INTRODUCTION AND METHOD. 5 intrinsic value, because, by testing and correcting such hypotheses from time to time, we may eventually succeed in arriving at the true one. It may be admitted that there can be none such which will be true in an absolute sense, and the best may be invalidated by incomputable contingencies; but there is nevertheless an excuse for the pursuit of such inquiries in the weighty observation of the father of modern philosophy, that "Shepherds of people had need know the calendar of tempests of State." For the importance of such a calendar it may be worth many an inconclusive effort, if we approximate only remotely to the theory of its construction. * Let us premise that the causes and consequences of revolutionary movements, in other words the more extended historic agencies, are the chief desiderata for this coveted work, and how shall we proceed to enumerate and classify them? Taken separately from each other, the great turning points of history can only be interrogated for a limited view of their meaning. Like the scattered leaves of the Sibyl, taken singly and apart, they are dubious fragments of a dismembered truth, inexplicable without a considerable context. To obtain an adequate answer we must not be content with the closest inspection of isolated facts; we must connect them with the series in which they occur, or with the system of which they are a subordinate part. We shall then have the grounds of an intelligible hypothesis; and grouping events according to their observed relations, we may draw serviceable conclusions from their united aspect. True it is, that, dealing with facts in historical. sequence, it is impossible to class separately, as cause and effect, events which will be found to alternate as either, according as they are referred to the change which comes after, or to that which precedes them. Yet we do not fail, in thus comprising a series of changes, and tracing their Lord Bacon. subordination to some common element, to comprehend fully their separate significance. Their aggregate illustrates their several importance, while thus only do we rise to the 'teλelótatov téλos'—the supreme end of historical inquiry, which, strictly speaking, is not so much the vicissitudes of institutions social, political, and religious,* as the ideas which institutions and their vicissitudes express, and through which, in a primary sense, they originate. In denoting such ideas or tendencies we term them laws, when, comparatively speaking, they are universal or permanent, as distinguished from others which are local or transitory, nor need the term, in its most ample sense, be taken to involve a denial of that liberty of choice within certain limits, which is implied by the conscious efforts of political bodies; still less should it be held to import a doctrine of external fatalism in substitution for the will of the great Author of the universe. I.-Be the subtleties of the metaphysicians as perplexing as they have ever been, the historical inquirer may be satisfied to regard such general laws of history as existing parts of the scheme of creation, and as equally within the reach of a controlling Providence. He will not be derogating from the Eternal Purpose, if he acquaints himself with some of its more systematic operations, such as this, which we take to be one of the chief, that nations proceed in a course of Development, their later manifestations being potentially present in the earliest elements out of which they are constituted. Of this law we may affirm that its operations are variable, to the verge of infinity, yet all of them are alike in the sense of development. The first impulse of national life prolonged into subsequent history may be likened to personal capacity and character, whence proceed individual conduct and action. sequences in both cases may be modified by external * Dr. Arnold's Lectures on Modern History, p. 157. The con agencies, and, in the case of nations, by the efforts even of individuals to influence the conduct of their respective communities. But we conceive of such modifications as telling for little in the aggregate, and we deliberately make it our choice to disregard them. If we cannot agree with the Professor of History at the University of Cambridge* in exaggerating the influence of great individuals, still less can we accept the dictum of another historian that original distinctions of race are altogether hypothetical."+ On the contrary, we conceive that there are ample grounds, to be stated hereafter, for ascribing to them consequences of the utmost importance; for, however they may have been produced in the first instance, if we find such in any race at the date at which we first encounter it in history, we shall certainly find them marking its identity down to our time. Insomuch that the changes which nations have separately experienced have been conformable to the nature of the elements they comprised at their origin; so that, estimating the revolutions of distinct groups, we may best ascertain how they have differed, if we can detect the elements original in each, and compare them together in their chief combinations. II. At the same time, if we admit a resemblance in revolutions, and a certain affinity is clearly discernible, we must not attribute this to a law of development, which necessarily produces varied results, according to the elements. upon which it operates. We must refer it to some other law, independent of national characteristics, which strives to accommodate their several diversities to the stricter measure of its own uniformity; a law which works by the side of Development, and turns its issues to a separate account. Such a law can we fail to recognise in the tendency to * Mr. Kingsley's Inaugural Lecture. Equality evident throughout history, the tendency which modern research pronounces to be the plainest and gravest fact it encounters-the most ancient as well as the most enduring impulse of the many movements which have agitated society.* This tendency Aristotle partially apprehends, where he asserts the cause of revolutions to be τὸ ἄνισον πανταχοῦ γὰρ διὰ τὸ ἄνισον ἡ στάσις—ὅλως γὰρ τὸ ἴσον ζητοῦντες στασιάζουσι. The nature of the equality sought will vary according to the actual circumstances of a nation, and depend on the equality it has already attained. It may apply to privileges of rank or religion or race, to rights civil or political, or even to social advantages; but some mode or shape of inequality, and that which for the time is felt to be oppressive, is the cause, as a a corresponding equality is the result, of every political change which amounts to revolution. III. Of this tendency to equality the incidents are as clear as the tendency itself is obvious and certain. Although man may be conscious of the effort to advance, to depress others or to elevate himself, yet his movement is confined within certain limits, and is made in subservience to certain conditions. It can only proceed by consecutive stages, each designating an epoch in the history of a nation, not such as is reached by mere lapse of time, but such as is sooner or later identical with its transition from one state of being to another. Thus, the contest for the equalisation of nobility and wealth is prior to the contest between wealth and numbers. The one belongs to an earlier, the other to a later, age of national existence, and it is quite as impossible that their order should be transposed, as that youth should be competent to man's exertions, or manhood entertain the emotions of youth. Of See Arnold's Thucyd., vol. i., Appendix I. * See the Introduction to De Tocqueville's Democracy in America. + Politics, book 5, chap. 1. THE TENDENCY TO EQUALITY. the earlier contest, that in which property is the assailant of birth, the modern, like the ancient world, has witnessed the completion. In both cases it was characterised by the same phenomena, and finally attended with the same result. It is thus observable that in neither instance was it a momentary event or crisis, which perfected at once the whole revolution. In Athens, the legislation of Draco, of Solon, of Clisthenes, mark the slow stages by which it was accomplished. The code of Draco, the first written definition of hereditary privilege-the "Seisactheia" of Solon, promoting diffusion of property-his apportionment of political rights to the gradations of his Census-the abolition by Clisthenes of the ancient Phylæ, with the aristocratic distinctions which these comprehended-the facilities he offered to naturalisation, and his somewhat later establishment of Ostracism, were the legislative settlement of the successive issues which property and nobility formulated in their struggle to attain the footing of a perfect equality. No less marked and graduated was the long series of political contests between the Plebs and Populus of ancient Rome; or, again, in the rise of the Commons through the middle ages, the growth of their boroughs in wealth and consideration-their successive incorporations— the extension of their Charters-their advance from a state of passive immunity to an active participation in political power, by means of their representatives in the great Council of the nation. Change is here seen drawing on change in a kind of necessary sequence, and though the duration of the conflict has been in some cases protracted, sooner or later it ended in all. It ended as invariably in the ascendancy of wealth,-property instead of privilege becoming substantially the standard in the distribution of political franchise and power. Yet in this revolution, itself only a wave of the grander movement towards a more distant and completer equality, |