tics in respect of their powers of prediction, and have indicated how they may be compared, in this respect, with the physical sciences, and also with the other sciences relating to man. It has been shown that two branches of politics have not, in form, any reference to the future. Positive politics describes the constitution of a government, and the nature of its acts, but in terms which suit all governments, and which therefore are as applicable to the future as to the past and the present. It does not profess to predict any particular event; but its generalizations of fact, if correctly deduced from universal experience, must retain their truth, notwithstanding the flux of time, like the generalizations of physical science. Political history, on the other hand, deals exclusively with singulars,-it narrates past events in all their individuality, with their circumstances of agent, time, and place. It aims only at exhibiting a register of the past at passing before our eyes a moveable picture, in which a continuous series of real actions is represented. In its character of history, therefore, it predicts nothing. record of the political past is not, like an epic poem or a tragedy, intended merely for delight: it is written for the instruction of posterity; and it serves indirectly, by the lessons which it conveys, to guide the course of the practical politician. In politics -as in other departments of knowledge-it is only by consulting experience that we can predict the future; and it is in historical records that the results of political experience are accumulated. History, therefore, though it does not itself predict, furnishes the materials out of which political predictions are constructed.

But a

The business of constructing these predictions is performed by the other two divisions of politics-the speculative and practical. Prediction, as we have already seen, is in strictness confined to singulars. Theory lays down general propositions with respect to the sequence of phenomena, but predicts no specific event. The prediction is properly a judgment formed by the practitioner in an individual case. Speculative politics, therefore, does not properly predict. It traces the operation of causes,

It

and their tendency to produce certain effects; but these causes are viewed abstractedly, and conceived as acting in vacuo; and it is not predicted that any event will ever actually happen. Yet speculative politics lays down principles which carry on the mind to the future, and which indicate the probable sequence of certain effects from a certain cause, though the anticipation is couched in general terms, and requires various corrections and adaptations when it comes to be applied to the circumstances of any actual case. This last operation is the peculiar and appropriate department of practical politics. The practical politician is concerned with prediction in the strict sense of the word. is his office to predict real events. He anticipates the operation of a given law or act of the government; he has to foresee particular contingencies and combinations of circumstances, and to provide for them by proper precautions and arrangements; he has to divine the true but unavowed intentions of foreign states, and to conjecture the probable destination of preparations or measures in progress. In making these anticipations, he must apply, either consciously or unconsciously, some general maxim or principle deduced from experience; and such maxims he borrows from the speculative politician. He uses this general principle respecting the tendency of a cause as an instrument to assist his judgment in a particular case, and having made certain allowances for additional circumstances-which are present in the reality, but of which the theory takes no notice-he proceeds to draw his inference as to the probable event. In this process, if it be properly carried on, he in general either hits the mark, or approximates closely to it, for a period of time immediately succeeding that in which he casts his horoscope. But the operation of causes arising out of the uncertain nature of the human will, and the multiplicity of human motives, sometimes disturbs calculations almost as soon as they have been made; nor can any human prescience dive deep into futurity, or predict the course of political events at a period remote from the time actually present.

369

CHAPTER XXV.

ON THE FALLIBILITY OF POLITICAL PRACTICE,

§ 1

WE

AND ITS CAUSES.

E have now investigated the application of political theory to practice, and the nature of political conduct we have also examined how far the political future can be anticipated by safe prognostications. In the course of this inquiry, we have had frequent occasion to advert to the causes which render political practice fallible-which prevent the statesman from attaining his end, or deter him from pursuing a right and discreet course. It will, however, be necessary to discuss this subject in greater detail, and to classify the various causes which contribute to the fallibility of political practice; for it is only by a knowledge of these causes that the errors with which it is beset can be avoided.

When a person, in political practice, acts upon argumentative grounds, distinctly conceived and understood, his reasoning must substantially resolve itself into such a practical syllogism as was explained in a former chapter. (') He has before his mind a general maxim or rule of conduct, together with a statement of the case, or circumstances, to which he applies the maxim; and from the combination of these he educes his practical conclusion. Now this process-simple as are the logical elements into which it may be resolved-is liable to be misconducted in a great variety of ways, all leading to practical error.

