writings of the Old Testament, the history of States, from the time when first the family had expanded into this its larger development. 67. It is very easily seen, upon a review of what has now been propounded respecting the abstract idea of the State, that it fulfils the same grand conditions which have been enumerated as descriptive of the family. Like the family, it is of universal, or, at the least, of general application. Its agency is permanent and annexed to the whole of our life. It is natural, as opposed to what is spontaneous and conventional. There is no limit of quantity to the obligations of the individual towards it. It is moral, and not merely economical, inasmuch as its laws and institutions, and the acts done under them, are intimately connected with the formation of our moral habits, our modes of thought, and the state of the affections, and inasmuch as its influences pervade the whole scheme and system of our being, mingling with the first instincts of boyhood; it may be, even attracting the last lingering look of age on the threshold of its departure; inasmuch as that which we are individually, we have come to be, in a very considerable degree, through and by means of that which we are nationally. 68. Of all the qualities that have here been predicated of the State, there is but one on which I propose to dwell a little in detail; it is this, that the State is properly and according to its nature, moral. In a lower sense this is likely to be admitted on all hands. Every man will perceive that there must be such things as public faith and justice, or that political society would become an universal and intolerable curse. But the morality of the State means much more than this. It means that the general action of the State is under a moral law, is conversant with moral subjectmatter, is fruitful of moral influences. Now, as regards the second of these in particular, the lawgiver, proposing to himself as his idea the establishment of peace and order and the security of property, immediately finds that he impinges upon the subjectmatter of moral science; that the same acts which are favourable to politic designs are the acts that general morality approves; that the same acts which are hostile to these designs are the acts that general morality condemns, and that upon a scale which, though there are partial exceptions, ordinarily very much conforms to his. Thus his law and his subjectmatter are in relations of the closest proximity, although not identical, with those of moral science. He is to consider how far it may be in his power to encourage, and, on the other hand, by what means most effectually to repress, through prevention or punishment, classes of acts which he must estimate mainly by the standard of that science; although he may be compelled in certain particulars to qualify that criterion by regard to those lower purposes, without the regular attainment of which he cannot proceed to such as are higher. So that law travels over much of the same ground as ethics, and guides its course nearly according to their dictates. 69. If this be the case, then it is clear that (while we may reserve for another place the consideration of the preventive function of civil rule) the lawgiver has the same need to be ethically instructed as the individual man. The philosophy which holds that the latter will do best to choose his actions by a consideration of their general consequences, and which maintains that presumed advantage is to the human mind the best and most available criterion of right, may propound the same doctrine for the lawgiver. But most men revolt from this position, and maintain that the intrinsic nature of acts is in itself generally accessible to the understanding, as well as the calculation of their results; that it is usually the easier and safer rule; above all, that, according to the Divinely ordained canon, right is intended to be employed as the criterion of advantage, much more than advantage as the test of right. They, therefore, will also hold that the deviser of public law, because it deals (in great part) with subject-matter of right and wrong, and deals with it for the public well-being, must, like the private person, read the guarantees of that well-being in the nature of the acts, and take this nature as a guide to their results, as well as measure his enactments by the results which he is thus enabled to estimate. The lawgiver then, that is, the legislative mind of the nation, must be ethically instructed; which implies that it must be enlightened by religion, upon the basis of which alone it is, that moral science can be effectually reared. 70. And, indeed, the circumstance that the State has primary regard to certain external conditions of well-being, peace and order, so far from overthrowing, corroborates the necessity for guarding its acts by the forms of religion. Nothing could be more dangerous to moral health than the habits which would be engendered by continually estimating action, of which the subject-matter is admitted to be moral, with exclusive reference to these external results, and with no regard whatever therefore to their intrinsic nature. The practice proceeds upon a false opinion, that we are at liberty to deal with truth upon considerations of simple convenience, and its sure effect would be the general induration of the human heart. But it is a practice to which the State is continually tempted, for the very reason that the law of its being compels it to have some, and that no inconsiderable, regard to these exterior results; and thus it lies under a peculiar need of the influences of religion, in order that a healthy tone of disinterestedness and of public virtue may pervade its action, and hold up an example for private imitation rather than avoidance. A reflective agency, then, conversant with moral subject-matter, involves of necessity a conscience, which is, ex vi termini, the regulator of moral offices. 71. In an earlier part of this chapter* the case of the family has been alleged to be in the main analogous to that of the State. The application of the principle of collective religion is, in the smaller sphere, it has been admitted, more palpable and less disputed.† But of the reality of the analogy between the two we may be persuaded, among other means, by this re * Sup. § 48-51. + Ed. Rev., April, 1839, p. 249. markable circumstance: that the school of reasoners, which alone in this country has employed the methods of logic in its attacks upon the principle of national religion, and which, therefore, holds out to us the best promise of a certain self-consistency, has likewise proceeded to assail the principle of family religion, and to contend that it is a capital offence against the laws of truth to communicate any bias to the minds of the young, or to inculcate belief antecedently to comprehension. In this very sense, Mr. James Mill has written his essay on 'The Principles of Toleration.'* 72. This idea of conscience in the State is supported, as I contend, by the impartial and weighty testimony of human language, which continually applies the phraseology of duty to its acts, and predicates of them all the moral qualities and their opposites. And I think every man must feel that injustice embodied in law, that bad faith in the inobservance of national engagements, imply something quite beyond the guilt of the individuals who may have been the instruments of the offence, although undoubtedly including it. Further, is it not true that the inward experience of conscientious men, who have been engaged in the discharge of public functions, would yield us a similar witness? Such a man will surely feel, in entering even on the routine of his duties, that he has come under a new set of conditions of action, involving elements quite distinct from those merely personal; that he is impelled to * Westminster Review, July, 1826. Reprinted in a separate form, London, 1837. |