national liberty; and on the other hand, unanimity does not of itself insure protection or liberty. Tyranny or corruption has often been unanimous.

The only way of meeting the difficulty is to prevent the overbearing growth of any power. When grown, it is too late; and this cannot be done by putting class against class, or interest against interest. One of these must be stronger than the other, and become the absorbing one. Nor is the problem we have to solve discord. It is harmony, peace, united yet organic action. History or speculation points to no other solution of this high problem of man, than a well-grounded and ramified system of institutions, checking and modifying one another, strong and self-ruling, with a power limited by the very principle of self-government within each, yet all united and working toward one common end, thus producing a general government of a cooperative character, and serving in many cases in which interests would jar with interests without institutions, as friction-rollers do in machinery.

The institution is strong within its bounds, yet not feared, because necessarily bounded in its action. What can be more powerful than the King's Bench in England, in each case in which it acts within its own limits? Now older than five hundred years, it has repeatedly stood up against Parliament with success. Yet no one fears that its power will invade that of other institutions, nor did the people of the State of New York fear that the Court of Appeals would become an invasive power, when in its own legitimate and efficient way it lately declared the vast Canal Enlargement Law, passed by a great majority, unconstitutional, and consequently null and void.

Seeking for liberty merely or chiefly in a vetitive power of each class or circle, interest or corporation, upon the

rest, as has been often proposed, and every time after a revolution, in modern times,2 would simply amount to dismembering, instead of constructing. It would produce a multitudinous antagonism, instead of a vital organism, and it would be falling back into the medieval state of narrow chartered independencies. We cannot hope for liberty in a pervading negation, but must find it in comprehensive action. All that is good or great is creative and positive. Negation cannot stand for itself, or impart life. But that negation which is necessary to check and refrain is found in the self-government of many and vigorous institutions, as they also are the only efficient preventives of the undue growth of power. If they are not always able to prevent it, man has no better preventive. When, in the seventeenth century, the Danes threw themselves into the power of 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

2 Harris, in his Oceana, St. Just, in the First French Revolution, and many former and recent writers might be mentioned.

3 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 the time. The course of history, therefore, flows in a narrow channel, and the historian can easily arrange universal ancient history. In modern times, 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

Y

states, contemporaneous progress of wealth or culture and civil liberty, and the national state as contradistinguished to the ancient city-state, the only state of antiquity in which liberty appeared. These are not merely facts which happen to present themselves to the historian, but they are conditions upon 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 last long to perform their great duties. All this can be obtained by institutional liberty alone. It is neither maintained 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 long, even though we may consider its late celebration of its millennial existence as a great official licence. But what is maintained 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.

4. Ancient liberty and wealth were incompatible, at least for any length of time; modern nations grow freer and richer at the same time.

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.)

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 indoor civilization, with all her schools and charities and comforts of the masses, is incalculably dearer than ancient outdoor civilization. Modern civilization is very dear. Yet our liberty requires 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, such riches in greater number than modern Europe has ever known them. We stand in need of immeasurable wealth, but it is diffused, widely spread and widely enjoyed wealth, for we stand in need of widely spread and widely enjoyed culture.

To last, to last with liberty and wealth, is the great problem for a 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.

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

CHAPTER XXXI.

INSECURITY OF UNINSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENTS. UNORGANIZED, INARTICULATED POPULAR POWER.

THE insecurity of concentrated governments has been mentioned in a previous part of this work. The same may be said of all governments that are not of a strongly institutional character. Eastern despotism is constantly exposed to the danger of seraglio conspiracies, as the centralized governments of the European Continent showed their insecurity in the year 1848. They rocked 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