SOCIAL OSCILLATIONS. 163 requisites: its abolition would in no way assist the reestablishment of Order; and no declamations against the revolutionary philosophy will affect the instinctive attachment of society to principles which have directed its political progress for three centuries past, and which are believed to represent the indispensable conditions of its future development. Each of its dogmas affords an indication of how the improvement is to be effected. Each expresses the political aspect of certain high moral obligations which the retrograde school, with all its pretensions, was compelled to ignore, because its system had lost all power to fulfil them. In this way, the dogma of Free Inquiry decides that the spiritual reorganization must result from purely intellectual action, providing for a final voluntary and unanimous assent, without the disturbing intervention of any heterogeneous power. Again, the dogmas of Equality and the Sovereignty of the people devolve on the new powers and classes of society the duty of a publicspirited social conduct, instead of working the many for the interests of the few. The old system practised these moralities in its best days; but they are now maintained only by the revolutionary doctrine, which it would be fatal to part with till we have some substitute in these particular respects; for the effect would be that we should be delivered over to the dark despotism of the old system;—to the restorers of religions, for instance, who, if proselytism failed, would have recourse to tyranny to compel unity, if once the principle of free inquiry were lost from among us. It is useless to declaim against the critical philosophy, and to deplore, in the name of social order, the dissolving energy of the spirit of analysis and inquiry. It is only by their use that we can obtain materials for reorganization; materials which shall have been thoroughly tested by free discussion, carried on till general conviction is secured. The philosophy which will arise out of this satisfaction of the public reason will then assign the rational limits which must obviate the abuse of the analytical spirit, by establishing that distinction in social matters, between the field of reasoning and that of pure observation, which we have found already marked out in regard to every other kind of science. Though consigned, by the course of events, to a negative doctrine for awhile, society has never renounced the laws of human reason: and when the proper time arrives, society will use the rights of this reason to organize itself anew, on principles which will then have been ascertained and estimated. The existing state of no-government seems necessary at present, in order to that ascertainment of principles; but it does not at all follow, as some eccentric individuals seem to think, that the right of inquiry imposes the duty of never deciding. The prolonged indecision proves merely that the principles which are to close the deliberation are not yet sufficiently established. In the same way, because society claims the right of choosing and varying its institutions and governing powers, it by no means follows that the right is for ever to be used in choosing and varying, when its indefinite use shall have become injurious. When the right conditions shall have been ascertained, society will submit its choice to the rules which will secure its efficacy; and in the interval, nothing can be more favourable to future order than that the political course should be kept open, to admit of the free rise of the new social system. As it happens, the peoples have, thus far, erred on the side of too hasty a desire for reorganization, and a too generous confidence in every promise of social order, instead of having shown the systematic distrust attributed to the revolutionary doctrine by those whose worn-out claims will not bear discussion. There is more promise of political reorganization in the revolutionary doctrine than in the retrograde, though it is the supreme claim of the latter to be the safeguard of social Order. The Stationary Such is the vicious circle in which we are at present confined. We have seen what is the antagonism of two doctrines that are powerless apart, and have no operation but in neutralizing each other. They have lost their activity as preponderating influences, and are seen now in the form of political debate, which they daily direct by the one furnishing all the essential ideas of government, and the other the principles of opposition. At shorter and shorter intervals, a partial and transient superiority is allowed to the one or the other, THE STATIONARY SCHOOL. 165 when its antagonist threatens danger. Out of these oscillations a third opinion has arisen, which is constructed out of their ruins, and takes its station between them. I suppose we must give the name of Doctrine to this intermediate opinion, bastard and inconsistent as is its character; for it is presented by very earnest doctors, who urge it upon us as a type of the final political philosophy. We must call it the Stationary Doctrine; and we see it, in virtue of that quality, occupying the scene of politics, among the most advanced people, for above a quarter of a century. Essentially provisional as it is, the Stationary school naturally serves as a guide to society in preserving the material order, without which a true doctrine could not have its free growth. It may be necessary for our weakness that the leaders of this school should suppose that they have a doctrine which is destined to triumph; but whatever benefits arise from their action are much impaired by the mistake of supposing our miserable transition state a permanent type of the social condition. The stationary polity not only contains inconsistencies, but