same opinion with regard to the publication of the social order, more especially as that publication has no need of being aided by grace and supernatural light? This order is instituted for men, and all men are born to live under it; it is then required by this order that men should know it, and accordingly they have all a sufficient portion of natural faculties, to be able to elevate themselves to that knowledge. For the same reasons that knowledge is required, instruction is required, by which alone certain kinds of knowledge can be attained.”

The economists did not enter into details respecting establishments necessary for instruction. They, however, affirmed, that such establishments “constituted a part of the essential form of a society, and that they could hardly be too numerous, because instruction can never be too common.” They affirmed, also, that “verbal instructions did not suffice; that it was necessary to have doctrinal books, suited to the purpose, and in every body’s hand. This help,” they said, “was so much the more important, as it was clear of all inconvenience, for error cannot stand in the presence of evidence; and contradiction is not less advantageous to evidence than it is fatal to error, which has nothing to fear so much as examination.”

What they affirmed with respect to the necessity of those which they called doctrinal books, and of the liberty which ought to reign with regard to them, “was founded,” they said, “upon the very nature of that order which is due to society, and of the evidence which belongs to it. That order,” they observed, “is either perfectly and evidently known, or it is not. In the first case, its evidence and simplicity render the formation of heresies on the subject of it altogether impossible. In the second ca9e, men cannot arrive at knowledge or evidence, but through the conflict of opinions. It is certain that an opinion can be established only upon the ruins of those which are opposed to it; it is further certain, that every opinion which is not founded upon evidence will be contradicted, until it is either destroyed, or recognized on evidence for a truth, in which case it ceases to be a bare opinion, and becomes an evident principle. And thus, in the pursuit of truths, capable of being established on evidence, the conflict of opinions leads, of necessity, to evidence, because it is by evidence alone it is capable of being terminated.”

This doctrine is of such infinite importance, that we are willing to prolong it, by adding the illustration which the economists were accustomed to adduce. “If a man should be actuated by any motives to write a book endeavouring to persuade his countrymen that they might live without subsistence, that they ought to make commodities without the materials, that they multiply themselves by change of place, or any other extravagant opinion, it would be highly useless for the public authority to give itself any concern or labour to prevent such a book from making an impression upon the public mind; and, far from feeling any alarm, e√cry body would rest securely upon the evidence of the contrary truths, assured that this evidence would always be sufficient for itself, and would quietly triumph over all the ridiculous efforts which would be made to oppose it.

“So absolutely necessary is it to leave to the whole body of society the greatest possible freedom of examination and contradiction; so absolutely necessary is it to abandon evidence to its own strength, that there is no other power which can supply its place; physical power, of what magnitude soever, can command actions alone, never opinions. The experience of every day affords to this truth the evidence of the senses. So little have our physical powers any influence over our opinions, that our opinions, on the contrary, exercise an uncontrollable dominion over our physical powers. Our physical powers are put in motion, and guided by our opinions alone. The common or social, called the public force, is formed by the union of the physical powers of many individuals. This supposes, necessarily and invariably, a correspondent union of evils; and this can never exist but in consequence of an union of opinions, good or bad. It is, therefore, to reverse the order of things, and take the effect for the cause, to desire to give the public force a power over opinion, while it is from the union of opinions that public force holds its own existence, and while, by consequence, it can have no stability but in proportion to that which reigns in the opinion on which it is founded, that is to say, in proportion as bare opinions, stripped of evidence, are replaced by opinions fixed and invariable, because founded upon evidence which cannot deceive.”

3. Laus. Having established as incontrovertible truths, that property is necessary to the production of the means of human life and enjoyment, that the system of human rights and duties spring from it as natural consequences, and that the natural and essential order of societies is nothing in reality but the chain or connected order of these same rights and duties, the economists laid down the following definition: “That the essential form of a society is the continuation of all those social institutions which are necessary to consolidate the right of property, and secure to it all the liberty which essentially belongs to it.”

Among these instrumental establishments, an important place is held by laws, of which they communicated the following very striking and original idea.

“A multitude of men assembled without acknowledging any respective rights, any reciprocal duties, would not form a society. That does not consist in the meeting of a number of men in a particular place. It may subsist among men very remote in respect of place, and not subsist among men very near in respect of place. That which really constitutes the union, are the conditions of the union. These conditions are the systems of rights and duties, in other words, the conventions entered into for their common interest by the members of the associated body. The laws, then, are precisely those conventions, by operation of which, the reciprocal rights and duties are established in such a manner that the members of the society are no longer permitted arbitrarily to depart from them.

“Of these conventions, some are of such a nature as cannot be defined very exactly, or at least cannot be enforced by artificial sanction, but must be left to the natural coercion of the approbation and disapprobation of mankind. Such are the common duties of morality; gratitude, veracity, charity, and the like. But the next clast [7:8:404]of these conventions are those which are capable of being defined exactly, and enforced by artificial sanctions; as, that murder shall not be committed, property shall not be stolen. This last class of conventions are those which are properly called laws.

