And so to take a case of national politics, a late writer remarks of the Parliament of 1628-29, in its contest with Charles, that, so far from encroaching on the just powers of a limited monarch, it never hinted at the securities which were necessary for its measures. However, "twelve years more of repeated aggressions," he adds, "taught the Long Parliament what a few sagacious men might perhaps have already suspected; that they must recover more of their ancient constitution, from oblivion; that they must sustain its partial weakness by new securities; that, in order to render the existence of monarchy compatible with that of freedom, they must not only strip it of all it had usurped, but of something that was its own."[43:1] Whatever be the worth of this author's theory, his facts or representations are an illustration of a political development.
Again, at the present day, that Ireland should have a population of one creed, and a Church of another, is felt to be a political arrangement so unsatisfactory, that all parties seem to agree that either the population will develope in power or the Establishment in influence.
Political developments, though really the growth of ideas, are often capricious and irregular from the nature of their subject-matter. They are influenced by the character of sovereigns, the rise and fall of statesmen, the fate of battles, and the numberless vicissitudes of the world. "Perhaps the Greeks would be still involved in the heresy of the Monophysites," says Gibbon, "if the Emperor's horse had not fortunately stumbled. Theodosius expired, his orthodox sister succeeded to the throne."[44:1]
3.
Again, it often happens, or generally, that various distinct and incompatible elements are found in the origin or infancy of politics, or indeed of philosophies, some of which must be ejected before any satisfactory developments, if any, can take place. And they are commonly ejected by the gradual growth of the stronger. The reign of Charles the First, just referred to, supplies an instance in point.
Sometimes discordant ideas are for a time connected and concealed by a common profession or name. Such is the case of coalitions in politics and comprehensions in religion, of which commonly no good is to be expected. Such is an ordinary function of committees and boards, and the sole aim of conciliations and concessions, to make contraries look the same, and to secure an outward agreement where there is no other unity.
Again, developments, reactions, reforms, revolutions, and changes of various kinds are mixed together in the actual history of states, as of philosophical sects, so as to make it very difficult to exhibit them in any scientific analysis.
Often the intellectual process is detached from the practical, and posterior to it. Thus it was after Elizabeth had established the Reformation that Hooker laid down his theory of Church and State as one and the same, differing only in idea; and, after the Revolution and its political consequences, that Warburton wrote his "Alliance." And now again a new theory is needed for the constitutional lawyer, in order to reconcile the existing political state of things with the just claims of religion. And so, again, in Parliamentary conflicts, men first come to their conclusions by the external pressure of events or the force of principles, they do not know how; then they have to speak, and they look about for arguments: and a pamphlet is published on the subject in debate, or an article appears in a Review, to furnish common-places for the many.
Other developments, though political, are strictly subjected and consequent to the ideas of which they are the exhibitions. Thus Locke's philosophy was a real guide, not a mere defence of the Revolution era, operating forcibly upon Church and Government in and after his day. Such too were the theories which preceded the overthrow of the old regime in France and other countries at the end of the last century.
Again, perhaps there are polities founded on no ideas at all, but on mere custom, as among the Asiatics.