Thus

"Religion as such is Reason in the soul and heart. Freedom in the State is preserved and established by religion. The Church was (in the middle ages) no longer a spiritual power, but an Ecclesiastical one. The third kind of contradiction is the Church itself in its acquisition as an outward existence, of possessions and enormous property-a state of things which, since that Church despises or professes to despise riches, is none other than a Lie. The corrup

tion of the Church was not an accidental phenomenon. The element in question, which is innate in the Ecclesiastical principle, only reveals itself as a corrupting one when the Church has no longer any opposition to contend with,—when it has become firmly established. It is that externality in the Church itself which becomes evil and corruption."-Hegel's "Philosophy of History."

"It is an unquestionable and most instructive fact that the years during which the political power of the Anglican hierarchy was in the zenith, were precisely the years during which national virtue was at the lowest point."-Macaulay's England, vol. i., p. 181.

"Shall I believe that Christianity deprived of State support must fall, when I see it without State support not only standing, but advancing with the settler into the remotest West? Will the Laity of Europe long remain under their illusion in the face of this great fact?"—Goldwin Smith.

"The whole freedom of man consists either in spiritual or civil liberty. As for spiritual, who can be at rest, who can enjoy anything in this world with contentment, who hath not liberty to serve God, and to save his own soul, according to the best light which God hath planted in him to that purpose, by the reading of his revealed will, and the guidance of His Holy Spirit?"-Milton.

All goes to this, that material, political, and religious freedom are the complement of Democracy, or national self-Government, but that every nation that aspires to self-Government must get also the four-fold foundation of School, Press, Church, and Assembly, and cement and perpetuate that grand victory over ignorance and despotism by the bond and guarantee of equality.

DEMOCRACY AND CENTRALISATION;

OR,

THE OLD POWER AND THE MODERN

ORGANISATION.

"I contend, that in order to combat the evils which equality may produce, there is only one effectual remedy-namely, polical freedom.

"Instruct, at all hazards, for the age of implicit selfsacrifice and instinctive virtues is already flying far away from us, and the time is fast approaching when freedom, public peace, and social order itself will not be able to exist without instruction.”—De Tocqueville.

"The Lower House of Parliament, is not, in proper language, an estate of the realm, but rather the image, and representative of the Commons of England; who, being the third estate, with the nobility and clergy, make up and constitute the people of this kingdom and liege subjects of the crown." -Hallam's Middle Ages, v. iii, p. 105.

"Without a ministry, the working of a Parliamentary Government such as ours must always be unsteady and unsafe. It is essential to our liberties that the House of Commons should exercise a control over all the departments of the executive administration. The ministry is a committee of leading members of the houses, and is almost as essential a part of our polity as the Parliament itself. It consists exclusively of Statesmen whose opinions on the pressing questions of the time agree in the main with the opinions of the majority of the House of Commons."-Macaulay, 434-5, v. iv.

"In all communities, some one principle of action may be discovered which preponderates over the others."-De Tocqueville.

"The simultaneous accordant action of the executive and legislature is essential to a perfect Government."— Walter Bagehot.

"With the rise of new functions and the increase of complexity, unity obtains its completest form and fullest expression. This is a great law of universal progress. By virtue of it, a nation is a living organism."

"Entails are founded upon the most absurd of all suppositions, that every successive generation have not an equal right to the earth and all that it possesses."--Adam Smith.

"Laws frequently continue in force long after the circumstances which first gave occasion to them, and which could alone render them reasonable, are no more. The right of primogeniture, however, as it is the fittest to support family distinctions, is still likely to endure. In every other respect, nothing can be more contrary to the real interest of a numerous family."—Adam Smith, "Wealth of Nations,” v. i, p. 84.

"An equal division of lands cannot be established in all Democracies. We are not always obliged to proceed to extremes. If it appears that this division, designed to preserve the People's morals, does not suit with the Democracy, recourse must be had to other methods."-Montesquieu.

"In Aristocratical Governments there are two principle sources of disorder: EXCESSIVE INEQUALITY between the governors and the governed, and between the governors.

"This inequality occurs, likewise, when the condition of the citizens differs as to taxes: which may happen four different ways; when the nobles assume the privilege of paying none; when they commit frauds to exempt themselves; when they engross the public money under pretence of rewards or appointments for their respective employments; in fine, when they render the common people tributary, and divide among their own body the profits arising from the several subsidies. This last case is very rare: an aristocracy so instituted would be the most intolerable of all governments.

"The laws ought to abolish the right of primogeniture among the nobles, to the end that by a continual division of the inheritances, their fortunes may be always upon a level.

"When the laws have compassed the equality of families, the next thing is, &c. In fine, the laws must not favor the distinctions raised by vanity among families, under pretence that they are more noble or ancient than others. Pretences of this nature ought to be ranked among private weaknesses.

"Aristocracy is corrupted if the power of the nobles becomes arbitrary. The extremity of corruption is when the power of the nobles becomes hereditary, for then they can hardly have any moderation."-Montesquieu, v. i, pp. 65-68-147.

"Such powers as are established by commerce, may subsist for a long series of years in their humble condition, but their grandeur is of short duration."—Ibid, pp. 24, v. iii.

385

CHAPTER VI.

DEMOCRACY AND CENTRALISATION;

OR,

THE OLD POWER AND THE MODERN ORGANISATION.

"After providing in the most liberal manner for education, free countries have but one thing more to do for the accomplishment of the rest,-to secure intellectual freedom."-Draper, "Intellectual Development of Europe."

"As in a country of liberty every man who is supposed a free agent ought to be his own governor, the legislative power should reside in the whole body of the People. But since this is impossible in large States, it is fit the People should transact by their representatives what they cannot transact by themselves."-Montesquieu.

"It no longer appears to me to be the end and purpose of the present world to produce that state of universal peace among men, and of unlimited dominion over the mechanism of nature, merely for its own sake,—but that it should be produced by man himself; and since it is expected from all, that it should be produced by all, as one great, free, moral community.". Fichte.

"If any of the provinces of the British Empire cannot be made to contribute towards the support of the whole empire, it is surely time that Great Britain should free herself from the expense of defending those provinces in time of war, and of supporting any part of their civil or military establishments in time of peace, and endeavour to accommodate her future views and designs to the real mediocrity of her circumstances." -Adam Smith, v. iii, p. 465.

"The land of France belongs to fifteen or twenty millions of peasants, who cultivate it: the land of England belongs to an aristocracy of thirty-two thousand persons, who have it cultivated. This is one of the spiritual characters of our revolution. Man outweighed the land. In England, the land has outweighed man."-Michelet.

When the national intellect becomes sufficiently developed and organised, not only will it have

superseded the reign of force and of chattel property, it will also undertake that opinions shall not be judged by interests, but rather interests by opinion.

Force could not then organise, for elements of organisation would remain above it and beyond it. Property could not organise, for it would be but the medium of preparation and enfranchisement of its master-manhood. That only can completely organise which develops by governing, and governs by developing. In which the units are not sacrificed to unity, nor unity to the units, but in which the State and the Individual are equally and completely considered.

The harmony of organisation with power is the test of conservative adjustment. The adjustment of power with preparation and right is the crucial question with Democracies.

Centralisation and Democracy both, are of the body, mind, and character,-by force, opinion, or conscience.

That only can be and remain universal, which is complete as to numbers and character,-as to quantity and quality. That alone which is thorough as to the whole man, can be catholic as to a whole People.

Democracy is founded, as we have seen, on material, political, and religious freedom. There can be no complete centralisation until this Democracy is universal in a nation, and "the whole of the all" is (approximately) organised.

Thus an intenser individuality than of old, can