the age teems with evidence how widely the view which he expressed is held. In 1858 Lord Salisbury, then at the beginning of his public career, noted the significant fact that in English politics แ no one acts on principles or reasons from them.” 1 This is even truer now than it was then. And it is true of other countries than our own. Writing recently in the Revue des Deux Mondes, M. LeroyBeaulieu declared—and no one ventured to gainsay him that in France, and in the Latin races generally, "contemporary politicians of all classes, from municipal councillors to Ministers, taken on the whole, and with few exceptions, are the vilest and the narrowest of sycophants and courtiers that humanity has ever known; their sole end basely to flatter and develop all popular prejudices, which, for the rest, they but vaguely share, never having consecrated one minute of their lives to reflection and observation." So in the United States of America, Mr. Brice tells us, "neither party has any principles, or any distinctive tenets; . tenets and policies, points of political doctrine, and points of political practice, have all vanished: all has been lost except office and the hope of it." I need not enlarge upon a state of things which must be familiar to my readers, and the exact description of which is anarchy or lawlessness. 1 In a remarkable article in Oxford Essays, 1858. Now, I have been led to write this book by the deep conviction that "nothing is that errs from law "-law issuing from the nature of things, which is rational; law, the first fact in the universe, though invisible, inpalpable, imponderable: most real, indeed, because most spiritual. I hold that law rules in the province of politics, as in every other segment of human life; and that to interpret the law, and to bring it into harmony with the varying conditions of human society, is the highest task of the legis lator. Properly speaking, politics--the word is here used in its old and only worthy sense, not in its modern acceptation of vote-catching—must be considered a branch of ethics. And by ethics, it may be not unnecessary to add, I mean the science of natural morality indicating what action is right, and what is wrong, as befitting or unbefitting a rational creature. Politics form a chapter, not in physics, but in the Philosophy of Right, by Right being understood, as Krause has admirably defined it, "the organic whole of the outward conditions of a life according to Reason." 1 The question before us, in this initial Chapter, is, What is the Foundation of the State? Not, I beg my readers to note, what is the actual genesis of any State in particular, but on what deep underlying principle human society must rest. I start, then, 166 'Das organische Ganze der ausseren Bedingungen des Vernunftlebens." Quoted by Green, Works, vol. ii., p. 341. with the position that the foundation of the State is the law of man's moral nature, in virtue of which he is a person invested with rights and encompassed by duties. The natural rights of man and the natural duties of man, I say, are the necessary postulates of political science. Let me not be misunderstood. I am very far indeed from holding, with the sophists of the French Revolution, that these natural rights and duties are independent of conditioning circumstances; that they have the empirical determinativeness or the binding force of positive law; that they can be translated off-hand into fact. I am merely asserting, to quote the words of Green, that "there is a system of rights and obligations which should be maintained by law, whether it is so or not, and which may properly be called natural," 1 as issuing from the nature of things. From the very first dawn of philosophy the conception has prevailed of an absolute order of right, embracing and harmonising all public rights. It is, metaphysically considered, the ultimate foundation of all human justice, and conformity thereto is the criterion of the moral and rational validity of positive law. It is binding upon the conscience of the individual as such, for it is, in Butler's phrase, that "law of virtue under which we are born." It is binding upon the 'conscience of the State, as such, for "the value of the institutions of civil life," Green 1 Works, vol. ii., p. 339. 1 1 well observes, "lies in their operation as giving reality to the capacities of will and reason," the possession of which is "the condition of a moral life." And the ideals of right which constitute it are the fundamental principles determinative of the proper construction of a polity. Now, of these ideals, the ideal of justice is the first, and embraces, in some sort, all the others. Hence the dictum, Justitia fundamentum regni. Yes; justice is the true foundation of the State. On justice, assuredly, every commonwealth must be based if it is to endure. Build on any other foundation than that adamantine rock, and your political edifice, however imposing with "cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces," will pass away like "an insubstantial pageant." When the rain descends, and the floods come, and the winds blow and beat upon it, fall it must. And great will be the fall of it. 1 Works, vol. ii., p. 337, 338. Of course, some eminent writers on political science deny to the jus naturæ the name of law (Recht) which they restrict to positive law. But they admit the thing, though they reject the name. Thus Lasson, who will not hear of Naturrecht, substitutes for it das Gerechte, which, he says, "is deduced from universal nature, from the pure expression of reason, and from the historical process. The Gerechte," he adds, "forms the ideal standard (Anforderung) of Recht, a standard to which it never fully attains" (System der Rechtsphilosophie, p. 231). But that is precisely the true account of rò dixarov, jus naturæ, or Naturrecht. CHAPTER II AT THE ORIGIN OF THE STATE T the basis, then, of politics lies the question, What is just? Political philosophy, as I just now insisted, is a chapter in the Philosophy of Right, and in it we may proceed either by synthesis or by analysis. We may take certain rights, and investigate their ethical source and their primary principles. But we cannot deduce from a principle alone-even if it be a true principle-its varying applications and ramifications, in the varying conditions and needs of human society. In politics both the a priori and the a posteriori methods are equally valid and equally valuable. Neither is sufficient by itself. History teaches us the how, metaphysics the why. To know anything scientifically, we must know it in its development; in the process by which it has become what it is. But that is not enough; we must know it also in its cause. The a priori method has never been popular in England. And the absurdities and atrocities of the Jacobin disciples of Rousseau, in the last century, not unnaturally overwhelmed it with discredit. |