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masses;—in which society will find Institutions compatible with its development and its stability, its Progress and its Order.

Institutions will come! Oh! did not the French Revolution in its ghastly instruction teach us forcibly enough the folly of expecting such miracles? did it not show the futility of "paper-constitutions in contest with social disruption-of experiments government, when each theorist had his plan, and the Nation to be ruled had no accepted creed?

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It is well to look forward with confidence to what the Future may produce; but it is not well to look into the nebulous futurity, and mistake the shadows of our ardent aspirations for the substantial forms of Institutions which await us; it is fatal to mistake a hope for a fact-an instinct for a doctrine. Yet this is the mistake of Radicalism. It hopes in the Future, and trusts that the present system once abolished, the true system will naturally evolve itself from the change. This is to call down Anarchy in the belief that Order must spontaneously shape itself out of Chaos!

The Coming Reformation is not, let us fervently hope, so wild a scheme as that. It will grow out of the definite convictions of thinking men. It will respond to that greatest of all social wants -the want of unanimity. It will assign to each individual his true function, and admit of every faculty having free activity in as far as it is consistent with the well-being of society. It will secure Liberty of Conscience, and suppress that pernicious Liberty of Private Judgment which now disturbs all attempts at social organisation.

I anticipate the expression of your astonishment at hearing me thus denounce the sacred right of private judgment; but be patient with me for awhile; I am not uttering paradoxes, I am only drawing your attention to a great, though little recognised, truth.

The right of every individual to think for himself, and to express or in any way maintain and propagate his opinions, is to be considered in two lights: Firstly, as the only fitting preparation for a new doctrine; Secondly, as simply destructive of an old doctrine.

It is preparatory when, the laws of the phenomena being still unascertained, men are seeking, and have the liberty of seeking, where they please and how they please; every opinion is then welcome, every guess may be of service. But man is not doomed

to this initiative stage of mere doubt and hesitation. The true principles which he is seeking, when found, will command implicit obedience. As Auguste Comte acutely observed, "There is no liberty of thought in astronomy, in physics, in chemistry, even in physiology; the man would be considered absurd who did not believe upon trust the principles established by competent men in these sciences. If it be otherwise in politics, it is because the old principles are discredited, and the new principles are not yet established; consequently there are, properly speaking, no principles at all.”*

It once occurred to me that Comte's observation was not so strictly true as I had formerly fancied; and as the same objection may present itself to you, I will here examine it. This it is: Men believe upon trust what Astronomers and Chemists say, because they know themselves to be incompetent to form an opinion on Astronomy and Chemistry, and must therefore, if they would have any opinion at all, accept that in vogue; because, moreover, the influence of these sciences upon society and the individual, although potent, is nevertheless indirect and inappreciable. This latter reason seems conclusive. Whether the Earth turn round the Sun, or the contrary, is a matter of exquisite indifference to Jones: ginger will not cease to be "hot i' the mouth," whichever hypothesis be adopted. But Jones, in Astronomy so acquiescent, is less easy to be persuaded in morals or politics: they touch him nearly, and truth becomes identified with his immediate interest. Jealous of all spiritual tyranny, Jones acquiesces in science; but stands up for the liberty of opinion in Religion and Politics. On these latter subjects he, in his naïve stupidity, fancies he can form an opinion, and insists on having it!

Examined closely, this objection will not stand. In the first place, whoever knows anything of social science knows, that, so far from its being within the reach of ordinary men-so far from the Joneses and Browns being competent to form any opinion at all upon it, that is not flagrantly false and absurd, it is of all sciences the most complex, the most intricate, and the most difficult. Ordinary men endowed with reasonable industry may, and do, attain to a considerable knowledge of physical science; if not discoverers, they are at least upholders of what has been discovered; if they have not the adventurous skill of the merchant, ransacking

* Cours de Philosophie Positive, IV., p. 49.

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the globe for fresh merchandise, they have solid and capacious warehouses wherein the merchandise is stored. But the same man who makes a conspicuous figure in the Academy of the Sciences would be a child in politics. The abstruseness and complexity of social science is hidden from us in two ways: First, By the absence of any laboratory and technical terminology, which, in the sciences, effectually shut out the ignorant from even the pretension of judging Secondly, By our long enjoyment of the right of discussing public topics; which has induced a rapidity of judgment, anticipative of all evidence, and a foolish confidence in our own sagacity. Were it not for this, men would humbly confess that social science was to be approached with a due sense of its intricacy, and of the necessity for proper preparatory studies: they would confess that liberty of private judgment would be more out of place in politics than in any other science.

