LORD BROUGHAM'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
Tins second volume appears with the name of Lord Baouousat as the author, and a dedication to the Queen "by the commands of the Useful Knowledge Society " ; that corporation uniting in loyalty and all kinds of wishes to her Majesty, but only undertaking a " general coincidence of opinion" as regards the work.
The origin, necessity, and general characteristics ofan aristocracy, with a summary account of aristocratic governments, partly his- torical, partly disquisitional, is the subject-matter of the volume. It opens with a view of the nature of an aristocracy, and then makes a wide digression to the system of Balances and Checks ; which is defended against the attacks of the Benthamites, and with something like loss of temper, not as if they had thought wrong, but done some wrong to the writer. Returning to the theme, the writer points out the advantages of an aristocracy, in the tendency of this form of government to admit an ingraftment of beneficial changes either democratical or monarchical, and its evil in the tendency to decline into an oligarchy. The foundation of aristo- cracy in the nature of things, with a digression as to the impossi- bility of a "political profession" existing, is followed by another episode in a chapter on Party ; which the author takes occa- sion to denounce. The main subject of the book is then again returned to, in an estimate of the vices and virtues of aristocratic politics, with a brief and rather jejune view of a feudal aristocracy. The remaining and larger part of the volume consists of a review of ancient and modern aristocratical governments—Rome, Athens, and Sparta ; the lesser Italian cities of the middle ages, together with Venice, Genoa, Milan, and Florence ; the aristocracies of Switzerland, and the mixed governments of Poland and Hungary. The merit of the work is its comprehensiveness, measuring by extent of ground. In a single compact volume, the reader has a review, for better or worse, of the constitution of some of the most remarkable governments that have been established in the world, with snatches of their history. But here praise must end. The author, as in the first volume, seems less to care about discovering truth than urging his own opinions; and wherever the subject can by possibility admit of it, he writes like a partisan rather than a philo- sopher. In selecting the governments to exhibit the workings of aristocracy, he is not always careful to draw a sufficient distinc- tion between those where aristocratical power merely existed and those where the aristocracy predominated : Athens, for example, cannot be called an aristocracy ; some of the old constitutions of Spain were quite as mixed, and had they been placed in the same circumstances quite as mischievous, as that of Poland; and it seems to us that Holland was as near an aristocracy as Milan or Florence. The examples of a pure aristocracy, on a large scale and for an enduring period, being almost limited to Venice and the earlier ages of the Roman republic' these doubtful instances were difficult to avoid—something must be left to discretion in the exhibition of examples: but the arguments about them are of the oddest. "Nothing," says Lord BROUGHAM, "call be more inaccurate than to con- sider the earliest Roman and Athenian Governments as aristocracies, merely because a considerable portion of the people in each were excluded from power. In the former, after the expulsion of the Kings, the powers of government are represented as vested exclusively in the families of rank, the nobles or patricians; in the latter, the class of citizens alone are said to have governed the state' and in both, it is inferred that the body of the people, the inhabit- ants at large, were excluded from all direct authority. But it mast be re- membered, that the privileged families in Rome were the whole free people of whom the founders of the city consisted, or the descendants of those freemen ; and the commoners or plebeians were either liberated slaves or foreigners who had settled in the state. Consequently, the governing body was the community at large, subject to certain exceptions, and could no more be deemed a separate order than Protestants in Ireland, before the abrogation of the penal laws, could be correctly regarded as a separate order and called an aristocracy as con- tradiatinguished from the Catholics, or than British-born subjects at this day can be deemed a separate order from aliens and forming an aristocracy in the government."
There was this slight difference : the inhabitants of Rome and Athens, excluded from power or the prospect of power—not from the nature of their circumstances, but of their condition, their caste—were a vast majority of the people ; the aliens in Great Britain, compared with British-born subjects, form a minority too small to be even reckoned—they are not a class, but a few scattered individuals, without connexion of interests, objects, manners, or blood: the Protestants in Ireland cannot properly be called an aristocracy, because Ireland had no supreme government—it was ruled by the British Ministry ; but they were worse than an aristocracy—they were a ruling and privileged caste.
