With regard to the importance of the Inquiry, there cannot be two opinions; but, concerning its utility and success, opinions may be divided.
One of the most profound and ingenious writers of a late period, has made the following interesting observation on the prosperity of nations. {1}
"In all speculations upon men and human affairs, it is of no small moment to distinguish things of accident from permanent causes, and from effects that cannot be altered. I am not quite of the mind of those speculators, who seem assured, that necessarily, and, by the constitution of things, all states have the same period of infancy, manhood, and decrepitude, that are found in the individuals who compose them. The objects which are
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{1} Mr Burke.
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attempted to be forced into an analogy are not founded in the same classes of existence. Individuals are physical beings, subject to laws universal and invariable; but commonwealths are not physical, but moral essences. They are artificial combinations, and, in their proximate efficient cause, the arbitrary productions of the human mind.
We are not yet acquainted with the laws which necessarily influence that kind of work, made by that kind of agent. There is not, in the physical order, a distinct cause by which any of those fabrics must necessarily grow, flourish, and decay; nor, indeed, in my opinion, does the moral world produce any thing more determinate on that subject than what may serve as an amusement (liberal indeed, and ingenious, but still only an amusement) for speculative men. I doubt whether the history of mankind is yet complete enough, if ever it can be so, to furnish grounds for a sure theory on the internal causes, which necessarily affect the fortune of a state. I am far from denying the operation of such causes, but they are infinitely uncertain, and much more obscure, and much more difficult to trace than the foreign causes that tend to depress, and, sometimes, overwhelm society."
The writer who has thus expressed his scepticism on this sort of inquiry, speaks, at the same time, of the im- [end of page #vi] portance of distinguishing between accidental and permanent causes. He doubts whether the history of mankind is complete enough, or, if ever it can be so, to furnish grounds for a sure theory, on the internal causes which necessarily affect the fortune of a state. Thus, he not only admits the existence of permanent causes, but says, clearly, that it is from history they are discoverable, if ever their discovery can be accomplished. This is going as far as we could wish, and, as for the sure theory, we join issue with him in despairing of ever obtaining one that will deserve the name of sure.