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that democratic nations are passionately fond of abstract and generic terms.* Again, with regard to the fine arts; he is of opinion that a love for numerous small works of painting or sculpture, executed by inferior artists, characterizes a democratic people. He thinks likewise that in architecture the democratic taste inclines to buildings devoid of solidity, and made only for outward show. As an example of the latter, he refers to a row of small palaces, of Grecian architecture, near the shore, at New York, which at a distance he supposed to be of white marble, but on a near approach he discovered to be of brick and plaster, with painted wooden columns.‡ As to poetry, he fears that, finding no fit subject for it in the real life of his country, a democratic poet will depart widely from nature, will lose himself in the clouds, and pursue the wild, the monstrous, and the exaggerated. § He affirms that a democratic nation despise the coarse and noisy amusements which please the common people in an aristocracy, but that they cannot appreciate the intellectual and refined amusements of the aristocratic classes; that they require something productive and substantial even in their diversions.|| He thinks farther, that a democratic age is peculiarly characterized by a fondness for easy successes and present enjoyments. He even believes that, in an aristocracy, every person has a single object which he pursues without cessation; whereas in a democratic society each person follows several objects at the same time.**

Now, on considering these and similar general propositions with which M. de Tocqueville's ingenious and suggestive work abounds, it is easy to see that he has not sufficiently borne in mind a caution which he has himself laid down, as a guide in inquiries, such as that which he has undertaken. He remarks elsewhere, that it is necessary not to confound that which is democratic with that which is only American. He warns his readers against seeing all democratic nations under the type of the American people. He says that he cannot consent to separate America from Europe, notwithstanding the ocean which divides them. For that he considers the people of the United States as only a portion of the English people, employed in clearing the forests of the New World; while

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the rest of the nation, possessed of greater leisure, and less engrossed with the care of procuring a livelihood, can occupy itself more with mental pursuits.*

In these just remarks, M. de Tocqueville indicates the necessity of attending to other circumstances than political institutions in characterizing the acts and dispositions of a community. He shows that he bears in mind the important influence which national origin, race, religion, manners, climate, geographical position, as well as the state of the useful arts, cannot fail to exercise upon the opinions, feelings, acts, and character of a political society. He points to the many features of resemblance between the people of England and that of the United States, notwithstanding that the one (according to his view) is an aristocratic, the other a democratic community.

It would, perhaps, be not difficult, if this were the proper place, to trace many of the phenomena, selected by M. de Tocqueville, to various unconnected sources, wholly independent of democratic or other political influences. For instance, the prevalence of pantheistic opinions (so far as they are prevalent) is to be sought for in the diffusion of the modern German philosophy-the taste for cheap works of art in numerous mechanical inventions for facilitating their production. In order to see at once that M. de Tocqueville's theorems respecting aristocracy and democracy are, in fact, founded on an imperfect induction-that he has not disentangled all the antecedent facts concurring in the production of the observed phenomenon and that he has generalized the single case of America, or, at most, of America and France, it is only necessary to test his propositions by the ancient republics.

Now, nobody would think of saying that, in the Grecian democracies, the people had any tendency to pantheism, or to the use of abstract terms; and certainly it could not be affirmed of Athens, in the age of Pericles, that its taste in poetry ran into the unnatural and grotesque, or that its taste in sculpture and architecture was turned to petty and perishable works. So the row of white plaster palaces at New York, which M. de Tocqueville considered a mark and consequence of democracy, has, I fear, many parallels, and probably patterns, in aristocratic England.

M. de Tocqueville doubtless saw that most of his general apophthegms concerning democracy, were not applicable to the republics

* Tom. III. pp. 68, 70, 71.

which the ancients regarded as democratic, and which the moderns have generally recognised as such. Accordingly, he considers the governments, both of Athens and Rome, at their most popular periods, as being, in fact, aristocratic on account of the exclusion of the slaves from political rights.*

It is no doubt right, in reasoning upon the ancient democracies, and in instituting a comparison between them and modern democracies, to bear constantly in mind the important fact, that the former contained a numerous class of slaves, and that the free citizens were only a small minority of the entire population. But it would, in my opinion, be a disturbance of the established landmarks of history, and an unauthorized departure from the received language of all writers, ancient and modern, to treat the Athenian and Roman governments, in their developed forms, as aristocracies. Nor, indeed, would even this phraseology render M. de Tocqueville's generalizations correct; for assuming these governments to be aristocratic, it will be found that his general affirmations respecting aristocracies are often as inapplicable to those ancient republics as other of his general affirmations respecting democracies.