“The first property necessary to give those laws their best possible form (for, in regard to their substance, it is always supposed that they are strictly conformed to that utility from which the whole system of rights and duties takes its origin) is, that they be definitive; to distinguish, by an incontrovertible line, what each of them does, from what it does not, comprehend. This is implied in the very notion of a law, which is to render something positive, which would otherwise be arbitrary.

“The second property necessary to give laws their best possible form is, that they be written. This is indeed implied in the first property; because no combination of ideas can be rendered positive and unvarying, of which the expression is not positive and unvarying. But nothing can render an expression positive and unvarying but a permanent sign; and, of permanent signs, none is equal to writing.

“The third property necessary to give to laws their best possible form is, that the reason of each be annexed to it. The distinction is very important between the letter of the law, and the reason of the law. The letter of the law is its textical composition; the reason of the law is the motive by which it was dictated. The man who is guilty of murder shall receive a certain punishment. This is the letter of the law. The reason is, that if murder were common, and not restrained by adequate motives, the happiness of human beings, if not the species, would soon be destroyed. Having thus acquired a knowledge of the reason of the law, 1 possess the evidence of its utility. And of this I should not have been possessed, had I seen in the law nothing more than the letter. Let us suppose two laws, which equally assign the punishment of death; the one for homicide, the other for walking at certain hours in the day. Is it not clear that they would be viewed with different eyes; that the one would appear to be just, the other tyrannical; that we should feel within ourselves a natural disposition to submit to the one, a disposition to avail ourselves of every thing which might serve as a means to deliver us from the hateful yoke of the other? This difference arises from the different judgment we form of the reason of these bad laws. The first carries with it the evidence of its utility ; and that evidence overcomes and binds without resistance the understanding and the will. The other carries with it, instead of the evidence of utility, the evidence of nothing but a dis-proportional rigour, of a manifest evil, to which our understanding, and consequently our will, can never submit.

“It is not, therefore, in the letter, but in the reason of the laws, that we must seek for the first principle of a constant submission and obedience to the laws; for that principle can be nothing but the dominion exercised over our minds by the evidence of the justice of necessity, that is, the utility of the laws; now this evidence is not in the letter of the laws; to establish that submission, therefore, generally and invariably, two conditions are requisite; one is, that the reason of the laws contain conclusive evidence of their utility, commonly called their justice and necessity; the other is, that the publication of this evidence be so complete, in respect both of clearness and diffusion, as to lodge it in the mind of a majority of all classes of the people. Men, persuaded that their laws were bad laws, might indeed for a time be constrained to observe them; but such a submission, contrary as it is to nature, could not be durable, nor escape daily breaches on the part of those who regarded themselves as suffering by the injustice of the laws. Submission to the laws is always, and necessarily, proportional to the idea which we hold of their justice and necessity ; that is, their indispensable use in procuring good and eschewing evil.

“If laws,” said the economists, “are any thing but the results of the natural order of society, or of that system of duties and rights which are rightly founded upon the interest of all; if the legislature of any country sets up rights and duties of another sort, these new rights and duties are contrary to the first; and hence, of necessity, the laws which prescribe them are in a state of perpetual opposition with our understandings and wills.” This contrariety they proved in the following manner: “AD the rights which a reasonable being can desire are summed up in that of property; because from the right of property results the liberty of enjoying; a liberty which ought to have no bounds but those which are assigned to it by the similar rights of property belonging to other men. As the essential order of society thus determines the measure of liberty belonging to each of its members, and as that measure is the greatest which can be, without disturbing that essential order itself, it is impossible that any thing should be added to the liberty, that is, to the rights of one set of men, without taking from the liberty, and by consequence from the property, of other men; and this is an injustice and disorder, the tendency of which is destructive to the society.”

It is destructive to the society, because it throws it into a state of violence. “My neighbour,” says Mercier de la Rivière, “will be content that he is not allowed to reap or to injure my crop; but for the same reason he will not be content that I should be allowed to reap or to injure his. On the view of such an injury permitted in regard to any other man, he will take the alarm, his fears will be excited for himself, and this anxiety will be a state of torment, from which his reason will perpetually urge him to seek relief. A law which violates the principle of utility, is a law therefore resisted by that evidence which governs beyond control the human will. To make such a law, is to put the society into a state of violence, because it is to put the minds of men into a state hostile to one another, and more or less hostile to the laws.

4. Magistrates. By this term the economists understood judges, and, in a word, all the leading functionaries employed in giving execution to the laws. Agreeably to the doctrines already exhibited, they conceived that the first service of the magistrates is that of shedding the light of evidence upon the particular cases which have been too obscure for the parties. But as there are some minds with which you cannot be sure of being able in every case to bring evidence, as it were, in contact, the magistrate needs to be armed with a coercive power; and all that is necessary is, that he affords to the rest of the community evidence that in such cases the power has been used agreeably to the principle of general good.

From these premises, the chief consequence which they deduced was, that the legislative and judicial powers are never to be united in the same hand, without destroying among the people all certainty of the justice and necessity of their laws, that is, the very essence of the laws themselves.

