22. CHAPTER XXII
OF THE FUTURE HISTORY OF POLITICAL SOCIETIES
Thus we have endeavoured to unfold and establish certain general principles
upon the subject of legislative and executive power. But there is one interesting
topic that remains to be discussed. How much of either of these powers does
the public benefit require us to maintain?
We have already seen[1] that the only legitimate object of political
institution is the advantage of individuals. All that cannot be brought home
to them, national wealth, prosperity and glory, can be advantageous only
to those self-interested impostors who, from the earliest accounts of time,
have confounded the understandings of mankind, the more securely to sink
them in debasement and misery.
The desire to gain a more extensive territory, to conquer or to hold in
awe our neighbouring states, to surpass them in arts or arms, is a desire
sounded in prejudice and error. Usurped authority is a spurious and unsubstantial
medium of happiness. Security and peace are more to be desired than a national
splendour that should terrify the world. Mankind are brethren. We associate
in a particular district or under a particular climate, because association
is necessary to our internal tranquillity, or to defend us against the wanton
attacks of a common enemy. But the rivalship of nations is a creature of
the imagination. If riches be our object, riches can only be created by commerce;
and the greater is our neighbour's capacity to buy, the greater will be our
opportunity to sell. The prosperity of all is the interest of all.
The more accurately we understand our own advantage, the less shall we
be disposed to disturb the peace of our neighbour. The same principle is
applicable to him in return. It becomes us therefore to desire that he may
be wise. But wisdom is the growth of equality and independence, not of injury
and oppression. If oppression had been the school of wisdom, the improvement
of mankind would have been inestimable, for they have been in that school
for many thousand years. We ought therefore to desire that our neighbour
should be independent. We ought to desire that he should be free; for wars
do not originate in the unbiased propensities of nations, but in the cabals
of government and the propensities that governments inspire into the people
at large.[2] If our neighbour invade our territory, all we should desire
is to repel him from it,[3] and, for that purpose, it is not necessary we
should surpass him in prowess, since upon our own ground his match is unequal.[4]
Not to say that to conceive a nation attacked by another, so long as its
own conduct is sober, equitable and moderate, is an exceedingly improbable
suppositions.[5]
Where nations are not brought into avowed hostility, all jealousy between
them is an unintelligible chimera. I reside upon a certain spot because that
residence is most conducive to my happiness or usefulness. I am interested
in the political justice and virtue of my species because they are men, that
is, creatures eminently capable of justice and virtue; and I have perhaps
additional reason to interest myself for those who live under the same government
as myself because I am better qualified to understand their claims, and more
capable of exerting myself in their behalf. But I can certainly have no interest
in the infliction of pain upon others, unless so far as they are expressly
engaged in acts of injustice. The object of sound policy and morality is
to draw men nearer to each other, not to separate them; to unite their interests,
not to oppose them.
Individuals ought, no doubt, to cultivate a more frequent and confidential
intercourse with each other than at present subsists; but political societies
of men, as such, have no interests to explain and adjust, except so far as
error and violence may tender explanation necessary. This consideration annihilates,
at once, the principal objects of that mysterious and crooked policy which
has hitherto occupied the attention of governments. Before this principle,
officers of the army and the navy, ambassadors and negotiators, all the train
of artifices that has been invented to hold other nations at bay, to penetrate
their secrets, to traverse their machinations, to form alliances and counter-alliances,
sink into nothing. The expense of government is annihilated, and, together
with its expense, the means of subduing and undermining the virtues of its
subjects.[6]
Another of the great opprobriums of political science is, at the same
time, completely removed, that extent of territory, subject to one head,
respecting which philosophers and moralists have alternately disputed whether
it be most unfit for a monarchy, or for a democratical government. The appearance
which mankind, in a future state of improvement, may be expected to assume
is a policy that, in different countries, will wear a similar form, because
we have all the same faculties and the same wants but a policy the independent
branches of which will extend their authority over a small territory, because
neighbours are best informed of each others concerns, and are perfectly equal
to their adjustment. No recommendation can be imagined of an extensive rather
than a limited territory, except that of external security.
Whatever evils are included in the abstract idea of government, they are
all of them extremely aggravated by the extensiveness of its jurisdiction,
and softened under circumstances of an opposite nature. Ambition, which may
be no less formidable than a pestilence in the former, has no room to unfold
itself in the latter. Popular commotion is like the waters of the earth,
capable where the surface is large, of producing the most tragical effects,
but mild and innocuous when confined within the circuit of a humble lake.
Sobriety and equity are the obvious characteristics of a limited circle.
It may indeed be objected 'that great talents are the offspring of great
passions, and that, in the quiet mediocrity of a petty republic, the powers
of intellect may be expected to subside into inactivity'. This objection,
if true, would be entitled to the most serious consideration. But it is to
be considered that, upon the hypothesis here advanced, the whole human species
would constitute, in some sense, one great republic, and the prospects of
him who desired to act beneficially upon a great surface of mind would become
more animating than ever. During the period in which this state was growing,
but not yet complete, the comparison of the blessings we enjoyed with the
iniquities practising among our neighbours would afford an additional stimulus
to exertion.[7]
Ambition and tumult are evils that arise out of government, in an indirect
manner, in consequence of the habits, which government introduces, of concert
and combination extending themselves over multitudes of men. There are other
evils inseparable from its existence. The object of government is the suppression
of such violence, as well external as internal, as might destroy, or bring
into jeopardy, the well being of the community or its members; and the means
it employs are constraint and violence of a more regulated kind. For this
purpose the concentration of individual forces becomes necessary, and the
method in which this concentration is usually obtained is also constraint.
