when we speak of things in their ordinary courses, the first condition of their well-being. So much then for religion in the family, and the reasons of it.

52. The other form of universal association, which I would couple with the family in respect of its extensive range of influences upon the characters and destinies of men, and of its high moral characteristics, is that of the nation or the state.

53. The nation, in its fullest sense, is an aggregation of men having substantial unity in physical origin, in language, in character and customs, in local habitation, and in political life. This unity admits of degree. Of origin and language there may be much diversity, as in the United Kingdom. The conformity of customs and character may be indefinitely various in amount. Even local juxtaposition is not essential to nationality, as we see in the case of the Jews, though it is nearly so. Unity of political or public life to some extent is absolutely essential. We perceive it in that singular people, under its own peculiar form, partly as blended with the theocratic element, and partly as compounded of retrospect and anticipation. Even this, however, is susceptible of gradations, as we may see its slighter forms in the Grecian, the Argive, the Ionic and the other confederations of Asia Minor, among the ancients;* and in the Germanic empire, the Swiss confederation, the

* Mitford on the Council of Amphictyons, i. iii. 3; and on the Argive or Calaurean Confederation, i. iv. 2. Herodotus on the Ionic Confederacy, i. 143, 147, 148; the Doric, 144; the Æolic, 149, 150.

provinces of the Low Countries, the United States of America, and the union of several European countries with their colonial dependencies, in modern times.

54. If we take in succession the terms a multitude, a people, a nation, a state, we rise by progression from a mere juxtaposition of units to a complete moral organisation. When we speak of a multitude, we indicate mere number; when we speak of a people, we separate the governed from the governors; when we speak of a nation, we contemplate them together, but we merge the governors in the governed; when we speak of the state, we contemplate the same personal subjects, but wholly and singly in respect of their partnership in the national life and order, not as individuals, but only as constituents of the active power of that life. We contemplate those who administer affairs, those who compose the legislative body, those who bear office, those who possess franchises, those who pay tax; in short, all who in any way contribute to make up the organic body; that is to say, all absolutely, but each simply in respect of his entering, according to his measure, into its mechanism; and the term regards them with degrees of more or less, according as their capacity therein is more or less comprehensive and efficient. And together with that fluent body of individuals, which is permanent only by succession, the term state includes those fixed laws and traditionary institutions to which they give effect, through which the national character is sustained and propagated, and which, comparatively secure from the

storms of passion and the devouring rust and moth of selfishness, become for the most part the depository and the safeguard of the best, purest, and truest portions of the common life. As, then, the nation is the realised "unity of the people,"* so in the state is that unity made vital and active. The state is the selfgoverning energy of the nation made objective. Where monarchy prevails it is centralised and represented in the person of the sovereign, himself an integral portion of this realised unity. Through his will the mind of the state is made effective, and becomes action; and the executive power which he impels throughout is the functional life, or organ, of the state, as the state is of the nation. Even thus, in its correlative the church, is understood, along with an organised body of individuals, the laws and forms of institution according to which they are organised.

55. Into the composition of this organ there should enter different elements in different proportions, according to their intrinsic fitness either positively to determine its actions for good, or reciprocally to correct the faults of each other, the interests or forces (in the German phrase momente) of nobility, of talent, of property, of numbers; all these, on account of their presumption of merit, or at least of a negative competency, as weights balancing one another; and with and beyond all these, the virtue which is from above, whose title to govern is alone indefeasible, but which on earth, from the imperfection of the forms of Coleridge, Table Talk, vol. i. p. 226.

*

its development, and yet more from the difficulty of applying a test to distinguish the genuine from the counterfeit, requires to be sought chiefly through the circuitous medium of other and secondary qualifica

tions.

56. These powers are continually passing into the composition of the governing body, in which we find them no longer in the gross but more or less refined, the weaker elements eliminated or suppressed, and the residue prepared for action. While the term state, in its larger sense, signifies the whole emanation and procession of these powers from their sources towards their concentration and their work, in a narrower sense it considers them apart from their primary springs, and in the determinate forms of the actual public authorities. For the present we have to do with the former.

57. In order to arrive at a comprehension of the general attributes of the state thus defined, let us consider separately what it professes, what it effects, and what it signifies.

Some writers have indeed mischievously exaggerated the office of the state, and even under the Christian revelation have represented it either as the fountain of morality, or at least as supremely charged with the regulation of the large province of relative duty; that province so comprehensive and important that the Redeemer has honoured it more than once with a distinct enunciation* of the law of moral obli

* Matt. xix. 17; Luke x. 27.

gation, although of course in the highest and ultimate sense it is comprehended within the yet larger commandment that enjoins upon us love to God as the universal principle of action.* Thus they have superseded the paramount principle of our private responsibility. Even these exaggerations, however, may serve for a sign of that real grandeur and comprehensiveness in the functions of the state, upon which they have been built.

58. The state, indeed, does not possess that range of qualifications which caused it to be said of the ancient Egyptians, that they wrought upon the scale of a giant but with the nicety of a jeweller, and which in matters of moral government are the attributes of almightiness alone. The state cannot provide for the discharge even of determinate, or as it has been defectively termed, perfect, duty in all its branches; far less can it insure the fulfilment of our indeterminate yet not less real obligations-the maintenance of Christian charity in its higher forms. But though it most imperfectly realises the idea of moral government, yet by its nature it tends and strives towards that consummation, and in its course or nisus thitherward, it exhibits signs and embodies portions of moral government in a pre-eminent and peculiar manner.

59. It declares itself against all injuries, whether of word or deed, between man and man, provided only that they be represented in such a form as its cognisance can reach, and as is also exemplary and intelliDeut. vi. 4, 5; xxx. 6.