“The essential form of positive laws,” they said, “in that which makes them to be what they ought to be, is, that they consist of certain visible signs, which show, that in the institution of them, that order has been followed which is necessary, 1st, to ensure their justice and necessity, that is, their adaptation to the ends of obtaining good and avoiding evil; 2dly, to render their adaptation to those ends evident or certain to the individuals whom [7:8:405] they concern. Now it is clear that these conditions could not be fulfilled if the legislative power was to engross the judicial functions. The legislator and judge being the same person, neither could the legislator find any resource against his own mistakes in the close review and experience of the judge; nor, on the other side, could the arbitrary will of the judge find any bridle or chain in the authority of the legislator; but the laws, however good in themselves, would be rendered evil by a variable and corrupt administration.

“If the legislator were judge also, his business would be to consummate and to crown all the mistakes which he incurred, or the abuses which he committed, in the formation of the laws. If the judge were legislator also, the laws existing only in conformity to his will, he would be under no necessity to consult the laws in passing his judgment, and would always ordain as law-maker, what he should have to determine as law-interpreter. Thus the reason of the positive laws would be found to consist in nothing but the will of the legislator, as he would be guided in making them by nothing but its arbitrary impulses; and, in the same manner, the reason of the judicial decisions would be found to consist in nothing but the mere will of the judge, whose independence would enable him to make them whatever he pleased. This double malady abundantly proves that those laws would be stript of the essential characteristics of law, the evidence of their justice and necessity, and an absolute exemption from every thing arbitrary.”

The duties of the judge they deduced in the following order: As the laws are in themselves mute, and the magistrate is the organ through which they speak, he is particularly charged with the guardianship of the laws. It is ,of importance to know what is implied in the term guardianship of the laws. It relates either to the laws which are made, or to those which are to be made. The natural strength of the Jaws consists in the evidence of their goodness. Their weakness consists in the strength of the hands which dispose of the physical power. As the laws arc mute in themselves, they cannot wield that evidence in which their strength consists. The magistrates, who are the mouth of the laws, ought therefore to wield it for them, and to resist the hands in -which the physical power is deposited, when they attempt the infringement of the laws, with all the force which evidence can be made to exercise over the minds of the community.

The same principles demonstrate what are the duties incumbent on the depositaries of the judicial power with regard to laws to be made. As laws ought all to be founded on that concatenation of the causes of human good which the economists denominated “the primary and essential reason of all laws, the evidence of that primary and essential reason was,” they said, “a deposit, so to speak, in the hands of the judicial instruments, of which they owed an account to the legislature, to the nation, and to God himself, of whose supreme will that evidence is the decisive token. It was their first duty, therefore, to have a perfect knowledge of that primary and essential reason.” Their next duty was, on all occasions, as far as their utmost efforts could extend, to impart that evidence to the governing power, and to make it as clear as it can be made, what laws, not yet proposed, that evidence shows that the society requires.

The economists further affirmed, “that no man can, without rendering himself criminal towards earth and heaven, undertake to perform the office of judge, according to laws that are evidently unjust. He would in that case cease to be a minister of justice, in order to become a minister of iniquity. If any law, for example, ordained that a man should be condemned to the ultimate punishment, on the mere denunciation of another man, and without any inquiry into the truth of the allegation, is it not evident that such a law would be a law of murder? And is it not equally evident, that the barbarian who should pronounce a judgment agreeably to that law, would be the voluntary instrument of murder? It is necessary, however, either to go the full length of saying that a man can, without guilt, become the instrument of such a law, or allow that no minister of the law ought to lend his ministry to the execution of a law evidently unjust; for if he may for one such law, so he may for all, however atrocious; no outrage to humanity, no excess of evil, presents any limiting point."

5. The tutelary authority. “ The union of wills to form that of individual powers; the union of individual powers to form a common or public force; the deposit of that force in the hands of a chief, by whose ministry it may command, and make itself obeyed,—these,” said the economists, “are the component parts of the tutelary authority. The tutelary authority is nothing more than a physical force resulting from an unio,n of wills; and, by necessary consequence, it is impossible for it to be either powerful or secure, unless the intuitive and determining force of evidence be the principle of that union.

“In one sense, it may be affirmed that the right of commanding belongs to evidence alone; for, in the order of nature, evidence is the only rule of conduct bestowed upon us by the Author of nature. But all men are not equally capable of seizing evidence; and even, if they were, the interest of the moment often operates upon them with such vehemence, that the appetite of enjoyment will not, in a state of disorder, be restrained by the evidence of duty. Among human beings, therefore, it is necessary that the natural authority of evidence be armed with a physical force; and that the legislative power, though it commands in the name of evidence, have the disposal of the public force to ensure obedience to its injunctions.”

From the analysis of what is necessary to constitute the tutelary authority, the key-stone, as it were, of the arch of human society, that which gives to the whole its binding force, and retains the parts in their order, the economists deduced a variety of most important conclusions, of which we can only present the more striking as a sample.

