THE PROGRESS OF NATIONS. * THIS is the third work on
"Progress," which has recently come under our notice. If speculation on national development were equivalent to a real advance, we should take this multiplication of books on sociological subjects, as a kind of index of our dis- tance from the Millennial goal. As it is, we apprehend that we are making more haste than good speed. The sword is not yet beaten into a ploughshare ; nor has the wolf any conscientious ob- jections to dine upon lamb.
The work now before us is written by a practising member of the English Bar, whose name 12 withheld from the public on the ground that its disclosure would convey no real knowledge. Our impression of its value, after a cursory examination of its pages, is not unfavourable. There are thoughts, of more or less sig- nificance, to be found scattered over the thirty chapters into which it is divided. Some of the historical speculations which it contains are interesting ; and some of its political recom- mendations are judicious and opportune. On the other hand, we complain of the verbose style of the author and the want of dis- tinct or definite treatment of the great argument discussed. We seem unable to apply his doctrines, or even to ascertain precisely the drift of his social philosophy. We find many general pro- positions to which we can assent in the Progress of Nations ; but when we ask for exact circumscription or distinct practical ap- plication, we meet with no satisfactory response.
To give an exhaustive analysis of the anonymous author's phi- losophical doctrines, is not our present intention ; much less shall we attempt to refute or confirm his leading assertions. We shall ll ourselves to a brief statement of some of his views and aphorisms, with perhaps an occasional comment on them. Our practising barrister repudiates all speculation on a possible perfect Futurity for mankind ; the establishment of invariable laws must, he maintains, precede the considerations of remote social phenomena. The cardinal principle laid down by him is, that there are two sorts of political progress, that of nations, which Vieo showed to be cyclical, and which is fluctuating and fugitive ; and that of humanity, which advances steadily, and never re- cedes. "The, human species engages," he observes, "in a race of intellectual progress after the fashion of the Greek Torch race, where the bearer of the torch handed it from one to another as they became exhausted." The torch, which is humanity, "has advanced without any perceptible tendency to retrograde, while The Progress of Nations ; or the Principles of National Derelopment in their elation., to Statesmanship. A Study in Analytical History. Published by Long- man and Co.
the bearers of the torch—the nations of the world—have fallen away, and died when their part in the great rack of human ad- vancement has been played." With this attempt to distinguish between the progress of humanity and the progress of nations, our author closes all that he has to say on the former topic.
Vice's doctrine, then, of the perpetual rise and fall of nations, is the first great truth in our author's sociological system. Such he,
at least, pronounces it. We are bold enough to question the in- variable validity of the principle. Reason, we think, can be shown why, in what we shall take leave to call the preliminary stage of human advancement, this political ascension and decline was an inevitable necessity : and why, under a new phase of social exist- ence, this " necessity " is contingent and evitable. It is true
that, "if a hardy nation of rude warriors pour itself again over Europe, we may be sure that Vice's principle will hold true ; "
but our knowledge, geographical and ethnographical, makes us more than doubtful of the probability of such a catastrophe. Is it likely that the great commonwealth of Europe, with its scientific resources, its vast military organization, its prodigious material and intellectual vantage ground, will ever become the battle-field, in which civilization shall be pitted against, and succumb to bar- barism? Are the Chinese, or the Hindoos, or the black races of Africa, or the Red Indians, to be the Goths and Vandals of a new Rome. Something the West of Europe may possibly have to fear from Eastern Europe ; but we doubt if even a Cossack raid, under circumstances most favourable to success, would result in the ob- literation of the political existence of all the sovereign nations of the West. In our own age, too, it must be remembered that the most distant nations are gradually being brought within the pale of a common civilization ; that there is a tendency, at least, to- wards the acceptance of a common life, and the establishment of common interests ; to an (ecumenical intercommunity which will tend to render conquest profitless and even impracticable. Thus, without either opposing or admitting our author's reclamations, we venture to express a conviction that M. Comte's general views on the rise of the industrial order, whether with or without his quadruple distribution of bankers, merchants, manufacturers, and agriculturists, are by no means unreasonable. We do not say that in the future the industrial order will be the sole dominant order ; but we do think that the day will come when it will be in the material world, the predominant order. As to its finality—we say nothing of that. They may be very near the truth who think that social perfection consists in there being no order at all. In that happy but still distant period, when every man does right in his own eyes (they must be uncommonly good ones), when the bene- volent wolf declines to dine on the temptingly inoffensive lamb, when there's plenty to get and nothing to do, the industrial order may, it is possible, cease to be "the order of the day." Meanwhile the existence of a Plutocracy is, our author would agree with us, undeniable ; and its accession to power is in some degree an accomplished fact. Now, without pausing to inquire whether Government, by the representation of a country's wealth, is or is not, in M. Comte's scheme, an " unalloyed " Plutocracy, we quite believe with the practising barrister, that it has its
defects, its inconveniences and its dangers. If in any country it is not "alloyed," it ought be alloyed. We regret that we can-
not quote from our author's chapter on "Plutocracy in English Life," or adduce such passages as would exhibit his views of the relative merits or demerits of the different social classes. But we must content ourselves with this general reference to them, and with his reassuring prediction, that English civilization "bids fair to give to the history of the world an unexampled and glorious chapter, which shall show how the elements of monarchy, aristo- cracy, democracy, and plutocracy, uncombined before, have been happily fused on English ground ; and how the last of them, far from disturbing the peace of the State, has improved the general condition, "by adding to it those qualities and arts that have always attended plutocracy, when not a constitutional element, but a form of social order unchecked by any other but the demo- cratic."
We now hasten to give a brief indication of our author's doc- trine of national development. There are, in his view, two distinct currents of civilization and refinement : the ode derived from the conquering or quasi-compering race, the Homeric ; the other from the conquered, the Hemodic. Of these, the first is earliest in its development; but for the maturity of that development it requires considerable contemporary progress in the second. The moment in which these two currents attain a nearly coequal elevation, is in the writer's somewhat affected phrase, "the National Acme." The national acme is also defined as the period when the literature of a country, which is part of the civilization derived from the con- quering race, attains its highest perfection—There are, our es- sayist resumes, three classes of nations in their acme. 1. That in which a constitutional monarchy regulates, and gives effect to all the coexisting social elements ; 2. That in which all the social elements coexist, but without a constitutional monarchy ; and 3. That in which some of these social elements are wanting, and the national development is, therefore, strikingly defective. To this generalization we may add our author's palmary "maxim of practical polities, often in recent times neglected,. but never vio- lated without disaster, that not only is a constitutional monarchy the proper form of government for nations, where the chief ele- ments of civilization, opposite but not contrary to each other, are simultaneously and equally developed • but also, that simultaneous and equal development is necessary for the existence of constitu- tional monarchy.'. We shall not follow our author in his lucubrations on sociology and history any further. /daily of his remarks will be found in- teresting, and some of his expositions instructive. His observa- tions on the Greek sophists are made from the high Platonic point' of view, and in our opinion fairly express the whole truth about ,that brilliant, useful, indispensable, but defective- and worldly, order of professional teachers. His reading is extensive, and his scholarship apparently more than respectable. He is not suite aoamate perhaps in his remark on Plato and his geometry, if at least he alludes to the dictum which tradition erroneously attri- butes to that magnificent speculator. He is also far too hasty in Asserting that Becket was u Saxon. Early annalists affirm that he was a Norman. The French Revolution of 1784 is, of course, 4 misprint.
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