NOTIONS THAT HAVE BEEN ADOPTED IN DIF

FERENT AGES RESPECTING FORMS OF GO-
VERNMENT.

Opinions respecting the best forms.-Nothing can more clearly indicate the imperfect state of the human understanding than the opinions which have at different times been adopted—and argued with great zeal and learning-on this subject. The opinions of some of the most enlightened of the ancients are still preservedand the following list comprises the most remarkable of them.

According to one of these sages---the best form is that in which the law is despotic. According to another, it is that in which equality of property prevails. According to a third, it is that in which the fear of disgrace is stronger than the law. According to another, it is that in which the law speaks instead of the lawyer. And, according to another, it is that in which the ruling power is confided to a small number.

The following, however, seems to be the result which the improved sense of mankind has attained on this topic and which, though it declines giving any categorical answer to the questionmay safely be held as containing views at once more just and more enlarged, than any that have previously been contemplated by men. "When a person asks," says Rousseau, "what is the best mode of government, he puts a question which is insoluble and indefinite; or, if he likes it better, he puts a question to which there are as many answers as there are absolute or relative conditions of nations."

The question respecting the best form of government is thus on a level with the corresponding question, so long agitated by the philosophers of antiquity respecting the chief good as applicable to individual life---and in both instances the progress of the human understanding has been, not to give a decided answer to either question, but to point out them both as incapable of solution

---and the results only of an erroneous and imperfect style of thought, to which the human mind in its first attempts at speculation, most naturally betook itself---but which the more advanced state of its powers induced it to reject, as not suitable to its nature, nor conducive to any good purpose.

Ideal forms. It is quite obvious, that with respect to government, or with respect to any thing else, it is possible for speculative minds, by setting out from an arbitrary abstraction, or by adopting some conceivable state of perfection in the social system as the basis of their conjectures-to amuse themselves with speculations which may have much apparent and superficial consistency---but which, when brought to the test of actual life, and tried by the essential principles of human nature—principles which no future progress of the species can ever altogether destroy-may in fact be nothing better than mere dreams, with which a speculative mind occasionally may be permitted to exercise its powers of thought. The two following passages from the work of Mr. Bulwer, entitled, England and the English, may perhaps be taken as among the best specimens of this kind of dreaming.

"A more vast and a more general object, to which, I fear, no party is yet prepared to apply itself, seems to me to be this-to merge the names of people and of governments,-and to unite them both in the word State.-Wherever you see a good and a salutary constitution, there you see the vast masses of the population wedded to and mingled with the state :-there must be energy to ensure prompt and efficient legislation: energy exists not where unity is wanting. In Denmark and Prussia is the form of absolute monarchy, but nowhere are the people happier or more contented, because in those countries they are entirely amalgamated with the state: The state protects, and educates, and cherishes them all. In America you behold Republicanism-but the state is equally firm as it is in Denmark and Prussia, the people equally attached to it, and equally bound up in its existence. In these opposite constitutions you behold equal energy because equal unity. Ancient nations teach us the same truth: in Rome -in Athens-in Tyre-in Carthage, the people were strong and prosperous only while the people and the state were one. But away with ancient examples-let us come back to common sense. Can the mind surrender itself to its highest exertions, when dis

tracted by disquietude and discontent? The mind of one individual reflects the mind of a people, and happiness in either results from the consciousness of security—but you are never secure while you are at variance with your government. In a well-ordered constitution-a constitution in harmony with its subjects,---each citizen confounds himself with the state: he is proud that he belongs to it: the genius of the whole people enters into his soul: he is not one man only, he is inspired by the mighty force of the community: he feels the dignity of the nation in himself: he beholds himself in the dignity of the nation. To unite then the people and the government, to prevent that jealousy and antagonism of power, which we observe at present,---each resisting each to the common weakness-to merge, in one word, both names in the name of the State, we must first advance the popular principle to satisfy the people, and then prevent a conceding government by creating a directive one. At present, my friends, you only perceive the government, when it knocks at your door for taxes-you couple with its name the idea, not of protection, but of extortion-but I would wish that you should see the government educating your children, and encouraging your science, and ameliorating the condition of your poor: I wish you to warm, while you utter its very name, with a grateful and reverent sense of enlightenment and protection. I wish you to behold all your great public blessings repose under its shadow. I wish you to feel advancing towards that unceasing and incalculable amelioration, which I firmly believe to be the common destiny of mankind, with a steady march, and beneath a beloved banner. I wish that every act of a beneficent reform should seem to you neither conceded nor extorted, but as a pledge of sacred and mutual love; the legitimate offspring of one faithful and indissoluble union between the power of a people and the majesty of a state.

"This is what I mean by a directive government and a government so formed is always strong-strong not for evil, but for good.

"This is the outline of what, in my poor opinion, a national party ought to be."

The same author has remarked in a note, "Were I giving myself up to the speculative and conjectural philosophy of politics, I should be quite willing to avow my conviction, that as yet we have scarce passed the threshold of legislative science, and that

vast and organic changes will hereafter take place in the elements of government and the social condition of the world. But I suspect that these changes will be favourable to the concentration, not of power, but the executive direction of power, into the fewest hands possible; as being at once energetic and responsible in proportion to such concentration. I think, then, that the representative system itself will not be found that admirable institution which it is now asserted to be."

"But," adds our author, and his reflection supersedes the necessity of any further remark on our part, "these are distant theories, and must be reserved for the visions of the closet. He now is the most useful politician who grapples the closest with the times."

Mixed forms.-Leaving then, these visionary theories, which may not only have respect to a distant state of the world, but perhaps have no foundation in any condition it is ever destined to exhibit we may conclude, that so long as men continue to be actuated by the antagonist interests that now animate the different portions of every political body—the best form of government must be that which balances these opposing interests in the most effectual and useful manner that this relation, however, must be determined by a comprehensive view of existing circumstances at all times in which the problem shall be submitted to a practical solution-and generally, that the most perfect form of government will always be that which calls most powerfully into operation the highest wisdom-the best intentions---and the greatest energy of the community. Perhaps the most judicious opinion that has ever been given on such points is that of Montesquieu, "How should I,” says he, "decide upon the perfection of institutions---I who believe that excessive sense is pernicious, and that mankind are more fitted for a medium than for extremes."

In a mixed form of government, however, it is as necessary that the different powers which go to the formation of the complex machine, should exist only in their due degree of influence, as that they should simply retain their nominal position---it being evident, that the perfection of any piece of mechanism may be as effectually deranged by too great an enlargement of the power of any one of its constituent parts, as by a complete alteration of its component elements.

The notion that all power is derived from the people, is founded on the same sort of confusion of ideas which has led some physiologists to assert, that the nerves of the body are derived from the brain---or that any of the parts of what is really one body, is to be traced to any of the others as its original source.

That the people should be the restraining and not the moving power in a well-regulated community, is a great truth, which admits of no question, so long as the people continue in their present state of prejudice-of limited views---and of selfish interests. And when all these shall have been removed from the mass of any community---or when that state of visionary perfection shall have been generally attained, which is implied in some of the preceding quotations---the question which we are now attempting to explain, will cease to have any application---or if we carry our notions as to perfection to the highest conceivable state of abstract simplicity, it is not easy to see what grounds shall remain for any of the forms of government with which men are acquainted, or which indeed, they are in a condition to conceive. A community absolutely perfect may be left to act simply as it pleases.