The first is, that the legislative and executive powers are essentially inseparable, and that all the fine-looking theories, which have solicited and obtained so much of the admiration of a superficial world about the virtues of their separation, are phantoms in the air, the mere visions of imagination. “To dictate laws is to command; and as our passions render it impossible that commands should be more than useless sounds without the physical power of making them obeyed, the right of prescribing laws can have no existence without the physical power of enforcing them. The depositary of the power is, therefore, and necessarily, the master of the right; and the executive power is always and certainly the legislative power. Let the enemies of this conclusion turn and torture the subject which way they please, they never can escape from it. Suppose, in order to form two powers, that the legislative right is confided to one organ, the public force to another, when opposition arises, which of the two is to be obeyed? As it is impossible that two contradictory commands can be obeyed at the same time, it must be absolutely decided which of the two is in preference to be obeyed. Now, this decision is, by the very fact, the destruction of the other power, and the establishment of that one. These two powers, therefore, unavoidably run into one; the legislative power necessarily becomes the Executive power, or the executive becomes the legislative.
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The second is, that the legislative never has, never can have, a right to make bad laws. A right to make bad laws, they said, is a contradiction in terms. A right supposes a compact ; it is the offspring of an agreement, tacit or express; the idea of it can no more exist without that of a mutual convention, than a debt without the contract of debtor or creditor. The compact upon which all rights are founded is that of mutual advantage; it is the union of all wills, freely determined by a great interest, of which the evidence is visible to all. How can that union which only exists for the sake of a good continue to exist if it is seen to produce evil? The hope cannot be framed of maintaining it by force, because force is its effect; force can exist only subsequent to union, and in consequence of union. The horrid prerogative of being able to make bad laws supposes necessarily a state of ignorance, a state in which the vices of the laws are not illuminated by evidence; for it is impossible that a community should consent to uphold that which visibly hurts them. The power exists in this hateful situation, but the right as little there as anywhere else.

The economists come next to the important question, What is the security for the right use of the legislative power ? On this subject their anxiety to secure to their opinions the benefit of publicity, and the favour of those in whose hands the governing powers were actually deposited, led them to use the veil of expressions too general, and into some positive mistakes. “The security,” they said, “for the right use of the legislative power, is the interest of that same power, which can, in the general order alone, find its own best possible state. The irresistible force which evidence acquires by publicity is also that security. This evidence exists in its greatest force in the body of the magistrates, who cannot, without ceasing to be ministers of justice, lend their ministry to the execution of laws evidently unjust; or forbear, without being criminal, their utmost endeavours to make the evidence of that injustice as clear as possible both to the legislature and to the nation.”

The grand question followed, What are the hands in which the legislative power ought to be deposited ? Having demonstrated that the legislative and executive powers cannot by possibility exist in any but the same hands, and that they form together what they denominated the tutelary authority, they proceeded to inquire what was implied in the idea of authority. “Unite,” said they, “upon one object a multitude of opinions and of wills; from that union will arise naturally and necessarily an union of physical forces for the accomplishment of those wills; and from the whole together will result an authority, or, in other words, a right of commanding, founded upon a physical power of procuring obedience to what is thus commanded. If these opinions and wills should disunite, and form, for example, two parties, the forces will for that reason be divided; there will be two forces, two authorities, and, by consequence, two societies. That two authorities cannot exist in the same society, they maintained by the following proof. Such authorities must be either equal or not equal. If equal, each of them taken separately is null. If unequal, the superior is the real and only authority. That, in the first case, each taken separately would be strictly and literally null, arose, they said, from the very nature of equality, which rendered it absolutely impossible that the one could do any thing without the other. Neither of them, therefore, could procure a single act of obedience, except by their union; but, at the very moment of their union, they cease to be two authorities, and form both together only one authority made out of the union of both. Unity is, then, a part of the very essence of authority; to divide it is to reduce it to an incapacity of acting, that is, to extinguish it; for authority is not authority but in so far as it can act to procure the execution of its will.”

From the necessary unity of the tutelary authority it followed, they said, by necessary consequence, that the organ of that authority must be one man. That the physical force which is one of its component parts can be directed only by one will, is above the need of proof. But it is said that one will may be formed out of the union of several wills, and that the public force is not subject to the separate wills till the union takes place.

To this the economists made answer, that if the opposition of one will can suspend the effect of all the others, it reduces authority to inaction, and for that reason destroys it. The reason why physical force is necessary is, that you cannot count upon the union of all wills. If, to avoid this objection, you have recourse, they said, to plurality of suffrage, you build no longer on the basis of evidence. That which divides opinions is not yet evident. As nothing in government ought to be arbitrary, and every thing that is not arbitrary is founded on reasons, that is, evidence, there cannot be diversity of opinions on matters of government, except from the effect of ignorance, or of bad design on the part of the délibérants. But it cannot be determined by a few voices less or more, on which side the ground of evil lies. Experience shows that an accredited error may long unite partizans in much greater number than the truth by which it is opposed. The number of those who concur in an opinion cannot render that evident which is not evident; their opinion is only opinion still, which is of course subject to change; for nothing but evidence is unalterable. And with respect to bad design, as that results from particular interests, it can never be determined whether the number of those whom such interests command is the greatest or the least. On both accounts, then, plurality of suffrage is not security.

