§ 11.

And thus we arrive at the true answer to that question at present so widely agitated—Is a purely popular form of government practicable now? For, as the sentiment by which a Edition: current; Page: [244] state of perfect political liberty is generated, is also the one by which it is upheld, there immediately suggests itself the corollary that, when the sentiment is strong enough to generate it, it is strong enough to uphold it. Whenever, therefore, a people calmly arrives at the conclusion that democratic institutions are right; whenever they dispassionately determine that they shall be adopted; or, in other words, whenever the circumstances show that the setting up of such institutions is not an accident, but results from the ascendancy of the aforesaid sentiment; then, and then alone, are such institutions permanently possible.

In the opinion, now happily so prevalent, that the pacific mode of working out political changes is the only efficient one, we have a collateral expression of this truth. Men see that freedom achieved by the sword is uniformly lost again; but that it is lasting when gained by peaceful agitation. Hence they very properly infer the propriety of carrying reforms solely by means which the moral law recognises—means which do not involve violations of it. Right as this conclusion may be, however, it is not philosophically understood. Men do not see why the thing is so. There is no truth in the usual supposition that the loss of liberties obtained by violence is a kind of retribution. It is not that bloodshed vitiates the free institutions it may help to set up; nor is it that when peacefully established such institutions are preserved by virtue of their being so established; but it is that the manner in which the change is wrought indicates the national character, and proves it to be respectively unfit or fit for the new social form. A brief examination of the moral conditions implied by these different kinds of revolution will show this.

When an old regime is overthrown by force, no guarantee is given that the new one put in its place will satisfy the wants of the age. The occurrence is simply a demonstration that the miseries inflicted under this old regime were no longer bearable. To repeat the saying of Sully, quoted by Burke, and which is perfectly true when applied to convulsions of this nature—“It Edition: current; Page: [245] is never from the desire to attack that the people rise, but from impatience under suffering.” Now anger against an agent inflicting pain is a passion, exhibited by brutes as well as by men; and a social revolution wrought out by such a motive power is not likely to leave behind it a state of things specially adapted to the people’s circumstances. That sudden display of ill-temper with which a man dashes on the ground something that has given him much provocation, and yet the loss of which he will subsequently regret, serves in some measure to illustrate the conduct of a people thus excited. They are irritated, and justly so; the hold which authority has had over them is weakened; that sentiment of power-worship—that loyalty, as we term it—which was but the index of a certain adaptation between their characters and the rule they had lived under, is for the time being in abeyance—is silenced, drowned in the rising tide of their wrath; and when, after they have destroyed the old framework of things, another becomes needful, it is very improbable that the one set up during this temporary state of excitement will be one really in harmony with their natural characters. Nay, indeed, it is sure to be out of harmony with their natural characters; for consider, the institutions they set up will bear the impress of the feeling then prevalent—a feeling widely different from that previously exhibited, and also from that which will come uppermost again by-and-by. Stimulated by transpiring events, the germs of those sentiments destined some day to establish genuine political freedom, assume a precocious activity—seem much stronger and more general than they really are; whilst, on the contrary, those sentiments which upheld the preceding state of things are almost wholly dormant. The improvised form of government exactly answers to this exceptional condition of mind, and might work could that condition be maintained; but as fast as the popular feeling ebbs back into its ordinary channels, so fast does the incongruity between the new arrangements and the old character make itself felt; and so fast is the retrogression.

On viewing the facts, through the foregoing theory of moral-sense Edition: current; Page: [246] agency, it becomes still more manifest that free institutions obtained by violence are of necessity premature. For what are the requisite antecedents to one of these social convulsions? They are the torments of a wide-spread and deep-seated injustice. And of what character is this injustice the exponent? Evidently a character deficient in those sentiments which deter men from aggression—a character in which the faculties of the social man are as yet imperfectly developed—a character, that is, by which the law of equal freedom is not duly responded to. Hence the unscrupulous trespasses on the one part, and the culpable submission on the other, which, by their accumulated results, have induced so terrible a crisis. Well: though by a revolution the people may re-make their government, they cannot re-make themselves. Slightly changed, perhaps, they may be in the passing through a period of such fiery excitement; but, in the main, they are still the men they were. The old process will consequently repeat itself. The storm of passion having died away, there will again begin these encroachments and this indifference; and they will continue until, by a gradual imposition of fresh bonds, the nation has been reduced, not, indeed, to a condition as bad as before, but to a condition not greatly in advance of it.

Of political ameliorations pacifically wrought out, exactly the opposite is predicable. These appertain to a higher phase of civilization. In the first place they presuppose the popular suffering to be of a comparatively mild type—no longer unbearable, maddening; and, other things equal, this indicates a diminished amount of injustice; and a diminished amount of injustice implies a more prevalent and energetic moral sense. Thus the very antecedents of a peaceful agitation serve in some measure to ensure the success of the free institutions obtained by it. But it is in the process by which one of these bloodless revolutions is brought about that the existence of the needful popular character is most clearly evinced. For in what consists the vitality of such a movement? What is the secret power that originates it; to which its growth is due; and by the help of Edition: current; Page: [247] which it triumphs? Manifestly this feeling that responds to the law of equal freedom. These pertinacious demands for political equality are simply the signs of its increasing activity. Not hunger, nor the anxiety to escape from torture, nor the desire for vengeance, is now the transforming force, but a calm unswerving determination to get human liberties recognised. The carrying out one of these battles of opinion to a successful issue through long delays and discouragements, through ridicule and misrepresentation, implies a perennial source of energy quite different from mere insurrectionary rage. In place of a passing gust of anger, a persistent and ever-strengthening sentiment is here the acting agent. Agitation is its gymnasium. Men in whom it predominates cultivate it in the rest. They address it in speeches; they write articles to it; they convene meetings for its manifestation. It is aroused by denunciations of injustice; it is appealed to in the name of conscience; it is conjured by all that is fair and upright and equitable. Pictures of the slave and the tyrant are exhibited to excite its abhorrence; a state of pure freedom is described to it as the one to be loved and hoped for; and it is made sensible of the sacredness of human rights. After men’s minds have been for many years thus exercised and stimulated, a sufficiently intense manifestation of feeling is produced, and then comes the reform. But this feeling, mark, proceeds from that same combination of faculties by which, as we have seen, free institutions are upheld and made practicable. One of these agitations, therefore, is a kind of apprenticeship to the liberties obtained by it. The power to get freedom becomes the measure of the power to use it. The law of social forms is that they shall be expressive of national character; they come into existence bearing its impress; and they live only so long as it supplies them with vitality. Now a general dissatisfaction with old arrangements is a sign that the national character requires better ones; and for the people in pursuit of these better ones to have organised associations, maintained lecturers, and for session after session to have wearied the legislature with petitions—to have continued Edition: current; Page: [248] this, too, until the accumulated force of opinion has become irresistible, is to have given conclusive proof that the change brought about is really in harmony with the wants of the age. The new institutions do not now express an exceptional state of the popular mind, but express its habitual state, and hence are certain to be fitted to it.