Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE INSTITUTION, CONTINUED. INSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY. INSTITUTIONAL LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT.

CIVILIZATION, SO closely connected with what we love in modern liberty, as well as progress and security, themselves ingredients of civil liberty, stands in need of stability and continuity, and these cannot be secured without institutions. This is the reason why the historian, when speaking of such organizers or refounders of their nations as Charlemagne, Alfred, Numa, Pelayo, knows of no higher name to give them than that of institutors.

The force of the institution in imparting stability and giving new power to what otherwise must have swiftly passed away, has been illustrated in our own times in Mormonism. Every observer who has gravely investigated this repulsive fraud, will agree that as for its pretensions and doctrines it must have passed as it came, had it not been for the remarkable character which Joseph Smith possessed as an institutor.1 Thrice blessed is a noble idea, perpetuated in an active institu

The great ability of this man seems to be peculiarly exhibited in his mixture of truth and arrant falsehood, his uncompromising boldness and insolence, and his organizing instituting mind. Two men have met almost simultaneously with great success, in our own times-Joseph Smith and Louis Napoleon. Of the two the first seems the more clever. He would almost reap all the praises which Machiavelli bestows upon the founder of a new empire. And he did it against all chances, without any assistance from tradition or prestige. Whether he be also the worse of the two will not be hastily pronounced by a careful inquirer.

T

tion, as charity in a hôtel-dieu; thrice cursed, a wicked idea embodied in an institution!

The title of institutor is coveted even by those who represent ideas the very opposite to institutions.

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, when he lately inaugurated his government, dwelt with pride, or a consciousness that the world prizes the founding of good institutions as the greatest work of a statesman and a ruler, on the "institutions" he had established.2

Institutions may not have been viciously conceived, or have grown out of a state of violence or crime, and yet they may have become injurious in the course of time, as incompatible with the pervading spirit of the time, or they may have become hollow, and in this latter case they are almost sure to be injurious. Hollow institutions in the state are much like empty boxes in an ill-managed house; they are sure to be filled with litter and rubbish, and to become nuisances. But great wisdom and caution are necessary to decide whether an institution ought to be amputated or not, because it is a notable truth in politics that many important institutions and laws are chiefly efficient as preventives, not as posi

2 He meant, of course, the senate, legislative corps, and the council of state. Why he calls these new institutions no one else can see; but he evidently wishes to indicate his own belief, or desired that others should believe, in their permanency, as well as, perhaps, in some degree, in their own independent action. To those, however, who consider them as nothing more than the pared and curtailed remnants of former institutions, who do not see that they can enjoy any independent action of their own, and are aware that their very existence depends upon the mere forbearance of the executive-who remember their origin by a mere decree of a dictator, whose very power by which he established them bears witness that he considers himself bound by no superior law, and who at any time may decree their cessation to those who know with what studied and habitual sneer 66 parliamentary governments" are spoken of by the ruling party in France,-all these establishments appear in principle no more as real institutions than a tent on a stage, the outpost of an army, or the clerk's office on board of one of our steamboats.

tive agents. It is not sufficient, therefore, that at a glance we do not discover any palpable good produced by the institution, to justify us in setting about lopping it off. Antiquity is primâ facie evidence in favour of an institution, and must not rashly be confounded with obsoleteness; but antiquity is certainly no proof against positive and grounded arguments. On the other hand, hollow institutions have frequently the serious inconvenience of deceiving and changing the proper venue, as lawyers would express it. The form of a representative government, without the spirit, true principles, and sincere guarantees of self-government in that body, or without being founded upon a candid and real representation, is worse than a government without these forms, because it eases the executive of the responsibility which without that hollow form would wholly rest on it. But here, again, it is necessary to observe that an institution may for a time become a mere form, and yet that very form may soon be animated again by a proper spirit. Parliament under Henry the Eighth had become a subservient tool, highly noxious because it formally sanctioned many atrocious measures of the king. Yet, it was that same parliament which rose to action and importance within fifty years, and within a century and a half became the virtual seat of government and supreme power in the state. There is hardly a species of penal trial which has not at times and for an entire period been abused; yet the existence of this very trial,

3 I am aware that many persons believe nowadays so little in this truth, that not only does antiquity of itself appear to them as a proof of de. ficiency, but they turn their face from the whole past, as something to be shunned, thus forgetting the continuity of society, progress, and civilization. M. Guizot, in his Lectures on the History of Representative Governments, delivered in Paris, 1820, found it necessary to warn his hearers against this horror of the past. The reader will find remarks on the impossibility of "beginning entirely anew," in my Political Ethics.

intended to rest on the principle of independence, became in a better period the starting-point of a new order of things.

We must also mention the fact that there are perennial and deciduous institutions, or institutions avowedly fit only for a preparatory state of civilization. Their office is limited in time, like that of the deciduous teeth, which must be drawn if they do not fall out of themselves, or resist too obstinately their perennial substitutes.

We may here close our general remarks on institutions, and investigate in what the force of the institution consists, when wisely taken into the service of liberty, and in what institutional self-government consists in particular.

By institutional self-government is meant that popular government which consists in a great organism of institutions, or a union of harmonizing systems of laws instinct with self-government. It is essentially of a cooperative or hamacratic character, and in this respect the opposite to centralism. It is articulated liberty, and in this regard the opposite to an articulated government of the majority. It is of an inter-guaranteeing, and consequently inter-limiting character, and in this aspect the negation of absolutism. It is of a self-evolving and genetic nature, and in this respect is contradistinguished from governments founded on extra-popular principles, such as divine right. Finally, institutional self-government is, in the opinion of our tribe, and according to our experience, the only practical self-government, or self-government carried out in the realities of life, and is thus the opposite of a vague or theoretical liberty, which proclaims abstractions, but, in reality, cannot disentangle itself from the despotism of one part over another, however permanent or changing the ruling part may be.

Institutional self-government is the political embodiment of self-reliance and mutual acknowledgment of selfrule. It is in this view the political realization of equality. Institutional self-government is the only self-government which makes it possible to be at once self-government and self-government.

According to the Anglican view, institutional selfgovernment consists in the fact that all the elementary parts of the government, as well as the highest and most powerful branches, consist in real institutions, with all the attributes which have been ascribed to an institution in the highest sense of the term. It consists, farther, in the unstinted freedom and fair protection which are granted to institutions of all sorts, commercial, religious, cultural, scientific, charitable and industrial, to germinate and to grow-provided they are moral and do not invade the equal rights of others. It receives its aliment from a pervading spirit of self-reliance and self-respect-the real afflatus of liberty.

It does not only require that the main functions of the government-the legislative, the judicial and the executive-be clearly divided, but also that the legislature and the judiciary be bonâ fide institutions. The first French constituent assembly pronounced the separation of the three powers, and was obliged to do so, since it intended to demolish the absolutism which had grown up under the Bourbons; but so long as there existed an absolute power, no matter of what name, that could dictate, liberty was not yet obtained. Indeed, it may be said that a real division of power cannot exist, unless the legislature and the judiciary form real institutions, in our sense of the term.

These institutions, again, consist of many minor

« AnteriorContinuar »