But the greatest evil, they said, of the mode of determining, by majority of votes, the question respecting the social order, was, that it set individual interest in opposition to public; in which case the public interests are sure to be sacrificed. “How great soever the differences among men, they have within them, nevertheless, two grand moving powers common to all, and which are the source of all their actions—the appetite of pleasure and the aversion to pain. To suppose that men can move in opposition to those powers, is to suppose that the cause can depend upon the effect. But the desire of enjoyment, and opinion by which it is modified, cannot act naturally and constantly in the direction of the public interest, when authority is divided among several persons who are liable to have interests opposite to one another. For it may be laid down as a truth which will not admit of contestation, that the public interest cannot be considered as generally safe when it is in opposition to the private interests of those who are entrusted with it. If one or more of the public administrators behold any great advantage to themselves in a sacrifice which has been made, or which may be made, of the public interest, we ask, said the economists, What can prevent the sacrifice from being made? Not the two springs of action which nature has placed within us to be the cause of all we do; for they are in this case put in opposition to the public interest. Not any other authority in opposition to that of the public administrator, since by the supposition they themselves engross the whole of the governing power.”

The remaining evil which the economists ascribe to this expedient was, that it attached to the number of votes a despotical authority, which can safely and usefully belong to evidence alone. “Under this system it is not evidence,” they said, “which governs; it is opinion, or the will of a certain number of men actuated by the same opinion.
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The mischief apt to result cannot be estimated; it is without bounds. Suppose, in fact, that the vote of the majo- ' rity is dictated by private interests, and that evidence is on the side of the minority, is it not monstrous that the former should command, and that the form of the government should lend to bad design a title to triumph over evidence itself? This excess of disorder is nevertheless inevitable under so defective a plan of government; and the nation remains absolutely without protection against the scourges with which, under private interest set in opposition to public, it may be lacerated, especially if these private interests are the interests of men who, by their riches or otherwise, are in possession of power.

“We forget not,” they said, “that the mischievous tendency of private interest would find a counterpoise in the knowledge of the nation. It is very true, that in a nation really enlightened, a nation that had from evidence the knowledge of its own true interests, the body of rulers could not abuse their authority. But why? because the evidence of the abuse would in that case annihilate the authority. But the idea of a nation governed by plurality of suffrage, and by evidence at the same time, involves an absurdity. Again, a nation sufficiently instructed to know all the links in the chain of social good and evil, would never sanction a form of government which places the common interest in opposition to the private interests of those to whom it is entrusted. Besides, it would be ridiculous to suppose a nation sufficiently instructed to have the wills of all united under the evidence of what is best in the social order, and to suppose its rulers at the very same time so ignorant as to be divided on those subjects, and reduced for a ground of decision to plurality of suffrage.

“So long, on the other hand, as a nation is not thus instructed, the people properly so called, sunk in ignorance and prejudices, see no farther than the nearest objects by which they are surrounded; each canton thinks the interest of the state is all summed up in the interest of that canton; each profession in the interest of that profession; the knowledge of relations and dependencies is absolutely wanting. Such men cannot ascend from effects to causes, much less enumerate the links in the chain of causes and effects. It becomes, therefore, morally impossible for them to act by principle and by rule. Ever credulous, and prone to prepossession, they must be gained in order to be persuaded; the same artifices must be practised upon them which are used to seduce them. The resolutions of men, the sport of momentary impressions, must have all the inconstancy of these impressions. Divided into rich and poor, the rich look upon the poor as made for them, and upon every power which they wish to possess as naturally their due. The poor, justly discontented with the treatment they receive, and mistaking the cause, are tempted to envy the condition of the rich, and to regard as injustice the inequality of the partition which is made between them. It is evidently, therefore, unsafe to choose the body of administration exclusively from either of these two classes. Nor would much be gained if one half were chosen from the one and the other from the other. If the separate portions continued to be governed by the prejudices and views of the classes to which they belonged, they would do nothing but contend; and there is only one way in which they could receive a motive to cease,— if collusion would enable them to serve their men private interests by sacrificing the interests with which they were entrusted."

The economists come then to their grand conclusion with respect to the artificial or physical security of the social order. To the question, what is the best form of government, they answered, the government of a single individual, uniting in his own person the whole of the legislative and executive powers; in other words, absolute. “All men,” they said, “would confess that the best form of government was that which was so perfectly conformable to the natural and essential order of societies, that no abuse could result from it; that form, in short, which renders it impossible to make gain out of misrule—which subjects him who governs to the absolute necessity of having no greater interest than that of governing well.” This advantage would be found, they affirmed, in the government of an hereditary sovereign, and it would be found in no other.

The reason was, that in no other could the interests of governor and governed be rendered absolutely the same. As the hereditary sovereign is the hereditary proprietor of the sovereignty, the interest of the sovereignty is his interest. The interest of the sovereignty means the most perfect possible state of the governing authority; that is, the most perfect possible assurance of obedience to its command. But obedience to command can only arise out of the union of wills. And there can be no perfect assurance of the union of wills to obey but from one cause; the evidence that what is commanded is for the benefit of those who are to obey. The interest of the hereditary sovereign, therefore, and the interest of the community, is one and the same.

