of

the undue growth of power. If they are not always able to hinder it, man has no better preventive. When in the seventeenth century, the Danes threw themselves into the power the king, making him absolute, in order to protect themselves against baronial oppression, they necessarily created a power which in turn became oppressive. The English, on the contrary, broke the power of their barons, not by raising the king, but by increasing self-government.

We find, among the characteristic distinctions between. modern history and ancient,' the longevity of modern states, contemporaneous progress of wealth or culture and civil liberty, and the national state as contradistinguished from the ancient city-state, the only state of antiquity in which liberty existed. These are not merely facts which happen to present themselves to the historian, but they are conditions upon

1 These differences between antiquity and modern times, all of which are more or less connected with christianity and the institution, are:

1. That in antiquity only one nation flourished at a time. The course of history, therefore, flows in a narrow channel, and the historian can easily arrange universal ancient history. In modern periods, many nations flourish at the same time, and their history resembles the broad Atlantic, on which they all freely meet.

2. Ancient states are short-lived; modern states have a far greater tenacity of life.

3. Ancient states, when once declining, were irretrievably lost. Their history is that of a rising curve, with its maximum and declension, Modern states have frequently shown a recuperative power. Compare present England with that of Charles II., France as it is with the times of Louis XV.

4. Ancient liberty and wealth were incompatible, at least for any length of time; modern nations may grow freer while they are growing wealthy.

5. Ancient liberty dwelt in city-states only; modern liberty requires enlarged societies-nations.

6. Ancient liberty demanded disregard of individual liberty; modern liberty is founded upon it.

7. The ancients had no international law. (Nor have the Asiatics now. The incipiency of international law is, indeed, visible with all tribes, for they are men. The Romans sent heralds to declare war, and the Greek, advised to poison his arrows, declines doing so, "for," Homer makes him say, "I fear the gods will punish me.")

which it is the modern problem to develop liberty, because they are requisites for modern civilization, and civilization is the comprehensive aim of all humanity.

We must have national states (and not city-states;) we must have national broadcast liberty (and not narrow chartered liberty;) we must have increasing wealth, for civilization is expensive; we must have liberty, and our states must endure long, to perform their great duties. All this can be effected by institutional liberty alone. It is neither affirmed that longevity alone is the object, nor that it can be obtained by institutions alone. Russia, peculiarly uninstitutional, because it unites Asiatic despotism with European bureaucracy, has lasted through long periods, even though we may consider the late celebration of its millennial existence as a great official license. All we maintain here is, that longevity, together with progressive liberty, is obtainable only by institutional liberty. England, now really a thousand years old, presents the great spectacle of an old nation advancing steadily in wealth and liberty. She is far richer than she was a century ago, and her government is of a far more popular cast. In ancient times, it was adopted as an axiom that liberty and wealth are incompatible. Modern writers, down to a very recent period, have followed the ancients. Declaimers frequently do so to this day; but they show that they do not comprehend modern liberty and civilization. Modern in-door civilization, with all her schools and charities and comforts of the masses, is incalculably dearer than ancient out-door civilization. Modern civilization requires immense production; it is highly expensive. Yet our liberty needs civilization as a basis and a prop; our progressive liberty requires progressive civilization, consequently progressive wealth-not, indeed, enormous riches in the hands of a few. Antiquity knew, and Asia possesses to this day hoarded treasures in greater number than modern Europe has ever known them. We stand in need of immea

1 Indeed, the enormous treasures occasionally met with in Asia are indications of her comparative poverty.

surable wealth, but it is diffused, widely spread and widely enjoyed wealth, necessary for widely diffused and widely enjoyed culture.

To last long-to last with liberty and wealth, is the great problem to be solved by a modern state. Our destinies differ from that of brief and brilliant Greece. Let us derive all the benefit from Grecian culture and civilization-from that chosen nation, whose intellectuality and æsthetics, with christian morality, Roman legality and Teutonic individuality and independence, form the main elements of the great phenomenon we designate by the term modern civilization, without adopting her evils and errors, even as we adopt her sculpture without that religion whose very errors contributed to produce it.

24

CHAPTER XXXI.

INSECURITY OF UNINSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENTS.

IZED INARTICULATED POPULAR POWER.

UNORGAN

THE insecurity of concentrated governments has been discussed in a previous part of this work. The same insecurity exists in all governments that are not of a strongly institutional character. Eastern despotism is exposed to the danger of seraglio conspiracies, as much so as the centralized governments of the European continent showed their insecurity in the year 1848. They tottered and many broke to pieces, although there was, with very few exceptions, no ardent struggle, and nothing that approached to a civil war. To an observer at a distance,

it almost appeared as if those governments could be shaken by the loud huzzaing of a crowd. They have, indeed, recovered; but this may be for a time only; nor will it be denied that the lesson, even as it stands, is a pregnant one.

During all that time of angry turmoil, England and the United States stood firm. The government of the latter country was exposed to rude shocks indeed, at the same period; but her institutional character protected her. England has had her revolution; every monarchy probably must pass through such a period of violent change ere civil liberty can be largely established and consciously enjoyed by the people-ere government and people fairly understand one another on the common ground of liberty and self-government. But no fact seems to be so striking in the revolution of England as this, that all her institutions of an organic character, her jury, her common law, her representative legislature, her local self-government, her justice of the peace, her sheriff, her coroner-all survived domestic war and depotism, and, having done so, served as

the basis of an enlarged liberty. The reason of this broad fact cannot be that the English revolution did not occur at a time of bold philosophical speculation which characterized the age of the French revolution. The English religionists of the seventeenth century were as bold, speculative reasoners as the French philosophers, and England's religious fanatics were quite as fierce enemies of private property and society as the French political fanatics were. It was, in my opinion, pre-eminently her institutional character in general, or the whole system of institutions and the degree of self-government contained in each, that saved each single institution, and enabled England to weather the storm when she was exposed to the additional great danger of a worthless general government after the restoration. There is a tenacity of life and a reproductive principle of vitality exhibited in the whole seventeenth century of British history, that cannot be too attentively examined by the candid statesmen of our family of nations.

It may be objected to my remarks that Russia, too, has remained untouched by the attempted revolutions of the year 1848, although her government is a very centralized one. Russia has in some respects much of an Asiatic character, and the succession of her monarchs is marked by an almost equal number of palace conspiracies and imperial murders or imprisonments. The people, on the other hand, have not yet been affected by the political movements of our race. There is in politics, as in all spheres of humanity, such a thing as being below and being above an evil. Many persons that are free from skepticism are not above it, but the dangerous questions have never yet presented themselves; and many nations remain quiet, while others are torn by civil wars, not because they have reached a settled state above revolution, but because they have not yet arrived at the period of contending elements. Russia may be said, in one respect at least, to furnish us

1 A London journal said some years ago, with great bitterness, yet with truth: A Russian czar is a highly assassinative substance.