In a literary sense, this volume has the faults of the previous one, with some superadded. The apparent endeavour to subdue the style has not only deprived the composition of the author's wonted raciness and power, but it has not attained its end; for the spirit of one-sidedness and the exceeding prominence given to in- dividual notions are as strong as ever, though diluted as regards force of expression. The periods are not only involved, but lum- bering and unfinished, with an occasional looseness of structure that renders the sense imperfect or incomplete. There are some still stronger instances of negligence, as if the work had not been read either in manuscript or proof.
Our extracts will be limited to two examples, chosen from the more general or digressive portions of the book : and even in these there will be found disputable matter, but we note its existence without pausing to dwell upon it.
PUBLIC OPINION.
It is the constant and invariable disposition of all men in resolving upon the line of conduct which they shall pursue, so far as they shape it by the public opinion, to cast their eyes rather upon their own class than the world at large. Judges and advocates look to the bar : " the opinion of Westminster Hall" is a well-understood expression among our own sages of the law ; it is almost to them synonymous with the opinion of mankind. If our statesmen do not confine their regards to the chambers of Parliament, it is because they are sub- ject to the direct interposition of the people out of doors. Were there no louse of Commons, and were the whole powers of government vested in the Peers, each patrician would look to that body alone, and shape his conduct in accordance with its views. The case supposed would be a pure aristocracy; and this is the first and fundamental vice of that scheme of polity. The su- preme power is vested in the hands of men who form a body numerous enough to be to themselves as the whole world ; and those men never look beyond it. The tendency of the constitution is to place them wholly above the influences of public opinion, which restrain even tyrants in their course. In modern times, it is true, this irresponsibility never can be complete, because the natural aris- tocracy interferes with it. The respect due to talents, learning, wealth, even virtue, obtains for those who belong not to the privileged class a certain weight in society; and their opinion will be in some degree regarded by the members of the ruling body. But such a control must always be exceedingly slight and uncertain, compared with its effects upon the very few men, or the single man, who in a monarchy wields the supreme power of the state.
WORKING OF FACTIONS.
It is a very different and a very pernicious kind of party to which the term faction is generally applied, and which arises out of the contentions for power and not out of the desire to further principles : and this weed is the natural growth of popular, but most of all, aristocratic government. Men bind them- selves together, and obtain the support both of their followers among the ruling orders and their dependants among the plebeians, that they may be enabled to engross the whole power in administering public affairs. The pos- session of power with its attendants, patronage, honour, places, wealth, im- punity for maleversation. indemnity against charges of maleadministration, all the benefits that uncontrolled dominion can bestow upon those who are clothed with it—this is the object of the party combination ; and to this every other consideration, among the rest all regard to public duty, all concern for the in- terests of the community, is sacrificed without hesitation, without scruple, and without remorse. There is generally a pretext of principle put forward to hide the nakedness of the association ; but no one is deceived by it, and the less, that the same principles are successively taken up and abandoned by all the factions successively as it suits their position and serves the purpose of the day; so that you shall see the party the most clamorous for certain measures before its accession to office, the readiest to abandon and even to oppose the same proposal immediately after that event and the same men who had the most loudly condemned a given course of policy, lay themselves meekly down by its promoters and join in patronizing it, as soon as their interest in the clamour has passed away.
This is the first, and it is the worst of the evil effects which party produces. Principles are no longer held sacred in the estimation of mankind ; they become secondary and subordinate considerations; they are no more the guides of men's conduct, but the false fabricated pretexts under which the real motive and ob- ject is cloaked : they are the mere counters with which the profligate game of faction is played. The highest public duties are thus not merely violated, but brought into open and unblushing contempt. A low tone of political morality becomes the prevailing sentiment of the governing classes in the state. Stern principle is scorned; rigid virtue is a laughingstock ; and men in the humblest stations see those who should be their patterns set them an example of the most scandalous profligacy. Add to this, the disgusting hypocrisy which men practise in their loud assertion of opinions which they care nothing about ; their solemn declaration of doctrine's in which they have no faith ; their earnest expression of feelings no deeper than their months; their inflated avowal of devotion to principles wholly foreign to their nature and habits. All this snakes up a picture which the people must be debauched by beholding so con- tinually unveiled before their eyes.
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