The evils of constraint have been considered on a former occasion.[8] Constraint
employed against delinquents, or persons to whom delinquency is imputed,
is by no means without its mischiefs. Constraint employed by the majority
of a society against the minority, who may differ from them upon some question
of public good, is calculated, at first sight at least, to excite a still
greater disapprobation.
Both these exertions may indeed appear to rest upon the same principle.
Vice is unquestionably no more, in the first instance,than error of judgement,
and nothing can justify an attempt to correct it by force, but the extreme
necessity of the case.[9] The minority, if erroneous, fall under precisely
the same general description, though their error may not be of equal magnitude.
But the necessity of the case can seldom be equally impressive. If the idea
of secession, for example, were somewhat more familiarized to the conceptions
of mankind, it could seldom happen that the secession of the minority from
difference of opinion could in any degree compare, in mischievous tendency,
with the hostility of a criminal offending against the most obvious principles
of social justice. The cases are parallel to those of offensive and defensive
war. In putting constraint upon a minority, we yield to a suspicious temper
that tells us the opposing party may hereafter, in some way, injure us, and
we will anticipate his injury. In putting constraint upon a criminal, we
seem to repel an enemy who has entered our territory, and refuses to quit
it.
Government can have no more than two legitimate purposes, the suppression
of injustice against individuals within the community, and the common defence
against external invasion. The first of these purposes, which alone can have
an uninterrupted claim upon us, is sufficiently answered by an association,
of such an extent, as to afford room for the institution of a jury to decide
upon the offences of individuals within the community, and upon the questions
and controversies respecting property which may chance to arise. It might
be easy indeed for an offender to escape from the limits of so petty a jurisdiction;
and it might seem necessary, at first, that the neighbouring parishes,[10]
or jurisdictions, should be governed in a similar manner, or at least should
be willing, whatever was their form of government, to co-operate with us
in the removal or reformation of an offender whose present habits were alike
injurious to us and to them. But there will be no need of any express compact,
and still less of any common centre of authority, for this purpose. General
justice, and mutual interest, are found more capable of binding men than
signatures and seals. In the meantime, all necessity for causing the punishment
of the crime, to pursue the criminal would soon, at least, cease, if it ever
existed. The motives to offence would become rare: its aggravations few:
and rigour superfluous. The principal object of punishment is restraint upon
a dangerous member of the community; and the end of this restraint would
be answered by the general inspection that is exercised by the members of
a limited circle over the conduct of each other, and by the gravity and good
sense that would characterize the censures of men, from whom all mystery
and empiricism were banished. No individual would be hardy enough in the
cause of vice to defy the general consent of sober judgement that would surround
him. It would carry despair to his mind, or, which is better, it would carry
conviction. He would be obliged, by a force not less irresistible than whips
and chains, to reform his conduct.
In this sketch is contained the rude outline of political government.
Controversies between parish and parish would be, in an eminent degree, unreasonable,
since, if any question arose, about limits, for example, the obvious principles
of convenience could scarcely fail to teach us to what district any portion
of land should belong. No association of men, so long as they adhered to
the principles of reason, could possibly have an interest in extending their
territory. If we would produce attachment in our associates, we can adopt
no surer method than that of practising the dictates,of equity and moderation;
and, if this failed in any instance, it could only fail with him who, to
whatever society he belonged, would prove an unworthy member. The duty of
any society to punish offenders is not dependent upon the hypothetical consent
of the offender to be punished, but upon the duty of necessary defence.
But however irrational might be the controversy of parish with parish
in such a state of society, it would not be the less possible. For such extraordinary
emergencies therefore, provision ought to be made. These emergencies are
similar in their nature to those of foreign invasion. They can only be provided
against by the concert of several district declaring and, if needful, enforcing
the dictates of justice.
One of the most obvious remarks that suggests itself, upon these two cases,
of hostility between district and district, and of foreign invasion which
the interest of all calls upon them jointly to repel, is that it is their
nature to be only of occasional recurrence, and that therefore the provisions
to be made respecting them need not be, in the strictest sense, of perpetual
operation. In other words, the permanence of a national assembly, as it has
hitherto been practised in France, cannot be necessary in a period of tranquillity,
and may perhaps be pernicious. That we may form a more accurate judgement
of this, let us recollect some of the principal features that enter into
the constitution of a national assembly.
[[1]]
Chap. XVI, p. 508; Chap.XX, p. 531.
[[6]]
Hume's Essays, Part I, Essay V.
[[7]]
This objection will be fully discussed in the eight book of the present
work.
[[9]]
Book II, Chap. VI: Book IV, Chap. VIII.
[[10]]
The word parish is here used without regard to its origin, and merely
in consideration of its being a word descriptive of a certain small portion
of territory, whether in population or extent, which custom has rendered
familiar to us.