certain number of these latter facts, and at the same time of indicating the quarter in which the political student (once set free from à priori assumptions) may seek materials for a reconstruction of his science, I have examined and analysed the Constitution of the United States, a topic on which much misconception seems to be abroad. There are some who appear to suppose that it sprang at once from the brain like the Goddess of Wisdom, an idea very much in harmony with modern Continental fancies respecting the origin of Democracy. I have tried to show that its birth was in reality natural, from ordinary historical antecedents; and that its connection with wisdom lay in the skill with which sagacious men, conscious that certain weaknesses which it had inherited would be aggravated by the new circumstances in which it would be placed, provided it with appliances calculated to minimise them or to neutralise them altogether. Its success, and the success of such American institutions as have succeeded, appears to me to have arisen rather from skilfully applying the curb to popular impulses than from giving them the rein. While the British Constitution has been insensibly transforming itself into a popular government surrounded on all sides by difficulties, the American Federal Constitution has proved that, nearly a century ago, several expedients were discovered by which some of these difficulties may be greatly mitigated and some altogether overcome. The publication of the substance of these Essays in the "Quarterly Review," besides giving me a larger audience than could be expected for a dissertation on abstract and general Politics which had little direct bearing on the eager controversies of Party, has gained for me the further advantage of a number of criticisms which reached me before this volume took its final shape. At the head of these I must place a series of observations with which Lord Acton has favoured me. I have freely availed myself of these results of his great learning and profound thought. H. S. MAINE. LONDON: 1885. ESSAY I. THE PROSPECTS OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT. THE blindness of the privileged classes in France to the Revolution which was about to overwhelm them furnishes some of the best-worn commonplaces of modern history. There was no doubt much in it to surprise us. What King, Noble, and Priest could not see, had been easily visible to the foreign observer. "In short," runs the famous passage in Chesterfield's letter of December 25, 1753, "all the symptoms which I ever met with in history previous to great changes and revolutions in government now exist and daily increase in France." A large number of writers of our day, manifesting the wisdom which comes after the event, have pointed out that the signs of a terrible time ought not to have been mistaken. The Court, the Aristocracy, and the Clergy should have understood that, in face of the irreligion which was daily becoming more fashionable, the belief in privilege conferred by birth could not be long maintained. They should have noted the portents of imminent B |