Let an American imagine what would be the inevitable consequences of local or sectional errors and excitements, of which we are never entirely free, if we did not live under a system of varied institutional self-government; each shock would be felt from one end of our country to the other with unbroken force. Had we nothing but uninstitutional Gallican universal suffrage, spreading like one undivided sea over the whole, we could not continue to be a free people, and would hardly be a united people, though not free.

A similar remark may be made with reference to that period in French history which actually obliges the historian to be at least as familiar with the long list of royal courtezans1 as with the prime ministers. The effect of this example of the court has been most disastrous to all France. The courts of England under Charles II. and James II. were no better. The conduct of George I. and George II. added coarseness to incontinency. The English nobility followed very close in the wake of their royal masters; but with them the evil stopped. The people of England-England herself-remained comparatively untouched, and while the court plunged into vices, the people went their own way, rising and improving. Had England been an uninstitutional country, the effect must have been the same as that which ruined France.

Another observation suggested by the subject which we are discussing is, that a wide-spread and penetrating institutional

hold up uncompromising absolutism, although a native of Switzerland. Having secretly become a catholic, he passed into the service of the Bourbons. The student of political science, desirous of making himself acquainted with the political literature of the European continent of this period, in its whole extent, is referred to a German work of a high order, Robert von Mohl's History and Literature of the Political Sciences, 3 vols., large 8vo., Erlangen, 1855 to 1858, (containing 2052 pages.) The comprehensive erudition and liberal judgment of the author, as well as the patient research in the literature of the day and the past and of all civilized countries, make this work a storehouse of historical and critical knowledge concerning political literature, for which every scholar of this branch must feel deeply indebted to him. 1 The very etymology, with its present meaning, is significant.

self-government has the same concentrative effect upon society which a careful and responsible occupation with one's own affairs and duties has upon the individual. This may indeed be counteracted and suspended by other and more powerful circumstances; but the natural effect of institutional selfgovernment is, I, believe, such as I have just indicated.

They

A large and active nation, which therefore instinctively seeks a political field of action for its energy, and which, nevertheless, is destitute of self-ruling institutions, will generally turn its attention to conquest or any other increase of territory, merely for the sake of conquest or of increased. extent, until a political gluttony is produced which resembles the immoderate desire of some farmers for more land. neglect the intensive improvement of their farm, and are known by every experienced agriculturist to be among the poorest of their class. Expansion may become desirable or necessary; but a desire of extension merely for the sake of extension is at once the most debilitating fever of a nation and the rudest of glories, in which an Attila or Timour far excels a Fabius or a Washington. So soon as a nation abandons the intensive improvement of its institutions, and directs its attention solely to foreign conquest, it enters on its downward course, and loses the influence which otherwise might have been its share. The truest, most intense, and most enduring influence a people exercises upon others is through its institutions and their progressive perfection. The sword does not plough deep.

1 There are persons among us who have fallen into this error; and it will always be found that they proportionately disregard our institutions, or are not imbued with esteem for institutional government. I lately received a pamphlet in which the author wishes for a confederacy embracing America from Greenland to Cape Horn. "Universal governments" were the dream of Henry IV., and again pressed into service by Napoleon. I am not able to answer the reader, why that confederacy should comprehend America only. There is no principle or self-defining idea in the term America. America is a name. The water which surrounds it has nothing to do with principles. Water, once the Dissociabile Mare, now connects. Polynesia ought to be added, and perhaps Further Asia, and why not Hindostan? Our oath of allegiance might

This is the reason, it may be observed, why the historian, the more truly he searches for the real history of nations, and the more his mind acquires philosophical strength, becomes the more attentive to the political life manifested by the institutions of a people. It distinguishes a Niebuhr from a common narrator of Rome's many battles.1

On the other hand, we may observe a similar effect upon cabinets. It seems to me one of the best effects of local and national self-government, with its many elementary institutions and a national representative government, that diplomacy ceases to form the engrossing subject of statesmanship. Shrewd as English diplomacy has often proved, the history of that country, in the eighteenth century, is a totally different one from that of the other European countries in the same period. It seems as if continental statesmanship sought for objects to act on, in foreign parts, in concluding alliances and making treaties; in one word, as if diplomacy had been cultivated for the sake of diplomacy. Yet nothing is surer to lead to difficulties, to wars and suffering, than this reversed state of things.2

Some remarks on the undue influence of capitals in countries void of institutions would find an appropriate place here; but they are deferred until we shall have considered

be improved by promising to be faithful to the United States et cetera, as Archbishop Laud's famous oath bound the person who took it upon an Et Cetera.

