I need hardly add, grew stronger and stronger, until it eventually produced those great legislative reforms which have already signalized the present century, have given a new tone to the character of public men, and changed the structure of the English parliament.

It is thus that, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, the increase and diffusion of knowledge were, in England, directly antagonistic to the political events which occurred during the same period. The extent and the nature of that antagonism I have endeavoured to explain, as clearly as the complexity of the subject, and the limits of this Introduction, enable me to do. We have seen that, looking at our country as a whole, the obvious tendency of affairs was to abridge the authority of the church, the nobles, and the crown, and thus give greater play to the power of the people. Looking, however, at the country, not as a whole, but looking merely at its political history, we find that the personal peculiarities of George III., and the circumstances under which he came to the throne, enabled him to stop the great progress, and eventually cause a dangerous reaction. Happily for the fortunes of England, those principles of liberty which he and his supporters wished to destroy, had before his reign become so powerful, and so widely diffused, that they not only resisted this political reaction, but seemed to gain fresh strength from the contest. That the struggle was arduous, and at one time extremely critical, it is impossible to deny. Such, however, is the force of liberal opinions, when they have once taken root in the popular mind, that notwithstanding the ordeal to which they were exposed, and notwithstanding the punishments inflicted on their advocates, it was found impossible to stifle them; it was found impossible even to prevent their increase. Doctrines subversive of every principle of freedom were personally favoured by the sovereign, openly avowed by the government, and zealously defended by the most powerful classes; and laws in accordance with these doctrines were placed on our statute-book, and enforced in our courts. All, however, was in vain. In a few years, that generation began to pass away; a better one succeeded in its place; and the system of tyranny fell to the ground. And thus it is, that in all countries which are even tolerably free, every system must fall, if it opposes the march of opinions, and gives shelter to maxims and institutions repugnant to the spirit of the age. In this sort of contest, the ultimate result is never doubtful. For the vigour of an arbitrary government depends merely on a few individuals, who, whatever

sioned by the House of Commons being composed of men not interested to protect the property of the people." Nicholls's Recollections, vol. i. p. 213.

their abilities may be, are liable, after their death, to be replaced by timid and incompetent successors. But the vigour of public opinion is not exposed to these casualties; it is unaffected by the laws of mortality; it does not flourish to-day, and decline tomorrow; and so far from depending on the lives of individual men, it is governed by large general causes, which, from their very comprehensiveness, are in short periods scarcely seen, but on a comparison of long periods, are found to outweigh all other considerations, and reduce to insignificance those little stratagems by which princes and statesmen think to disturb the order of events, and mould to their will the destinies of a great and civilized people.

These are broad and general truths, which will hardly be questioned by any man who, with a competent knowledge of history, has reflected much on the nature and conditions of modern society. But during the period we have been considering, they were utterly neglected by our political rulers, who not only thought themselves able to check the growth of opinions, but entirely mistook the very end and object of government. In those days, it was believed that government is made for the minority, to whose wishes the majority are bound humbly to submit. It was believed that the power of making laws must always be lodged in the hands of a few privileged classes; that the nation at large has no concern with those laws, except to obey them ;403 and that it is the duty of a wise government to secure the obedience of the people by preventing them from being enlightened by the spread of knowledge.104 We may surely deem it a remarkable circumstance, that these notions, and the schemes of legislation founded upon them, should, within half a century, have died away so completely, that they are no longer advocated, even by men of the most ordinary abilities. What is still more remarkable is, that this great change should have been effected, not by any external event, nor by a sudden insurrection of the people, but by the unaided action of moral force, the silent, though overwhelming, pressure of public opinion. This has always seemed to me a decisive proof of the natural, and, if I may so say, the healthy march of English civilization. It is a

403 Bishop Horsley, the great champion of the existing state of things, said in the House of Lords, in 1795, that he "did not know what the mass of the people in any country had to do with the laws, but to obey them." Cooke's Hist. of Party, vol. iii. p. 435. Compare Godwin on Population, p. 569.

404 Lord Cockburn (Life of Jeffrey, 1852, vol. i. pp. 67, 68) says: "If there was any principle that was reverenced as indisputable by almost the whole adherents of the party in power sixty, or even fifty, or perhaps even forty years ago, it was that the ignorance of the people was necessary for their obedience to the law." One ar gument was, "that to extend instruction, would be to multiply the crime of forgery!" Porter's Progress of the Nation, vol. iii. p. 205.

proof of an elasticity, and yet a sobriety of spirit, such as no other nation has ever displayed. No other nation could have escaped from such a crisis, except by passing through a revolution, of which the cost might well have exceeded the gain. The truth, however, is that in England the course of affairs, which I have endeavoured to trace since the sixteenth century, had diffused among the people a knowledge of their own resources, and a skill and independence in the use of them, imperfect, indeed, but still far superior to that possessed by any other of the great European countries. Besides this, other circumstances, which will be hereafter related, had, so early as the eleventh century, begun to affect our national character, and had assisted in imparting to it that sturdy boldness, and, at the same time, those habits of foresight, and of cautious reserve, to which the English mind owes its leading peculiarities. With us, therefore, the love of liberty has been tempered by a spirit of prudence, which has softened its violence, without impairing its strength. It is this which, more than once, has taught our countrymen to bear even considerable oppression, rather than run the risk of rising against their oppressors. It has taught them to stay their hands; it has taught them to husband their force until they can use it with irresistible effect. To this great and valuable habit we owe the safety of England late in the eighteenth century. If the people had risen, they would have staked their all; and what the result of that desperate game would have been, no man can say. Happily for them and for their posterity, they were content to wait yet a little; they were willing to bide their time, and watch the issue of things. Of this noble conduct their descendants reap the reward. After the lapse of a few years, the political crisis began to subside, and the people re-entered on their former rights. For although their rights had been in abeyance, they were not destroyed, simply because the spirit still existed by which they were originally won. Nor can any one doubt that, if those evil days had been prolonged, that same spirit which had animated their fathers in the reign of Charles I. would have again broken forth, and society have been convulsed by a revolution, the bare idea of which is frightful to contemplate. In the mean time, all this was avoided; and although popular tumults did arise in different parts of the country, and although the measures of government caused a disaffection of the most serious kind,406 still the people, taken as a whole, remained firm, and patiently

