admirably sketched out by Hooker. Following Aristotle, he remarks the fallacies which occur from disregarding the nature of the stuff which the politician has to work upon. 'These varieties [the phases of human will and sentiment] are not known but by much experience, from whence to draw the true bounds of all principles, to discern how far forth they take effect, to see where and why they fail, to apprehend by what degrees and means they lead to the practice of things in shew, though not indeed repugnant and contrary one to another, requireth more sharpness of wit, more intricate circuitions of discourse, more industry and depth of judgment than common opinion doth yield. So that general rules, till their limits be fully known (especially in matter of public and ecclesiastical affairs), are by reason of the manifold secret exceptions which lie hidden in them, no other, to the eye of man's understanding, than cloudy mists cast before the eye of common sense. They that walk in darkness, know not whither they go.'-Book v. ch. 9. Such conceptions are naturally generated in a comprehensive mind, as soon as the world is stirred by the impulse to shake off old evils. Wisdom consists in no inconsiderable degree, says Burke, in knowing what amount of evil is to be tolerated. 'Il ne faut pas tout corriger,' says Montesquieu. 'Both in civil and in ecclesiastical polity,' says Hooker, 'there are, and will be always, evils which no art of man can cure, breaches and leaks more than man's art hath hands to stop.' This may be: but it is certain that breaches and leaks which one age has regarded as incurable have been stopped in another. The science of politics, unlike most other sciences, is too often regarded as having reached its final stage: many a specious conclusion is vitiated by this assumption. The defect of such aphorisms as that of Montesquieu obviously lies in their extreme liability to abuse: and Burke cannot be absolved from the charge of abusing the principle which the aphorism embodies. But it cannot be denied that Hooker and many another Englishman whose authority English people held in high respect, had done the same thing before him. The following passage of Hooker strikingly reminds the reader of a mode of argument frequently employed by Burke : 'For first, the ground whereupon they build, is not certainly their own, but with special limitations. Few things are so restrained to any one end or purpose, that the same being extinct they should forthwith utterly become frustrate. Wisdom may have framed one and the same thing to serve commodiously for divers ends, and of those ends any one be sufficient cause for continuance, though the rest have ceased, even as the tongue, which nature hath given us for an instrument of speech, is not idle in dumb persons, because it also serveth for taste. Again, if time have worn out, or any other mean altogether taken away, what was first intended, uses not thought upon before may afterwards spring up, and be reasonable causes of retaining that which other considerations did formerly procure to be instituted. And it cometh sometime to pass, that a thing unnecessary in itself as touching the whole direct purpose whereto it was meant or can be applied, doth notwithstanding appear convenient to be still held even without use, lest by reason of that coherence which it hath with somewhat more necessary, the removal of the one should indamage the other; and therefore men which have clean lost the possibility of sight, keep still their eyes nevertheless in the place where nature set them.'-Book v. ch. 42. The ground of this philosophical or rational conservatism mainly consists in seeking to contemplate things with reference to their dependency on an entire system, and to have regard to the coherence and significance of the system. It is liable to abuse and many may think that the whole conception belongs to the domain of poetry rather than to that of philosophy. The poetry of the time, indeed, reflects it in more than one place. The idea is clearly traceable in Spenser's Cantos of Mutability, the 'hardy Titaness,' who, seduced by 'some vain error,' dared To see that mortal eyes have never seen.' The poet foreshadows a calamitous break-up of the established order of things, a mischievous contortion of the 'world's fair frame, which none yet durst of gods or men to alter or misguide,' and a reversal of the laws of nature, justice, and policy. It reminds us something of the bodings of the Greek chorus, when they sing that the founts of the sacred rivers are turned backward, and that justice and the universe are suffering a revolution. Such notions are unquestionably more than the over-wrought dreams of poets. They have their key in the defective moral tone of their age: but it by no means follows that the moral defect which this in plies covers the whole ground to which they extend. Slumber seems natural to certain stages of human history: and a slumbering nation always resents the first signs of its awakenment. We may trace a similar vein of feeling, stimulated