5.
Blackstone supplies us with an instance in another subject-matter, of a development which is justified by its utility, when he observes that "when society is once formed, government results of course, as necessary to preserve and to keep that society in order."[202:2]
On the contrary, when the Long Parliament proceeded to usurp the executive, they impaired the popular liberties which they seemed to be advancing; for the security of those liberties depends on the separation of the executive and legislative powers, or on the enactors being subjects, not executors of the laws.
And in the history of ancient Rome, from the time that the privileges gained by the tribunes in behalf of the people became an object of ambition to themselves, the development had changed into a corruption.
And thus a sixth test of a true development is that it is of a tendency conservative of what has gone before it.
SECTION VII.
SEVENTH NOTE. CHRONIC VIGOUR.
Since the corruption of an idea, as far as the appearance goes, is a sort of accident or affection of its development, being the end of a course, and a transition-state leading to a crisis, it is, as has been observed above, a brief and rapid process. While ideas live in men's minds, they are ever enlarging into fuller development: they will not be stationary in their corruption any more than before it; and dissolution is that further state to which corruption tends. Corruption cannot, therefore, be of long standing; and thus duration is another test of a faithful development.
Si gravis, brevis; si longus, levis; is the Stoical topic of consolation under pain; and of a number of disorders it can even be said, The worse, the shorter.