towards ranging the powers of society on its side. On the day when the
proto-martyr was stoned to death at Jerusalem, while he who was to
be the Apostle of the Gentiles stood by "consenting unto his death,"
would any one have supposed that the party of that stoned man were
then and there the strongest power in society? And has not the event
proved that they were so? Because theirs was the most powerful of then
existing beliefs. The same element made a monk of Wittenberg, at the
meeting of the Diet of Worms, a more powerful social force than the
Emperor Charles the Fifth, and all the princes there assembled. But
these, it may be said, are cases in which religion was concerned,
and religious convictions are something peculiar in their strength.
Then let us take a case purely political, where religion, so far as
concerned at all, was chiefly on the losing side. If any one
requires to be convinced that speculative thought is one of the
chief elements of social power, let him bethink himself of the age
in which there was scarcely a throne in Europe which was not filled by
a liberal and reforming king, a liberal and reforming emperor, or,
strangest of all, a liberal and reforming pope; the age of Frederic
the Great, of Catherine the Second, of Joseph the Second, of Peter
Leopold, of Benedict XIV., of Ganganelli, of Pombal, of Aranda; when
the very Bourbons of Naples were liberals and reformers, and all the
active minds among the noblesse of France were filled with the ideas
which were soon after to cost them so dear. Surely a conclusive
example how far mere physical and economic power is from being the
whole of social power.

  It was not by any change in the distribution of material
interests, but by the spread of moral convictions, that negro
slavery has been put an end to in the British Empire and elsewhere.
The serfs in Russia owe their emancipation, if not to a sentiment of
duty, at least to the growth of a more enlightened opinion
respecting the true interest of the State. It is what men think that
determines how they act; and though the persuasions and convictions of
average men are in a much greater degree determined by their
personal position than by reason, no little power is exercised over
them by the persuasions and convictions of those whose personal
position is different, and by the united authority of the
instructed. When, therefore, the instructed in general can be
brought to recognise one social arrangement, or political or other
institution, as good, and another as bad, one as desirable, another as
condemnable, very much has been done towards giving to the one, or
withdrawing from the other, that preponderance of social force which
enables it to subsist. And the maxim, that the government of a country
is what the social forces in existence compel it to be, is true only
in the sense in which it favours, instead of discouraging, the attempt
to exercise, among all forms of government practicable in the existing
condition of society, a rational choice.

                             Chapter 2

             The Criterion of a Good Form of Government.

  THE FORM of government for any given country being (within certain
definite conditions) amenable to choice, it is now to be considered by
what test the choice should be directed; what are the distinctive
characteristics of the form of government best fitted to promote the
interests of any given society.

  Before entering into this inquiry, it may seem necessary to decide
what are the proper functions of government; for, government
altogether being only a means, the eligibility of the means must
depend on their adaptation to the end. But this mode of stating the
problem gives less aid to its investigation than might be supposed,
and does not even bring the whole of the question into view. For, in
the first place, the proper functions of a government are not a
fixed thing, but different in different states of society; much more
extensive in a backward than in an advanced state. And, secondly,
the character of a government or set of political institutions
cannot be sufficiently estimated while we confine our attention to the
legitimate sphere of governmental functions. For though the goodness
of a government is necessarily circumscribed within that sphere, its
badness unhappily is not. Every kind and degree of evil of which
mankind are susceptible may be inflicted on them by their
government; and none of the good which social existence is capable
of can be any further realised than as the constitution of the
government is compatible with, and allows scope for, its attainment.
Not to speak of indirect effects, the direct meddling of the public
authorities has no necessary limits but those of human existence;
and the influence of government on the well-being of society can be
considered or estimated in reference to nothing less than the whole of
the interests of humanity.

  Being thus obliged to place before ourselves, as the test of good
and bad government, so complex an object as the aggregate interests of
society, we would willingly attempt some kind of classification of
those interests, which, bringing them before the mind in definite
groups, might give indication of the qualities by which a form of
government is fitted to promote those various interests
respectively. It would be a great facility if we could say the good of
society consists of such and such elements; one of these elements
requires such conditions, another such others; the government, then,
which unites in the greatest degree all these conditions, must be
the best. The theory of government would thus be built up from the
separate theorems of the elements which compose a good state of
society.

  Unfortunately, to enumerate and classify the constituents of
social well-being, so as to admit of the formation of such theorems,
is no easy task. Most of those who, in the last or present generation,
have applied themselves to the philosophy of politics in any