V. Lecture "of the army, the navy, and the law; the occupiers of great offices in the State; together with many private individuals, eminent by their knowledge, eloquence, or activity. Now, if the country be not safe in such hands, in whose may it confide its interests? If such a number of such men be liable "to the influence of corrupt motives, what assembly " of men will be secure from the same danger? Does any new scheme of representation promise to collect together more wisdom, or to produce firmer integrity? "In this view of the subject, and attending not to "ideas of order and proportion (of which many minds are much enamoured), but to effects alone, we may discover just excuses for those parts of the present representation, which appear to a hasty observer "most exceptional and absurd." 1 And Paley's view of the unreformed House of Commons is in substance his view of the whole British constitution, and was shared by most statesmen of his day. 2 Blackstone, Burke, and Paley were, it may be thought, political philosophers who represent the speculative views of their time. Turn then to a writer the charm of whose style does not conceal the superficiality of his ideas, and whose whole aim as a man of letters was to express in graceful English the ideas current among ladies and gentlemen of average intelligence. Goldsmith, in his Citizen of the World, has precisely reproduced the tone of his day. The cosmopolitan Chinaman talks much of English law; 1 Paley, Philosophy, ii. pp. 220, 221. 2 See G. Lowes Dickinson, The Development of Parliament, ch. i. 3 This by the way is a curious illustration of the interest felt towards the end of the eighteenth century in legal speculations. V. he maintains, among other fanciful notions, the para- Lecture dox that it was the height of wisdom to fill the statute book with laws threatening offenders with most severe penalties which were rarely or never exacted. "In England, from a variety of happy accidents, "their constitution is just strong enough, or if you will, monarchical enough, to permit a relaxation of "the severity of laws, and yet those laws still to remain sufficiently strong to govern the people. This is the most perfect state of civil liberty, of "which we can form any idea; here we see a greater number of laws than in any other country, while "the people at the same time obey only such as are immediately conducive to the interests of society; several are unnoticed, many unknown; some kept "to be revived and enforced upon proper occasions, "others left to grow obsolete, even without the necessity of abrogation. 66 66 66 "There is scarcely an Englishman who does not almost every day of his life offend with impunity against some express law, and for which in a certain conjuncture of circumstances he would not receive punishment. Gaming-houses, preaching at prohibited places, assembled crowds, nocturnal amusements, public shows, and an hundred other instances "are forbid and frequented. These prohibitions are useful; though it be prudent in their magistrates, "and happy for their people, that they are not enforced, and none but the venal or mercenary attempt to enforce them. 66 The law in this case, like an indulgent parent, "still keeps the rod, though the child is seldom "corrected. Were those pardoned offences to rise V. 66 Lecture "into enormity, were they likely to obstruct the happiness of society, or endanger the State, it is "then that justice would resume her terrors, and punish those faults she had so often overlooked "with indulgence. It is to this ductility of the laws "that an Englishman owes the freedom he enjoys superior to others in a more popular government; every step therefore the constitution takes towards "a democratic form, every diminution of the legal authority is, in fact, a diminution of the subject's "freedom; but every attempt to render the govern"ment more popular not only impairs natural 'liberty, but even will at last dissolve the political "constitution."1 The feebleness of our Chinaman's, or rather of Goldsmith's, reasoning adds to its significance. When pleas in support of an obvious abuse, which are not plausible enough to be called fallacies, pass current for solid argument, they derive their force from the sympathy of the audience to which they are addressed. The optimism, indeed, of the Blackstonian age is recognised by moralists of a later generation, among whom it excites nothing but condemnation. "Then followed," writes Dr. Arnold, "one of those "awful periods in the history of a nation which may "be emphatically called its times of trial. I mean those tranquil intervals between one great revolution " and another, in which an opportunity is offered for profiting by the lessons of past experience, and to direct the course of the future for good. From our present2 dizzy state, it is startling to look back on 66 1 Goldsmith, Works, iii., Citizen of the World, pp. 194, 195. V. "the deep calm of the first seventy years of the Lecture eighteenth century. All the evils of society were "yet manageable; while complete political freedom, 66 66 66 and a vigorous state of mental activity, seemed to promise that the growth of good would more than keep pace with them, and that thus they might be kept down for ever. But tranquillity, as usual, bred "carelessness; events were left to take their own way uncontrolled; the weeds grew fast, while none "thought of sowing the good seed." 1 66 These are the words of a censor who points a lesson intended for his own generation by condemnation of a past age with the virtues and defects whereof he has no sympathy; but to a critic who wishes to understand rather than to pass judgment upon a bygone time, it is easy to discover an explanation or justification of the optimism represented by Blackstone. The proper task of the eighteenth century was the work of pacification. The problem forced by the circumstances of the time upon thinkers and upon statesmen was, how best to terminate feuds originally generated by religious differences, and to open, if possible, a path for peaceful progress. This problem had in England received an earlier and a more complete solution than in any other European State. The Revolution Settlement had given the death-blow to arbitrary power, and had permanently secured individual freedom. The Toleration Act might It seems 1 Dr. Arnold, Miscellaneous Works (ed. 1845), p. 276. clear that though Arnold refers definitely only to the first seventy years of the eighteenth century, he really has in his mind the tone of the whole of that century-at any rate till near the outbreak of the French Revolution. V. Lecture appear contemptible to teachers who, like Arnold, wished to realise an ideal-we may now surely say an unattainable and mistaken ideal of the identification of State and Church, but to men of sense who test the character of a law by its ultimate tendency and result, the celebrated statute will appear to be one of the most beneficial laws ever passed by any legislature. For the Toleration Act gave from the moment it was enacted substantial religious freedom to the vast majority of the English people; in reality, though not in theory, it made active persecution an impossibility. It formed the foundation on which was built up such absolute freedom of opinion and discussion as has never hitherto existed, for any length of time, in any other country than England, or at any rate in any other country the institutions whereof have not been influenced by the principles latent, though not expressed, in the Toleration Act. The Revolution Settlement, moreover, while establishing theological peace, laid the basis of national greatness. It made possible the union with Scotland. And the union doubled the power of Great Britain. When, in 1765, Blackstone published the first volume of his Commentaries, there were men still living who remembered the victories of Marlborough, and no one had forgotten the glories of the last war with France. "It is well known that the administration of the "first William Pitt was a period of unanimity unparalleled in our annals: popular and antipopular parties had gone to sleep together, the great minister "wielded the energies of the whole united nation; "France and Spain were trampled in the dust, Pro |