TOPICS OF THE DAY.
GOVERNMENT NO GOVERNMENT.
GOVERNMENT has duties to perform besides acting as police magis- trate on a great scale. If governments have at times done harm by meddling, it has been by interfering in the wrong time, or place, or manner—most frequently the last : and sometimes what have been called their faults of commission, if strictly examined, will be found to be more properly faults of omission.
The errors of interfering in the wrong time and place are suffici- ently obvious. A government acts not only upon but by means of men ; and in estimating its forces, it ought first of all to take into account whether public opinion is ripe for its measures—to time its operations well. By interfering in the wrong place, is meant legis- lating about matters which require no legislation. But interfering in the wrong manner, is at once a more actively mischievous mistake, and one from the wrong apprehension of which some reasoners have fallen into the heresy of under-legislation- the reverse of over-legislation, but equally detrimental.
"Pas trop gouverner "—" laisser faire "—have become the fashion- able maxims of certain economists. The expressions originated in misconception, and are used to perpetuate error. What the per- sons who first used these phrases wished to deprecate, (though, their views not being very precise, their language necessarily became equivocal,) was, not legislative regulation, but regulation that disre- garded or sought to control and thwart the laws of nature. It is with society as with the individuals of whom society is made up. The ascetic moralists, who set out with an intention of making man different from what he is, must fail—nature is too strong for them. On the other hand, the sentimental moralists, who would leave man to his spontaneous impulses, are equally wide of the mark—man's passions, unless checked and guided by reason accord- ing to rules derived from experience, would work wild havoc with the happiness of others. Government ought to be to society in loco parentis. It ought to lead the way—to entice in this direction and stop progress in that—to study the constitution of society, in order to avoid exacting the impossible or leaving practical good un- attempted—to note the cravings and efforts of the multitude, that it may divine the uneasiness in which they have their origin and provide for its alleviation. Among other mistakes engendered by an im- perfect understanding of the theory of representative government, is that which draws a line of demarcation between executive and legislative authority. It is, say the theorists who fall into this error, the part of the legislature to make the laws— of the sovereign's ministers to carry them into execution. Ministers neglect their duty if they do no more than merely carry into effect existing laws, and rest satisfied with them however imper- fect until the legislature sets itself to change them. It is the business of ministers, as having the best opportunities of ascer- taining experimentally the working of the laws, to take the initia- tive in the amelioration of laws. The advantage of an elective legislature is, that when ministers neglect this duty, volunteers may be found to supply their omissions. But the circumstance of extensive and searching reforms being habitually agitated in a le- gislature by non-official members, is in itself a proof of the indo- lence and incompetence of government—of its leaving to others the discharge of one of its most important functions.
The opinion we set out with, that what are regarded as faults of commission in a government are not unfrequently faults of omission, is a corollary from the principle just stated. Injudicious restrictions on industry and commercial enterprise—undue re- straints on free thought and its free expression—are in nine cases out of ten the consequence of preserving institutions and forms of transacting business which were beneficial in their day but which have become inapplicable to the existing state of society. The abstract principles of justice or utility are simple ; the difficulty lies in their application to the relations of individuals. The laws which directed their application with sufficient precision in a simple agricultural state of society, or even in the first vigorous develop- ment of our commerce in the time of EDWARD the Fifth, may be so vague as to leave room for much oppression in such a compli- cated state of society as ours, with its factories, joint-stock com- panies, credits, and mortgages. It is one of the most urgent duties of a government to watch how new modes of transacting business, bow more varied and complicated relations of employer to employed, debtor to creditor, develop themselves in society, and to modify with the changing phases of the body corporate of the nation the rules and institutions by which justice is to be enforced in the transactions of man with man. When it stands too long and stubbornly on the old ways, and insists upon carrying into effect laws which have become at once burdensome and useless, the fault is not in the act of enforcing the law, but in the omission of not modifying it to the exigencies of the time. The danger of being a do-nothing government—a mere govern- ment of resistance—in so far as the holders of power and the secu- rity of their tenure of office is concerned, has been sufficiently harped upon. Recent illustrations are abundant and striking. Without going back to the Duke of WELLINGTON'S declaration against "reform," the consequences to the Whig Ministry of their taking up the doctrine of "finality," and the consequences to Sir ROBERT PEEL of his having "done nothing" during the present session, establish that point. But neglect on the part of a national government, irrespective of its ersonnel—of the shifting and changing of parties and individuals, to discharge its parental duties of sleepless care and watchfulness, is fraught with consequences of more extensive danger. This neglect strikes at the stability of government in the abstract. So long as a government is a government—so long as it not only enforces the law but makes and modifies laws to meet the varying exigencies of society—there may be discontent, and tumults, and conspiracies, but there can be no revolution. But when a government becomes no-goverliment, revolution is inevitable. Society must have a go- vernment of some kind—it is a necessity of its nature ; and if the ostensible depositaries of executive power persist in being inactive, unauthorized revolutionary authorities will grow up and usurp their functions. The French Revolution was not occasioned by the scoffing of the philosophes or the discontents of the people— these were but symptoms of unreality in what seemed a govern- ment: it was the unreal character of the phantom that filled the chair of state that enabled the ill-regulated and destructive revo- lutionary power to struggle into birth. The American Revolution, with its more cheering features, was an illustration of the same truth. There was no government at home for the Colonies ; they were left to govern themselves ; and when a quarrel arose be- tween them and the Mother-country, they felt this, and casting away the shadow of Imperial government, resolved to get on as well as they could with the real government which had grown up among them.
These examples ought to teach our statesmen the danger which will be incurred if our Government is to remain much longer a no- government. The Whigs, it is clear, held office latterly on the tenure of doing nothing. Sir ROBERT PEEL, it is daily becoming more apparent, holds office on the same condition. The Tories, after throwing PEEL overboard, in deference to the fiercer and more intolerant members of the party, might command for a time a majority in the Legislature ; but their forces would be neutralized by the spirit of the age : they too would be a no-government—only a harsher and more exasperating one. The deleterious influence of a no-government is in our case rendered more alarming by the difficulty of constructing a real and efficient government. If the symptoms to which we adverted when commenting upon Mr. SMYTHE'S letter to the Canterbury electors are not delusive—if in reality opinions are gaining ground among our statesmen which must emancipate the best of them from the mere formulas of party—if the time for a fusion of parties is at band—then we may look for a real government. If not, what with smouldering dis- content in the manufacturing districts, a public conspiracy against the unity of the empire in Ireland, and turbulence gaining ground in hitherto passive Wales, our prospects under a no-government are any thing but pleasant.
Previous page