§ 2 In the first place, the general maxim or rule upon which the entire argument rests may be unsound. The maxim may be either formed by the conversion of a false theory into a precept, or it may consist in the recommendation of a bad ideal model. There is not in politics, as in astronomy and some of

(1) Ch. xx. § 2.

VOL. II.

B B

the physical sciences, a general agreement even among competent judges, and still less in the public at large, with respect to the truth of any political theory, and therefore it is impossible to select examples of erroneous practical arguments, arising from false theories, which all the world will admit to be fairly chosen. The following laws and institutions will, however, be probably considered by most readers as dictated by unsound practical arguments, whose unsoundness is owing to this cause.

1. The prohibition of the use of written laws, said to have been established in Sparta by Lycurgus: involving the theory, that written laws are detrimental to a state, and that oral tradition is the best form for the promulgation and preservation of its laws.()

2. The institutions of Sparta, intended to discipline the citizens to the life of a soldier, and to fit them exclusively for military purposes: involving the theory, that the successful conduct of war is the main end of a state. ()

3. The non-admission of foreigners as residents in a state, as well as a prohibition of foreign travel to the natives: involving the theory, that each independent state ought to be isolated as much as possible, and cut off from direct intercourse with the rest of the world.

4. The institution of slavery: involving the theory, that, on the whole, it promotes the welfare of the community, by encouraging, cheapening, facilitating, and organizing labour.

5. The institution of polygamy: involving the theory, that this constitution of the family is preferable to that which results from monogamy.

6. The institution of castes: involving the theory, that the system of hereditary trades and occupations is beneficial to the state.

(2) Plutarch, Lycurg. 13.

(3) Aristot. Pol. vii. 14. In ii. 9, he repeats, with approbation, the remark of Plato in the Laws (qu. iv. p. 705), that the laws of Sparta look only to one species of virtue, viz. military valour.

Aristotle remarks (vii. 2), that the end of legislation in many states is to make the people warlike; and he particularly instances the laws and public education of Lacedæmon and Crete as being framed with this object. See Plutarch, Comp. Lyc. et Num. c. 2.

7. The use of torture, as a means of extracting confessions from accused persons and evidence from witnesses in criminal proceedings involving the theory, that the assistance which it affords to the administration of justice outweighs the cruelty of the infliction.

8. A censorship of the press: involving the theory, that the government is competent to discriminate between those facts and arguments which ought to be communicated to the public and those which ought not.

9. A prohibition of public meetings and voluntary associations involving the theory, that all such common expressions of opinion and combined efforts on the part of the people are mischievous, without the previous permission of the government.

10. A prohibition of the public exercise of any religion not held by the state to be true, accompanied by the denunciation of punishment to the professors of it: involving the theory, that the propagation of religious truth by coercive means is incumbent upon the state.

11. The fixation of a maximum rate of prices for commodities in general: involving the theory, that it is in the power of the government to regulate prices, and that the exercise of that power is beneficial.

12. The establishment of government granaries: involving the theory, that such a provision tends to keep down prices in time of scarcity more effectually than the measures of private traders.

13. The enactment of sumptuary laws: involving the theory, that the expensive tastes of private individuals ought to be restrained by legislative penalties, and that luxury is mischievous to the state.(")

(4) Pour le dedans de la ville, Mentor visita tous les magasins, toutes les boutiques d'artisans, et toutes les places publiques. Il défendit toutes les marchandises de pays étrangers qui pouvaient introduire le luxe et la mollesse. Il régla les habits, la nourriture, les meubles; la grandeur et l'ornement des maisons, pour toutes les conditions differentes. Il bannit tous les ornements d'or et d'argent; et il dit à Idoménée: je ne connais qu'un seul moyen pour rendre votre peuple modeste dans sa dépense, c'est que vous lui en donniez vous-même l'exemple.'-Télémaque, liv. x.; and see, on the evils of luxury, liv. xvii. On luxury, see Filangieri, Scienza della Legislazione, lib. ii. c. 37, 38.