it is itself inconsistency erected into a principle. It acknowledges the essential principles of the other systems, but prevents their action. Disdainful of Utopias, it proposes the wildest of them all;-that of fixing society for ever in a contradictory position between retrogradation and regeneration. The theory serves to keep in check the other two philosophies; and this may be a good: but, on the other hand, it helps to keep them alive; and it is, in so far, an obstacle to reorganization. When I present my historical review of society, I shall explain the special assemblage of social conditions which gave England her parliamentary monarchy, so lauded by the school of mixed doctrine, but in fact, an exceptional institution, whose inevitable end cannot be very far off. When we enter upon that analysis, we shall see how great is the. error of philosophers and statesmen when they have taken up a singular and transient case as the solution of the revolutionary crisis of modern societies, and have endeavoured to transplant on the European continent a purely local system, which would be deprived in the process of its very roots: for it is an organized Protestantism which is its main spiritual basis in England. The t expectation attached to this single specious aspect of the stationary doctrine will make a future examination of it important; and we shall then see how hopeless is the constitutional metaphysics of the balance of powers, judged by that instance which serves as the common ground of such social fictions After all the vast efforts made to nationalize elsewhere the stationary compromise, it has never succeeded anywhere but in its native land; and this proves its powerlessness in regard to the great social problem. The only possible result is that the mischief should pass from the acute to the chronic state, becoming incurable by the recognition as a principle of the transient antagonism which is its chief symptom. Its principal merit is that it admits the double aspect of the social problem, and the necessity of reconciling Order and Progress but it introduces no new idea; and its recognition amounts therefore to nothing more than an equal sacrifice, when necessary, of the one and the other. The order that it protects is a merely material order; and it therefore fails in that function precisely in crises when it is most wanted. On the other hand, this function continues to be attributed to royalty, which is the only power of the old polity that is still active: now, the balance which is instituted by the stationary doctrine surrounds the royal power with bonds that are always tightening, while declaring that royal power to be the chief basis of the government. It is only a question of time when the function of sovereignty, thus embarrassed, shall cease, and the pretended balance be destroyed. This parliamentary polity serves the cause of progress no better than that of order: for, as it proposes no new principle, the restraints which it puts upon the revolutionary spirit are all derived from the ancient system, and therefore tend to become more and more retrograde and oppressive. An example of this is, the restrictions on the right of election; restrictions always derived from irrational material conditions, which, being arbitrary in their character, oppress and irritate, without answering their proposed purpose, and leave the multitude of the excluded much more offended than the small number of the privileged are gratified. There is no need to say more in this place of the mixed DANGERS OF THE CONDITION. 167 or Stationary doctrine, which is, in fact, only a last phase of the metaphysical polity. The reader cannot but see that a theory so precarious and subaltern, so far from being able to reorganize modern society, can only regulate, by protracting, the political conflict, and discharge the negative office of preventing kings from retrograding and peoples from destroying. Whatever the value of this service may be, we cannot expect regeneration to be accomplished by means of impediments. We have now seen the worth of these three systems. To complete our conviction Dangers of the critical period. of the need of a better, we must briefly notice the chief social dangers which result from the deplorable protraction of such an intellectual condition, and which must, from their nature, be aggravated from day to day. The dangers are imputable to all the three systems; though the revolutionary and stationary systems assume that the blame of our disorders rests with the retrograde school: but they are certainly no less guilty; for, powerless to discover the remedy, they protract the mischief, and embarrass the treatment. And again, the discordance between the movements of governments and of their peoples is to be attributed quite as much to the hostile spirit of the directing power as to the anarchical tendency of popular opinions. The social perturbations, the aspect of which we are about to examine, proceed no less from the kings than from their peoples, with this aggravated disgrace,--that it seems as if the solution ought to emanate from the kings. The first, the most fatal, and the most universal consequence of this situation is the Intellectual anarchy. alarming and ever-widening extent of the intellectual anarchy which all acknowledge, however they may differ about its cause and termination. This evil is charged almost exclusively on the revolutionary philosophy; and that school too readily admits the charge. But, as we have seen, that doctrine does not prohibit decision, when the requisite grounds are ascertained: and it is the stationary theory that ought to bear the blame of the absence of those grounds: and yet more the retrograde, which is chargeable with urging the restoration of the |