But let me call your attention to this fact: Religion and Politics, which so nearly concern every man, have only in modern times submitted to this right of private judgment. It was the Reformation which-for destructive purposes-introduced this liberty into Religion. Before that event, the mass of men believed upon trust. The Priests were the only teachers. The Scriptures were not translated. People were forced to believe, in the absence of all evidence; and no one murmured thereat. So also in Politics the discussion of principles of government is treason even now in Austria and Russia; and the period is not very remote, when any one in England who should have questioned the Divine Right of Kings to do wrong, would have been executed as a factious rebel.

You see therefore that Comte's observation is profoundly true, and you must admit that I uttered no paradox when I rejoiced in the prospect of liberty of private judgment becoming absurd. evidently impossible is it for any doctrine which is constructive, and not simply destructive, to tolerate liberty of opinion, that the very Reformation which introduced the principle, turned round upon it, directly the principle was applied to Lutheranism. Luther and his followers used liberty as a destructive instrument; having gained the day, they sternly refused to permit that liberty any more. Calvin burned his friend for indulging in that liberty; and Protestant sovereigns, shocked at the intolerance of Catholicism, roasted their Catholic subjects for the triumph of liberty of opinion.

The infallibility of the Pope was a monstrous sophism, and men with free souls, loving freedom of opinion, revolted against that sophism. What has been the consequence? Protestantism with its liberty is split into innumerable sects, and the irritable infallibility of each sect is substituted for the infallibility of the Pope.

In Politics the same spectacle presents itself. The French Revolution—that text for all political discussion-owed its triumph to the principle of liberty of opinion. Having destroyed the ancien régime, and having taken in its own hands the reins of government, it found itself forced to interdict, with sanguinary energy, that very principle of liberty which it had espoused. Men were free to discuss the acts of the monarchy; because discussion was the privilege of freemen. But if they were also free to discuss the acts of the republic, the republic was free to send them to the scaffold.

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Look where you will, you see the same thing. The cause is deep-rooted. Until the laws which regulate society are discovered and appreciated—until social science has gained somewhat of the stability and precision of the other sciences, it is hopeless to expect perfect tolerance, and then tolerance will be indifference. once that desired event takes place when politics shall be a science-men may indeed indulge in the absurdity of private judgment, just as there may still be found an eccentric speculator who refuses to accept the law of gravitation; but in each case the result will be contempt. Thus the Reformation introduced the principle of liberty of opinion. The destructive mission once fulfilled, the New Reformation will come, and, without interfering with the liberty of discussion, will restrain it within healthy limits. It will substitute one tyranny for another, I admit; but instead of the tyranny of caprice, it will be the tyranny of Truth.

You will not so far misunderstand the foregoing, as to suppose I wish to repress discussion by any external means. That would be tyranny. But, convinced as I am of the necessity for unanimity on all the great fundamental points-and this would still leave a large margin for differences of opinion with respect to details—I see in the principle of private judgment, so loudly extolled, a potent source of anarchy, and I wish therefore to see it discredited, but discredited solely by the excellence and truth of the dominant opinions. I wish also that men should learn to take upon trust that which they have no capacity for understanding.

To return to the Radical party. I cannot join it because it has

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no definite social theory. It is all very well talking about Democracy and Republics; but before I give my consent to Republicanism, I wish definitely to understand what sort of a Republic is proposed. Are we to imitate those of Greece and Rome? notion is childish. Are we to imitate those of America and Switzerland? I can see no earthly advantage in such a project; but manifold disadvantages.

The sovereignty of the People is a good subject for declamation, but it is a contradiction in terms. Either there must be a social hierarchy of some kind, or there must be absolute equality. If we are to have an hierarchy, of what kind is it to be? Radicalism is silent. Absolute equality !—it is a wild chimera. There cannot be equality of physical and mental powers, for these are the capricious gifts of Nature; and the progress of civilisation, in spite of its cultivation of the masses, tends more and more to develop intellectual disparities, by the increase of stimulus. There cannot be equality of property, for property depends on skill, forethought, and perseverance, in which men are unequal. There cannot be equality in social rank, because no government can go on without a proper hierarchy and subordination. The People, if they govern themselves, must govern by a Senate or Chosen Bodyand this chosen body will be superior in power at least to the rest, so that it will produce inequality.

If the French Revolution had not shown it us, it would still have been easy to foresee the consequences resulting from any attempt at realising the doctrine of equality: a savage levelling of all merit down to the vilest standard. But in truth, equality is so chimerical, that it never has been, and never can be introduced into society.

Let me then assume it as an admitted principle, that every society must have an hierarchy of some kind. I then ask you what kind is that schemed out for a Republic by sanguine Radicals? They have no theory of society beyond this very simple one, "That society requires reorganisation. Get rid of the present decrepit system, and the right one will be sure to evolve itself." In other words, their doctrine is purely destructive. A striking example of the truth of this may be seen in the want of any rational hierarchy to substitute in the place of the present. Radicals are powerful when directing their attacks against the notion of hereditary legislators. They have no great difficulty in exposing the absurdity of a man becoming a legislator because his father was a

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