With regard to the famous idea of the balance of a constitution, that fancied arrangement of things in which the power and will of one part of the instruments of government finds a counterpoise in the power and will of another; this pretended counterpoise the economists treated as a perfect chimera, a mere imposition of the imagination, a sort of day-dream.

The nation, they said, is either instructed or not instructed. Let us examine the supposition of the balance in both cases. If it is instructed, or, in other words, possesses the evidence of the causes of good and evil in society, there is no balance of forces; there is only one force, because force follows will, and here wills are united. They carry the development of this idea to a great length, to which our limits will not permit us to follow them.

If the nation is not instructed, or, in other words, does not possess the evidence of the causes of good and evil in society, the establishment of counter-forces is impracticable. To ignorance there can be only one salutary counteracting force, and that is evidence. The effect of ignorance in the sovereign is dreaded; and to remove the dread, another man’s ignorance is provided. This is what people call making counter-forces. It must be confessed that they are not of the very best sort of materials. How could it ever be imagined that confidence for any thing stable could be laid on any thing so unaccountable as the results of ignorance?

Let us adopt this chimera for a moment, and ask if it be possible to assure ourselves that each force will be the same to-morrow which it appears to be to-day. It is evidently impossible; nay, what each appears to-day may be a false appearance; for, resting only on opinion, detached from evidence, it rests on what can never be exactly known.

The idea of a balance is the idea of two powers, one tending by its own force in one direction, another urging it by an equal force in an opposite direction. The effect is rest. To balance the power of the sovereign acting in one direction, you provide another power acting in an opposite direction. If the powers are equal, they destroy one another, and there is no action. If they are unequal, there are not two powers, but only one power; for the greater swallows up the less.

The theory of a constitutional balance is founded on a metaphor, a contrivance of language; and moral forces are supposed to be subject to the laws of material forces. Material forces acting on a body in different directions, [7:8:408]make it assume a certain determinable duration between the two. But it has not been considered, that in physics the direction given does not depend upon the opinion of the things which act. In morals, on the other hand, the things which are depended upon for counteraction change their duration according to their opinion. A theory which supposes that to be uniform and constant which is known to be the reverse, is evidently absurd.

Suppose every thing which the theory needs to be supposed. Conceive an assembly, or assemblies, provided to counteract the sovereign, and so constituted, as to form the most perfect counteraction possible; that the sovereign can ordain nothing but with the consent of the assemblies, and the assemblies nothing but with the consent of the sovereign. In this case, it is not a government of one, but a government of many; each member of the assemblies shares in the sovereignty; they are so many partners, therefore, with a particular partner at their head. The question is, what are the interests of the partnership? Those of the nation or not? The interests of the partnership doubtless are, to make it as profitable to the members as possible; for it would be absurd to suppose them not governed by their private interests. Suppose, then, that there is originally a tendency to counteraction between the sovereign and the assemblies. It is v,cry obvious that they will put an end to this counteraction, as far as they discover that the suspension of it is conducive to their private interests. This is a law of nature, and may be taken for granted. As far, then, as the serving of the private interests of the members is concerned, there is no balance of opposite forces; the forces combine instead of opposing, and so far the balance is lost. The loss of the balance to this extent may be a loss engrossing the whole of the protection to the common interest which it was expected to yield, or it may be a loss not extending so far. If it goes to the whole extent of that protection, there is to the purpose in question no balance at all. If it does not go to the whole extent, there will still be some balance, more or less. What then is the case? The case is, that the loss goes to the whole, and that the balance does not exist. The balance does not exist, as far as the private interests of those who share among them the governing powers are concerned. But it is only from the private interests of those who govern that the nation has any thing to fear; it is only against these interests that the balance is provided. As far, however, as these private interests are concerned, the balance does not exist. As far, therefore, as the balance is even supposed to be of any service, the balance is excluded by the law of nature. It follows as a corollary, that in a country where the people depend upon what is called a balance as the whole of their security for good government, they have no security at all.

Such is the analysis which the economists present of the causes of good and evil in human society, and of that order of things which best insures the presence of the one and the absence of the other. That part of their doctrine which alone is yet known to the mere English reader, their Political Economy, is introduced as only an auxiliary exposition. It is part of the development by which they endeavoured to prove the identity which they supposed between the interests of the sovereign and the interests of the people. But, as a very distinct account of this part of their system has been given by Dr Adam Smith and other writers, and as our object rather was the exhibition of those doctrines of the sect which nobody has yet presented to our countrymen in their own language, we shall content ourselves with only marking the place which their political economy held in their general system.

