“On my honour, Mr. Westby, I cannot remember having made such a confession. My head is in a strange state; I have only a very partial remembrance of the events of yesterday. I well remember my feeling of deep gratitude and admiration for your noble conduct.”
“I assure you,” replied Westby, growing very confused.
“It is not wonderful that I should have talked wildly and lost my head on such an occasion. I know, Mr. Westby, that you will not hold me to any random words.”
And you do govern your features so well, Lilian, that you deceive him into a belief that you had merely uttered empty words, but it is terrible torture to see how infinitely relieved he is. Then he turns the idea of his marriage into a joking impossibility, talking in a brotherly confidential tone of the labour and struggle in store for him. Ay, but it does touch you to the depths of your soul to sit by with a false smile on your countenance, and see that in his heart he only holds you fit for the sunshine and ease of life—you, who for one loving word from him would have rendered back love and endurance, and devotion to the end of existence. Your brother discovers you downcast with dim eyes.
“What’s the matter, my pet?”
“Nothing, Fred.”
“Not grim Charles Westby, you little goose?”
“Nonsense! just as if he would care for a butterfly.”
“But I do believe it is that fellow Charles!”
“You are a regular plague, Fred!” And you burst into tears in your brother’s arms.
REPRESENTATIVE MEN.
Political Philosophers.
machiavelli: montesquieu: de tocqueville.
If there are people who really doubt whether the world gets on, one would like to know what they make of such a fact as the appearance and growth of Political Philosophy in human history. There may be some plausibility in the argument that scientific discoveries in the material world may leave men pretty much as they were, intellectually and morally; but when we see that the interests of men in society have so changed and expanded as to enable wise thinkers to discern the principles of politics, and the natural laws which operate upon society as upon individuals, we can no longer doubt that society has reached a point of enlightenment which, on the one hand, is new, and which, on the other, must certainly lead on to further knowledge of the means of liberty and security which, again, must further improve the character of nations, and of the individuals composing them. Any fact which exhibits a new intellectual and moral step taken by any society, and that step rendered secure by its being associated with ascertained principles, is evidence of an actual advance in wisdom and virtue; and therefore the fact that political philosophy has appeared in the world like something new in modern times, and that we have, in political philosophers, a new order of sages, is an evidence of human progress which the veriest cynic must find it hard to get rid of.
It is true, Plato lived a long time ago, and Aristotle was quoted against him for a good many centuries: but any reference to either shows how essentially different political science is from the dreams of metaphysicians, and the corrections of those dreams by a sagacious and practical thinker who could avoid the errors of his time, but had no materials for creating a science prematurely. Plato’s pictures of what, in his view, society ought to be are interesting and full of suggestion; and so are Aristotle’s wise corrections of fallacies, and discussions of the reasons, and the right and wrong of government: but as there was no notion in those days of such progress as society has made, nothing that could be written could be anything more than a preparation for a real political philosophy: and those who wrote on the subject did so in the course of treating of moral topics, without any conception of a time to come when the principles and modes of government would spread out into a great province of study, in which every man would have an interest, and from which a new and separate order of wise men would issue forth.
The fact is, that till there was a middle class in society in a sufficient number and variety of nations to afford plenty of material for observation and reasoning, there could be nothing like a science of politics. Almost everywhere the rulers had only to take care of themselves, and do the best they could with the privileged orders by whom they were hustled on every side, and the labouring class, far down under their feet. In the few cases of republics which professed self-government, there was no idea of looking beyond the frontier, in which party conflicts were always going on. In those ages, and for long after, there could be no representative men in the province of political research. The order is a modern one, and as yet they and their works are hardly known to those whom they most concern.
It is customary to consider Machiavelli as the first prominent specimen of the class; and even at this day the reputation of the whole order may be seriously injured by the name of Machiavelli having become the current term for extreme political vileness. It is always mischievous, all round, to use any man’s name in such a way, because it becomes the slang of the ignorant, and satisfies hasty thinkers with sound instead of sense. There is thus injustice to the individual, and bad discipline to everybody else. In our own day there is talk about Malthusian notions, and a popular conception of Mr. Malthus as unlike as can well be to what Mr. Malthus was and taught; and it would be difficult to exaggerate the mischief done to the last and present generation by this piece of ignorance. The same practice has gone on for more than three centuries in regard to Machiavelli—perhaps with more warrant of truth, but with not less mischief to multitudes who have fancied themselves wise and virtuous in condemning and scorning a philosopher of whom they really knew nothing but the name. It is not our business here to discuss the real meaning of the disputed parts of his writings, on which critical readers