1 The same phenomenon may be observed in the more philosophical division of history. People begin to divide the history of a nation by the monarchs, or by any other labelling. When they penetrate deeper, they divide history by the rise and fall of institutions, of classes, of interests, of great ideas. To divide the history of England by George I. and George II. is about as philosophical as if a geologist were to color a chart, not according to the great layers that constitute the earth, but by indicating where the people walking upon it wear shoes or sabots, or walk barefooted.

2 We ought to compare the repeated advice of the greatest of Americans, to beware of alliances, with the contents of such works as Raumer's Diplomatic Dispatches of the Last Century. It is for this reason that the present publicity of diplomacy has such vital importance.

somewhat more closely, the peculiar attributes of centralization, the opposite of institutional self-government.

Patience, united with energy, is as much an element of progress and efficient action in public concerns as in private matters. Mr. Lamartine has feelingly said some excellent truths on this subject, in his Counsellor for the People; but it does not seem possible to unite the two in popular politics and in the service of liberty, except by the self-government which we are contemplating. Patience, as well as desire of action, can exist separately without an institutional government, but in that case they are both destructive to freedom. Activity, without institutions, becomes a succession of unconnected efforts; patience, without institutions that constantly incite by self-government, and rouse as much as they form the mind, becomes mere submission, and ends in Asiatic resignation.

It would seem, also, that by a system of institutional selfgovernment alone the advantage can be obtained of which Aristotle speaks, when he says that the psephisma (the particular and detailed law) ought to be made so as to suit the given cases by the Lesbian canon,1 and ought to be applied so as to fit the exact demands.

1 The cyclopian walls in Greece and Italy, built before the memory even of the ancients, and many of which still stand as firm as if raised in recent times, have their strength in the irregularity of the component stones, and the close fitting of one to the other, that no interstices are left even for a blade of grass to grow. An irregular polygonal stone was placed first; sheets of lead were then closely fitted to the upper and lateral surfaces. When taken off, they served as the patterns according to which the stones to be placed next were hewn. It was this sheet and this mode of proceeding which was called the Lesbian canon or rule, while the canon or rule which the architect laid down alike for all stones of an intended wall was called a general canon. See On the Cyclopian Walls, by Forchhammer, Kiel, 1847. Now, Aristotle compares the general law, the nomos, to the general canon, but the particular law, the psephisma, ought, as he says, to be made by the Lesbian canon. Ethica ad Nicomachum, 5, 14. It is inelegant, I readily confess, to use a figure which it is necessary to explain, but I am not acquainted with any process in modern arts similar to the one used as an illustration by the great philosopher, except the forming of the

It is on account of the institutional character of the British polity in general and of the English constitution in particular -on account of the supremacy of the law and of the spirit of self-government which in a high degree pervades the whole polity and society of that country, that, long ago, I did not hesitate to call England a royal republic. Dr. Arnold, some five years later, expressed the same idea, when in the introduction to his Roman History he styles his country "a kingly commonwealth." It will be hardly necessary to add that the British commonwealth is in many respects of a strongly patrician character, that it is occasionally aristocratic, and that the Englishman believes one of the excellencies of his polity to consist in the fact that it contains in the monarch an element of conservatism apparently high above the contending elements of progress and popular liberty. What advantages and disadvantages may be wound up in this portion of her constitution, and how far the actual position of Great Britain, the state of her population and her historical development, may make it necessary, it is not our task to investigate, any dentist's gold plate according to a mould taken from nature itself. I naturally preferred the simile of the philosopher, even with an explanatory note, to the unbidden associations which the other simile carries along with it. Nor would I withhold from my reader the pleasure we enjoy when a figure or simile is presented to us, so closely fitting the thought like the Lesbian canon, and so exact that itself amounts to the enunciation of an important truth, well formulated. This is the case with Aristotle's figure.

1 In my Political Ethics, first published in 1838.

2 I do not know that this opinion was ever more strikingly symbolized than lately, when Lord John Russell, the leader of the administration in the commons, moved an address of congratulation to the queen on the birth of a prince, and Mr. Disraeli, the leader of the opposition in the same branch, seconded the motion, while a similar motion was made in the lords by Lord Aberdeen, the premier of the administration, seconded by the Earl of Derby, the premier of the lately ousted administration, and very bitter opponent to the present ministry. What the queen is, in this respect, in England, the constitution or rather the Union is in the United States. Our feelings of loyalty centre in these, but not in our president, any more than an Englishman's loyalty finds a symbol in his prime minister.