As the society has public expenses, it is necessary that it also have a public revenue. To reconcile the formation of a public revenue with , the idea of social order, it ought to be formed, if possible, without infringing the property of individuals, for the sake of which the order of society itself is established. It ought, therefore, if possible, to be formed without diminishing the revenue of individuals. When the real origin of revenue, the source from which it all is drawn, is sufficiently understood, the mode of forming a revenue for the sovereign, without diminishing that of individuals, would be immediately apparent. The source of all riches is the land ; because the land alone, of all the sources of production, yields a produce greater than the cost of the production. The surplus produce of the land, therefore, constitutes a fund, which is over and above the remuneration to the agents of production, and out of which the revenue of the sovereign may be taken, without diminishing the motive to production; that is, without retarding the natural progress of the state in wealth, population, and felicity.

To lay the foundation for this plan of a public revenue, it was necessary to prove that the land is the only source of production; and that manufactures and commerce, though they alter the form of things, never add any thing to the amount or value of production. In the development of these views, one of the most remarkable results at which the economists arrived, was the necessity of perfect freedom to all the proceedings which lead to production; as giving to produce that form which is most agreeable to those who are to make use of it. Till the time of the economists, the necessity of holding those proceedings in chains, and binding them to the will of governments, was the universal doctrine of governments, and, to a great degree, of speculators themselves. The general principles of the economists respecting the freedom of property necessary to constitute the foundation of social order, led them to infer the evil of those abridgments of freedom; but they examined the inference in detail, and showed that the meddling officiousness of governments to compel industry to one thing, and exclude it from another, not only failed to effect any good purposes, but of necessity created obstructions of the greatest magnitude to production in general, and tended powerfully to keep down the wealth, population, and prosperity of the state. The light which they diffused on this subject, and which soon produced a grand effect on the minds of men, was a good, the magnitude of which is beyond calculation.

Another of their conclusions is, that the revenue of the sovereign, taken, as they said it ought to be, wholly from the net produce of the land, ought to be a fixed and unalterable proportion of that produce. The reason appeared to them conclusive. If the proportion was variable, and depended upon the will of the owners of the land, they might be induced to break upon the public revenue, and deprive the state of those benefits which the public revenue is necessary to produce. If it depended upon the sovereign, the property of the land might be detached from that of its produce; nobody would have a motive to become a proprietor in land, and all the advantages which depend on the existence of that property would be lost the production of subsistence would fail, and the community could not exist.

This proportion being once fixed, there is no longer any contrariety between the interest of the sovereign and the interest of any portion of his people; and the proprietor· of land are as completely and securely exempt from contributing to the expense of the state, as any other class of the community. The sovereign derives no part of his revenue from the subject; and this deplorable source of the conflict of interests is wholly cut off. The proportion being settled for ever between the sovereign and the landowners, [7:8:409]that alone is the property of the landowner which is the proportion remaining to him. The rest is, with regard to him, as if it did not exist. The sovereign they denominated, therefore, co-proprietor of the land; and between him and the landowner, commonly so called, a perfect community of interests is fixed. It is the interest of the sovereign that the produce of the land should increase, because, with every increase in the produce of the land, his revenue increases. It is also the interest of the landowner that the produce of the land should increase, because it is from the same cause that his revenue increases. See the article Political Economy.

III. In the remarks which we have to offer on the doctrines of this sect, we must content ourselves with a few general strictures on one or two leading points.

The most important slips which the economists made in tracing the laws of the social order, are found in their deductions respecting the tutelary autJu>rity. Many steps, nevertheless, in that doctrine they have established. That the legislative and executive power are essentially the same, and cannot be separated except in appearance, they seem to us to have placed beyond the reach of dispute. That no security for good government can be found in an organization of counter-forces, or a balance in the constitution, they have proved in a manner equally satisfactory. But we think they have not proved that a security for good government can ever be found in the personal interests of a sovereign who unites in himself the whole of the legislative and executive power. And we think they have not proved that this security, if it cannot be found in the interests of such a sovereign, can be found in nothing else.

1. That the economists do not reason correctly from their own principles, when they regard the interests of the sovereign as an adequate security for good government, may be made apparent, we should hope, by an argument of a very few steps.

In a perfect state of the social order, they say that the interest of the sovereign w ould be the same with that of the community; and the evidence of this identity would be so clear to the sovereign, that the effect of it would be irresistible on his mind. But in a perfect state of the social order, they say also, that the interest of every man would consist in the most exact conformity to all the rules of that order, and that the evidence of this truth would be so apparent as to be sure of its effect. In the only state, therefore, in which the interest of the individual entrusted with the tutelary authority could be relied on as a security, the tutelary authority itself would not be required; for in a state in which every man would, of his own accord, do what is best, an authority to compel him to do so would be worse than useless.

The moment when you suppose a tutelary authority to be necessary, the moment at which you suppose there is any man in the community who can regard his private interest as consisting in any degree in what is hurtful to the community, how can you be sure that the depositary of the legislative and executive powers will not be that man? It can be easily shown that no man is acted upon by stronger forces to impel him in that direction.

In order to prove that the legislative power cannot be exercised by the community at large, the economists declare expressly, “that if we study the nature of each man in particular, we shall find in general that he would if possible have nothing but rights on his own side, nothing but obligations on the side of other men. The legislative power can be exercised with safety only by those who possess in perfection the evidence of the justice and necessity of the original and pervading laws of social order. It cannot, therefore, be exercised in safety by a body of men, among whom unequal rights exist, and must exist; and who at the same time are all separately desirous that the inequality should be in their favour.”