405 See chapters ix. and x., on the history of the protective spirit.

406 Sir A. Alison notices in his History (vol. iv. p. 213) "how widely the spirit of discontent was diffused" in 1796; and the only wonder is, that the people were able to keep it in bounds. That, however, is a question which writers of his stamp never consider

reserved their force till a better time, when, for their benefit, a new party was organized in the state, by whom their interests were successfully advocated even within the walls of parliament.

This great and salutary reaction began early in the present century; but the circumstances which accompanied it are so extremely complicated, and have been so little studied, that I cannot pretend in this Introduction to offer even a sketch of them. It is sufficient to say, what must be generally known, that for nearly fifty years the movement has continued with unabated speed. Every thing which has been done, has increased the influence of the people. Blow after blow has been directed against those classes which were once the sole depositaries of power. The Reform Bill, the Emancipation of the Catholics, and the Repeal of the Corn-Laws, are admitted to be the three greatest political achievements of the present generation. Each of these vast measures has depressed a powerful party. The extension of the suffrage has lessened the influence of hereditary rank, and has broken up that great oligarchy of landowners, by which the House of Commons had long been ruled. The abolition of Protection has still further enfeebled the territorial aristocracy; while those superstitious feelings by which the ecclesiastical order is mainly upheld, received a severe shock, first by the repeal of the Test and Corporation Act, and afterwards by the admission of Catholics into the legislature; steps which are with reason regarded as supplying precedents of mischievous import for the interests of the Established Church. 407 These measures, and others which are now obviously inevitable, have taken, and will continue to take, power from particular sections of society, in order to confer it upon the people at large. Indeed, the rapid progress of democratic opinions is a fact which no one in the present day ventures to deny. Timid and ignorant men are alarmed at the movement; but that there is such a movement is notorious to all the world. No one now dares to talk of bridling the people, or of resisting their united wishes. The utmost that is said is, that efforts should be made to inform them as to their real interests, and enlighten public opinion; but every one allows that, so soon as public opinion is formed, it can no longer be withstood. On

407 Bishop Burgess, in a letter to Lord Melbourne, bitterly complained that Catho lie emancipation was "the extinction of the purely Protestant character of the British legislature." Harford's Life of Burgess, p. 506: see also pp. 238, 239, 369, 870. There can be no doubt that the bishop rightly estimated the danger to his own party; and as to the Corporation and Test Acts, which, says another bishop (Tomline's Life of Pitt, vol. ii. p. 604), "were justly regarded as the firmest bul warks of the British constitution," the feeling was so strong, that at an episcopal meeting in 1787, there were only two members who were willing to repeal these persecuting laws. See Bishop Watson's Life of Himself, vol. I. p. 262. Lord Eldon, who to the last stood up for the church, pronounced the bill for repealing these acts to be "a revolutionary bill." Twiss's Life of Eldon, vol. ii. p. 202.

this point all are agreed; and this new power, which is gradually superseding every other, is now obeyed by those very statesmen who, had they lived sixty years ago, would have been the first to deny its authority, ridicule its pretensions, and, if possiblė, extinguish its liberty.

Such is the great gap which separates the public men of our time from those who flourished under that bad system which George III. sought to perpetuate. And it is evident, that this vast progress was brought about rather by destroying the system, than by improving the men. It is also evident, that the system perished because it was unsuited to the age; in other words, because a progressive people will never tolerate an unprogressive government. But it is a mere matter of history, that our legislators, even to the last moment, were so terrified by the idea of innovation, that they refused every reform, until the voice of the people rose high enough to awe them into submission, and forced them to grant what, without such pressure, they would by no means have conceded.

These things ought to serve as a lesson to our political rulers. They ought also to moderate the presumption of legislators, and teach them that their best measures are but temporary expedients, which it will be the business of a later and riper age to efface. It would be well if such considerations were to check the confidence, and silence the loquacity, of those superficial men, who, raised to temporary power, think themselves bound to guarantee certain institutions, and uphold certain opinions. They ought clearly to understand, that it does not lie within their function thus to anticipate the march of affairs, and provide for distant contingencies. In trifling matters, indeed, this may be done without danger; though, as the constant changes in the laws of every country abundantly prove, it is also done without benefit. But in reference to those large and fundamental measures which bear upon the destiny of a people, such anticipation is worse than useless, it is highly injurious. In the present state of knowledge, politics, so far from being a science, is one of the most backward of all the arts; and the only safe course for the legislator is, to look upon his craft as consisting in the adaptation of temporary contrivances to temporary emergencies.108 His business is to follow the age, and not at all to at

408 Sir C. Lewis, though in his learned work he over-estimates the resources possessed by politicians, does nevertheless allow that they are rarely able to anticipate the manner in which their measures will work. Lewis on the Methods of Observation and Reasoning in Politics, 1852, vol. ii. pp. 360-362. A writer of repute, M. Flassan, says (Hist. de la Diplomatie, vol. i. p. 19): "On doit être très indulgent sur les erreurs de la politique, à cause de la facilité qu'il y a à en commettre; erreurs auxquelles la sagesse même quelquefois entraîne." The first part of this sentence is true enough; but it conveys a truth which ought to repress that love of interfering with