existing parties, and would soon become corrupt itself. Can they accomplish their work by entering into the other parties, according to their political convictions, and insisting on having a share in all those primary arrangements for office, caucuses, conventions, and the like, of which they complain so much now? The probability is that they would be met and worsted by new intrigues, without gaining anything for the cause of political honesty. I see no way in which they could act so well as by acting within the existing parties, and yet determining to cast their votes, each individual for himself, for no one who is a political intriguer or untrustworthy man. They act in this case without any forced combination, by the power of a vote which is silent, but well understood. Suppose this to begin in one of the parties, and that this party loses the election on account of such independent action. Can the party fail thenceforth to make a selection of better men? and if this is to be its principle, will not the other be compelled to be more careful in choosing its candidates? If thus there is understood to be a quiet body in both parties. which will rebuke all improper selections for office, this one thing will go far towards creating a moral revolution in state and in country. Staying away from the polls on account of the badness of parties is an unworthy course; but going there and rebuking your party for its improper candidates is something honorable for every good citizen to do.

In regard to the nomination of candidates for office, I should be glad to see the plan of offering one's self to one's fellow-citizens tried on such scale and for such a length of time as to take away all novelty and destroy old prejudice. This, in the case of inferior officers chosen by the people, would not call for speeches of candidates; but, when important elections were made, it would compel the voters to become more familiar with the great questions that divide parties than they are now; and candidates might with advantage be called before the voters to advocate their respective opinions.

changes.

CHAPTER XV.

POLITICAL CHANGES.

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A STATE that is not built on caste or shut up within itself Causes of political by non-intercourse with the rest of the world, cannot escape the changes that affect the condition of society, and through them the state of opinion and the other causes on which political systems themselves depend for their stability. Even China has not been able to avoid changes produced from abroad (those resulting from the conquest by the Mongols), and from within, which have shown themselves in various revolutions. Nor has India, with a system most wonderfully devised for permanence, been able to resist foreign influences which now, at length, seem to be undermining the old institutions of Brahminism; nor were these institutions able, more than two thousand years ago, to suppress without a struggle the reformatory movements of Buddhism, which at one time seemed about to control the whole peninsula. It was the greatness of the change, apparently, the danger of the abolition of caste and of the fall of Brahminism, that roused the leaders of society to a struggle which slow and silent changes would not have provoked.

Changes may be silent and unperceived in their action on society and on thinking, or they may be open and manifest. Thus, they may be of such a kind as not to be provided against, or they may give notice of their approach by what they had done in some other country. They may appear in such a shape that all, even the most conservative, the most uncompromising, will welcome them, and in the end they may turn out to be the most sweeping and revolutionary of

all causes. They may be entirely beyond the reach of prevention by any causes, material or spiritual-as much so as plagues and other distempers; or there may be no prevention within reach as long as the existing organization of society continues. As Thomas of Sarzano became pope in 1447, under the name of Nicholas V., he saw no signs of evil to the church in the humanism to which he had long been devoted; he encouraged Greek and Roman learning, and founded the Vatican library. Yet it is now clear that these new studies broke up the stagnation of thought, became rivals of theological learning and even threw it into the shade, spread a love for liberty and a spirit of free-thinking after the antique pattern among Italian scholars, and were one of the leading causes of the general revolution which became manifest in Europe in the middle of the fifteenth century.

The old political writers were familiar enough with political changes, and we shall ere long go back to Aristotle for some of his results as drawn from the history of the Greek cities, and brought into a philosophical form. But as they had small experience of the operation of spiritual causes on a large scale in changing opinion within the political sphere, the power of such causes they could not duly estimate. And although Plato was well aware of the necessity of religion in conserving political order, Aristotle has very little to say on this matter. In fact, I have found no passage where he contemplates what the effect might be of such a general atheism and irreligion as that which soon followed his era. The power of judging with justice, concerning the vast influences of spiritual and social causes upon the forms and spirit of governments, was never within the reach of the human mind until a general unity of thinking had been caused in the Christian world by Christianity, and until under its protection other agents in modern civilization had given each its contribution to modern times. The ease of spreading ideas all over the civilized world gives rapidity, energy, and distinctness, to every new turn of human thought.

Some of these causes of change act directly on political

forms; others act indirectly. We will consider the former, which are fewer n number, first, and then pass over to the others.

We mention first, example, as propagated from place to place. To this cause the Greek states, so many in so small an area, were extensively subject. We cannot account for the frequent tyrannies following one another in the age of the earlier tyrannis, nor for the democratic revolutions afterwards, by the existence of a common moving sentiment and a similar condition alone. The news of revolution, as it spread over Greece, added fuel to a fire all ready to burst out; and so, on the other hand, the news of their unfortunate issue in particular cases may have damped the ardor of a city ready to change its polity. So, also, it is likely that the various city institutions of the middle ages did not begin without some knowledge of movements elsewhere, in the same direction. In modern times the example of England, its government securing liberty and order, created, in a sense, the "spirit of the laws," and preached constitutional government all over Europe. Nor has the revolution of 1776, in this country, been without a vast influence by way of example over Spanish America, in Switzerland, and in France.

Still more potent are new political and politico-moral principles. Few will deny that the modern doctrines of personal rights, and of a people's self-governing right, whether in their milder Anglican or more revolutionary French form, have had a vast influence in aiding all other concurrent causes, such as the feeling of being oppressed, discontent with the existing government, and the struggles of orders. And although in themselves they may be dead, being alone, yet when thus employed as allies, they may remove scruples from the consciences of many, and intensify the sense of wrong.

This doctrine of human rights and of human equality has reached its greatest height of power in defending and redeeming the colored race from slavery. Scarcely ever has an enslaved race been led to attempt its own liberation by the mere feeling of being held in unjust bondage; nearly all the

movements having this in view have come from the sense of human rights acting on the humane or the fanatical freeman. We need only refer to the emancipation of the slaves in the British West Indies, with pecuniary compensation to their masters; to the late war, which, but for the cry of " abolition," would never have broken out, and to the extinction of serfdom in Russia.

Another theory or doctrine, which is now uniting men all over the Christian world, is that of the socialists, which looks forward to a revolution in society greater than any that has been known since the foundation of the world, and would have, if it could be realized, greater effects for a time, than those to which it looks forward. We have already spoken of communism in its earlier form, and of the social theory (§§ 103, 104), and incidentally of the socialistic doctrine concerning property in the soil. We need only refer to its principles in regard to wages and to the position of the capitalist towards the manual laborer, to its doctrine of inheritance, and to that extensively held by its leaders concerning marriage, religion, and God, as indicating an opposition to the whole framework of existing society-an opposition as entire as that between materialism and atheism on the one hand, and God and providence on the other. There can be no terms between such a plan of society for the future and the existing one. But there is danger that the feeling condemning most of its doctrines may keep men from condemning whatever social evils have helped socialism forward. There is reason to believe that it derived its origin from abuses in the social system co-operating with an abstract and partly false theory of the rights of man. Neither cause could produce permanent results, but let not evil in society be defended by the argument that the socialists complain of it.

We turn next towards some of the causes which act indirectly on political forms, chiefly through opinion, and in part by raising up new powers in society which insist on having their rightful and proportionate influence. The first of these is religion, whether it appears in the shape of a new faith or