by the same revolutionary agencies, though in a later stage, in the poems of the philosophical and 'well-languaged' Daniel. The faculty of looking on an institution on many sides enabled Daniel to point out 'How pow'rs are thought to wrong, that wrongs debar.' Daniel had trained himself in an instructive school, in the preparation and composition of his History of the Civil Wars. Like Burke, he was of opinion that political wisdom was not to be obtained à priori. The statesman must study sun. The sure records of books, in which we find By all our ancestors, and in what kind We hold the same, and likewise how in th' end Shall to our late posterity descend By the same patent of like destiny. In them we find that nothing can accrue To man, and his condition, that is new 1 It is an apt illustration of Burke's vehement contention that Englishmen will never consent to abandon the sense of national continuity. The English nation is emphatically an old nation: it proceeds on the assumption that there is nothing new under the It is always disposed to criticise severely any one who labours, as Warburton says, under that epidemic distemper of idle men, the idea of instructing and informing the world. The heart of men, and the greater heart of associated bodies of men, has been radically the same in all ages. In the laws of life we cannot hope for much additional illumination: new lights in general turn out to be old illusions. There is no unexplored terra australis, whether of morality or political science. The great principles of government and the ideas of liberty 'were understood long before we were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grave has heaped its mould upon our presumption, and the silent tomb shall have imposed its law upon our pert loquacity 2 In a literary and scientific age, it is impossible that 1 Dedication of Philotas. 2 Page 101. this dogmatism can pass unchallenged: but Burke is right in asserting an antagonism between the beliefs of the best minds of England, as represented in a great historic literary past, and those of the existing literary generation in France. Englishmen have in all times affected a taste for public matters and for scholarship: and this affectation is not ill exemplified in one who was a man of letters, with the superadded qualities of the philosopher and the politician. Curious illustrations of a normal antagonism between these elements may be derived from Daniel's Dialogue entitled 'Musophilus.' Musophilus is the man of letters, Philocosmus the man of the world. Philocosmus taunts Musophilus with his empty and purposeless pursuits, to which Musophilus replies by a spirited defence of learning. Philocosmus changes his ground, and lays to the charge of the professors of learning, who overswarm and infest the English world, a general spirit of discontent, amounting to sedition. Do you not see these pamphlets, libels, rhimes, Your virtues, by your follies made your crimes, Burke insists on identifying the 'literary cabal' as the chief element in the ferment of Revolution: 'Men of letters, fond of distinguishing themselves, are rarely averse to innovation' (p. 130). See how a retired observer in the time of the first Stuart anticipates the effects of the same misplaced activity. 'For when the greater wits cannot attain Th' expected good which they account their right, They present, with the sharp of envy, strain Hence discontented sects and schisms arise; Action, Philocosmus goes on to say, differs materially from what is read of in books: The world's affairs require in managing More arts than those wherein you clerks proceed.' Men of letters, in the indulgence of the tastes which their pursuits have fostered, lose those faculties which are necessary to the conduct of affairs. The skill wherewith you have so cunning been Unsinews all your powers, unmans you quite. Require another grace, another port.' Beware of the philosopher who pretends to statesmanship. The Scholar replies, that the Statesman, with all his boasted skill, cannot anticipate the perils of the time, or see how soon this rolling world can take Advantage for her dissolution, Fain to get loose from this withholding stake Of civil science and discretion; How glad it would run wild, that it might make The mysteries of State, the 'Norman subtleties,' says the Scholar, are now vulgarised and common. Giddy innovations would overthrow the whole fabric of society. But what is the remedy? To 'pull back the onrunning state of things'? This might end in bringing men more astray, and destroy the faith in the unity and continuity of civil life, which is 'that close-kept palladium Which once remov'd, brings ruin evermore.' Investigation would discover much the same vein of thought in many of Daniel's contemporaries. Compare, for instance, Fletcher's portraiture of Dichostasis, or Sedition, 'That wont but in the factious court to dwell, But now to shepherd swains close linked is. A subtle craftsman fram'd him seemly arms, Forg'd in the shop of wrangling sophistry; The Purple Island, Canto vii. |