Admit this—admit that all men in general desire to have nothing but rights on their own side, obligations on the side of other men; to have the inequality all in their own favour; to possess advantages, in short, over their fellows in the community; and it is surely absurd to talk of security in the interest of the sovereign.

It is a part of their doctrine, that he who is entrusted with the legislative power cannot be entrusted with the judicial power; because in that case the same party, both legislators and judges, would destroy law, by the exercise of arbitrary will. This is a direct admission, or rather an unlimited affirmation, that the interest of the sovereign is not a security such as good government requires. Again, it is said by the economists, “that under a government conformable to the principles of order, the positive laws would be of a justice and necessity publicly evident ; and that in order to apply these laws, the judges would unite two sorts of knowledge, both of its meaning and of its reason; and, secondly, a knowledge of the facts which constitute the case in which they are required to decide.” No men, according to them, are more urgently called upon, none can be more reasonably expected to be in full possession of the evidence of that interest which every man has in the preservation of the social order. Yet so far are the economists from saying that the interest of these men, and the evidence they could possess of that interest, would be a sufficient security for the right administration of their trust, that they declare them liable to the greatest malversations, and that the ultimate security would lie in the sovereign, who would check them. It is surely matter of wonder how the economists could fail to perceive, that the very same motives which they rejected as security for the right use of authority in the judges, they trusted to as complete security in the sovereign; though likely to operate on the judges with greater force than upon him.

2. We think it may also be made apparent, that the economists do not reason correctly from their own principles, when they conclude, that if security for good government cannot be found in the interests of one man entrusted with the whole of the legislative and executive powers, it can be found in nothing else.

They expressly state, that “the first, the real depositary and general guardian of the laws, is the nation itself, at the head of which is the sovereign. Accurately speaking, the deposit and guardianship of the laws can belong to those alone who are armed with the superiority of the physical force, to procure to that deposit its necessary superiority. This being evident, it is the nation as a body which naturally and necessarily is the depositary and guardian of its own laws; because there is in the nation no power comparable to that which results from the combination of its powers.” Again,

In contending that the legislative and executive powers must always be exercised by the same hands, they affirm that those powers could only be exercised by those who had in their hands the superiority of the physical force. Observe, now, the legitimate conclusion:

The people alone have the physical force necessary to constitute them guardians of the laws. The same force is necessary for tłie makers and the executors of the laws. No body, therefore, but the people ever can, accurately speaking, have either the legislative or the executive powers. In a state of ignorance they may be led by fraud to lend their powers to their own destruction. But it is a part also of the doctrine of the economists, that in a state of knowledge, in which they may be easily placed, [7:8:410]it is not possible they should make any but a good use of their power.

“A nation,” they said, “governed according to the natural and essential order of society, has necessarily the perfect evidence and knowledge of it, and therefore sees with certainty that it enjoys its best possible situation. This perception, of necessity, unites all the wills and all the forces in the nation for the support of that order, and, by consequence, for the creation and preservation of all the institutions which are best adapted to that support.” The people, therefore, may be safely trusted.

In a nation governed badly, governed not according to “the natural and essential order,” but according to what the economists call the “political order,” “it is always,” they said, “one part of the nation which governs the rest; the weaker which governs the stronger. In this case, too, the power of him who commands consists in nothing but the powers united of those who obey him. And this union of their forces supposes, of necessity, the union of their wills; which can be founded only upon the persuasion that this obedience procures them their best possible condition. The powers of the nation in this vicious order are less at the disposal of the sovereign than at the disposal of those who hire to him their agency, and, by consequence, sell to him the means of procuring obedience from the nation; his situation is therefore at bottom a real dependence; his situation is precarious, uncertain, changeable; he is put in chains, which he dares not attempt to break." In every situation, therefore, it is the will of the people, either of the whole of the people united, or of a part of the people united against the rest, which is in reality both the legislative and the executive power. Estimate, therefore, as high as you please, exaggerate to any excess, the inconvenience of being governed by the people, you have that inconvenience still; you are bound to it by the inexorable law of nature; it is not within the range of possibility that you should escape from it.

We have already seen that the economists declare that “every man wishes to have all the rights on his own side, all the duties on the side of other men; that every man likes inequality, in short, when the inequality is in his own power.” From this they infer, that the community cannot safely govern; but from this it may with much more justness be retorted upon them, that nothing else can safely govern. The interest of the community, say the economists, is easily known; the evidence of it is within the reach of all descriptions of the people, and so cogent as to be irresistible. The union of wills, according to their doctrine, follows as a matter of course. Here, therefore, it should seem we have a much better security than can be found in the interest of any individual, sovereign or subordinate.

It is remarkable enough that the economistá have wholly overlooked, in their criticism on the plans opposed to their own, the representative system ; and yet it is pretty evident that it is by means of the representative system that the grand problem of government must finally be resolved. The speculations connected with this subject will, however, find a more fitting place under the article Government. (a. a. a.)