Progress and success do not always go together hand in hand; and while motion is essential to life, it is not always safe to urge a country forward at too great a speed; and security and stability are quite as important to the nation’s life as actual progress.
There are other impulsive forces which [100] act occasionally in the sphere of politics, and which baffle all our calculations, and exclude scientific considerations of the polemical problems which arise. Ambition is such an impulsive force, and when the rulers of the people are actuated by it, and struggle for money, place, and power, politics is degraded from its position as a science, and it becomes impossible to estimate the result of forces so generated.
In my next lecture I propose to treat the important subject of the Laws which govern States and Governments, and which regulate, generate, and control the social forces which we have seen at work in the body politic.
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PAPER VII.
LAWS OF POLITICAL MOTION.
Since the last time I had the honour of addressing you on polemical matters, I have met with a passage in the writings of M. Auguste Comte which afforded me much pleasure. It seemed to be the one word for which I had been waiting, and confirmed many of my own impressions and speculations. He lays down two propositions: first, that the constructive politics of the future must be based on the history of the past; and second, that political science is a composite study, and presupposes the complete apprehension of every branch of science, beginning with the physical, such as astronomy, and ending with the moral, such as ethics and sociology. M. Comte evidently does not regard as a vain dream and imaginative [102] speculation the theory that it will be possible for statesmen to calculate a policy, and to determine a course of action by purely scientific considerations. May I entertain the hope that in this university, where all branches of physical science have found a home, and are studied by most able and learned professors, the science of politics may be pursued under most favourable circumstances? I trust that each professor will bring before me the results of their deliberations, and contribute to the growth of this particular science for which our university has already become deservedly famous.
My present lecture is devoted to the important consideration of Law. At first sight it may appear to you that the wills and passions of mankind are so diverse and unknowable, that it would be absurd to suppose that they can be calculated, or rendered amenable to any law. But Professor Amos has pointed out that in proportion as we examine history, and compare the actions present and past of different [103] nations and states, the more uniform does human nature appear; the more calculable the actions, sentiments, and emotions of large masses of people. As we have already stated, the difficulties of the study are not likely to deter the professors of Girtham College from the pursuit of any particular branch of science.
A priori we might suppose from analogy that these polemical laws existed, as there is no department of nature which is not governed by law. It is an essential feature in nature, and also in government. What is political economy but the study of certain laws of nature? These were first discovered by Adam Smith, and have since been traced and estimated by such men as Ricardo, the two Mills, Professor Cairnes, Jevons, and many others. Moreover, our physical constitutions are governed by laws, which physicians have determined, and which it is perilous to resist. Our moral constitution is also governed by laws, which evidently exist, although it is difficult to find them out. But the nation is only an assemblage of [104] individuals; and since individuals are so governed, it is only natural to suppose that the nation, composed of individuals, is so constituted and controlled. And not only is that true, but we shall see that polemical laws are as permanent and universal, as invariable and irreversible, as the laws of nature which regulate the courses of the heavenly bodies, and raise the tides, or depress the sandstone hills.
We may notice first the preponderant impulse observable in a nation’s life in favour of supporting existing facts and institutions; and every reformer has discovered the difficulty and danger of changing or opposing the customs and habits of the people. As a wheel will travel most smoothly along a well-worn groove, whereby friction is diminished, so there is a natural national tendency always to run along those paths with which the habits and customs of the people have made them familiar. This law is nothing else than Newton’s first law of motion, which is quite as applicable to human masses as to lifeless matter. The [105] tendency of matter to remain at rest, if unmoved by any external agency, and of persisting to move after it has once been set in motion, is a conservative tendency; and is as true in political science as in any other.
The special branch of our science, which we may call the Biology of Politics, shows how absolute is the domain of law in polemical matters. The law of human life is that men are born, grow, become strong and vigorous, and then decay and die. This is the law of life, to which we must all yield an enforced obedience. This same law is observed to be at work in the heavenly bodies; and astronomy shows us that planets are born, flourish, and at length die, just as our human bodies do. The moon is, as you may have observed, a dead planet, such as our earth may be some day. The same growth and decay are also manifest in national life. First, there is the birth of the nation, which sometimes lies a long time in a dormant state, and then wakes up to life and energy. China and Russia [106] are examples of dormant States, just waking from a long sleep of childishness and ignorance. The next stage is the strong an healthy period of its existence, which England is at present enjoying; and then, after various stages of gradual decline, we come to the senile period of national life, when every energy and faculty, every national feeling and power of invention, are completely exhausted. As an example of this depressing condition, we may mention Turkey and several of the effete States of South America. Sometimes, when life is nearly extinct in the human body, physicians have made use of the power of galvanism, in order to revive the dying energies. This process of galvanizing a State into life was tried by Lord Palmerston and others on the worn-out frame of Turkey. But such attempts can only meet with partial and transitory success; and where the loss of national power and faculty betokens the senile period of the nation’s existence, it is vain to attempt to restore its former life and energy. The study of the biology [107] of politics presents many interesting and important details in this special branch of knowledge; and I commend this part of our subject to the special attention of the professor of physiology. The law of development is observable in nations as in nature. Recent scientific discoveries have tended to take away all ideas of chance in the workings of nature, and have substituted law instead of it. It would be unscientific and incorrect to speak of the world being formed by the ‘fortuitous concourse of atoms.’ So we cannot speak of a State being generated in this manner. Laws—economical, geographical, natural—preside over the formation of States and nations, and produce their further development.