The utmost caution is requisite in laying down general propositions respecting the tendencies of aristocratic and democratic governments, or the characteristics of aristocratic and democratic communities. Even the induction of Aristotle, which was necessarily confined to the Greek and other republics on the shores of the Western Mediterranean, is, in many cases, inapplicable to modern Christian communities, having no class of slaves, and acquainted with the use of gunpowder, printing, the compass, and the steam-engine. M. de Tocqueville remarks, that "two neighbouring nations cannot have the same democratic social state without adopting similar opinions and manners."+ Admitting the truth of this remark, (which, however, I must be permitted to think very questionable,) it does not follow that this similarity will exist in cases where communities are separated, not only by wide intervals of space, but also by wide intervals of time, and whose religion, race, language, and civilization, are widely different.

§ 4. It is by a neglect to observe the cautions above indicated—

* Tom. III. p. 122. In like manner, he says, that the Americans who inhabit the States where slavery does not exist, alone present the complete image of a democratic society, tom. IV. p. 147.

+ Tom. IV. p. 243.

by hasty attempts to generalize without a sufficient basis of facts, and to found universal theorems upon a complex but undissected phenomenon by the consequent establishment of imaginary laws of connexion between facts related to each other only by juxtaposition in place or time-and by subjecting intricate problems of plurality of causes to the direct inductive method, without verification or correction, that the Science of Politics has been rendered uncertain and uninstructive, and that practical politicians and statesmen have been deterred from regarding it as resting on a sure foundation, or as tending to useful applications.* If political science be properly understood-if it be confined within the limits of its legitimate province-and if its vocabulary be well fixed by sound definitions and a consistent usage, there is no reason why it should not possess the same degree of certainty which belongs to other sciences founded on observation.

§ 5. Political science may be conveniently distributed into the following three great departments :

1. The nature of a sovereign government, and its relations with the individual persons immediately subject to it.

2. The relation of a sovereign government to a political community dependent upon it.

3. The mutual relations of the sovereign governments of independent communities.

Each of these departments admits of being considered in a double point of view. Each may be either treated merely as something existing, as something which is, without reference to its tendencies, or to any standard of rectitude; or, again, it may be assumed that the existing state of each is known, and it may be treated with reference to its probable future tendencies and effects, as well as with reference to its most improved and erfect state, or what it ought to be. The former may be called Positive or Descriptive, the latter, Ideal, or Speculative Politics.

The science of Positive or Descriptive Politics would, with regard to the first of the three departments above mentioned, comprehend an exposition of the structure of a sovereign government, and its powers the nature of laws and of their execution-the nature of legal rights and obligations, and their classes, and other cognate

* As to the defectiveness of the ordinary methods of proof in the moral sciences, see the exposition of Mr. Mill, System of Logic, b. III. c. 10, §8; b. V. c. 5. § 4; b. VI. c. 7.

subjects. This exposition would be generally applicable to all governments, laws, rights, obligations, &c., without reference to their comparative goodness or badness, or to their conformity with some ideal standard; it would treat political society merely as a subject of observation, and political institutions as something to be noted and described.* Portions of Aristotle's Politics, of Cicero's Republic, of Hobbes' Leviathan, of the works of Grotius and Puffendorf on the Law of Nations, and of their followers, fall under this head. Most of the writers on general jurisprudence likewise contain an exposition of the nature and action of a sovereign government. On the other hand, the Republic and Laws of Plato, a large part of Aristotle's Politics, the works of Bodinus, Machiavel, Montesquieu, Sir T. More, and others, are occupied almost exclusively with considering the tendencies and effects of certain political forms and institutions, or the best form of government.

The second department above mentioned, viz.-that which concerns the relation between a paramount or imperial community, and its dependency, has been considered more or less at length by many writers, but has been generally treated in connexion with the question of colonies, both as respects the actual form of the relation, and the rules of expediency by which it ought to be governed.

The third department, viz.—that of the Law of Nations, or International Law, may be regarded under the same double aspect. It may be either considered as an actually existing system of moral rules, to which the governments of civilized nations usually conform in their mutual relations, and to which they habitually appeal as something recognised in common. Or it may be considered as an ideal or theoretical type, to which the practice of independent nations ought to conform. Such, for example, would be a system of conventional rules for the prevention of war between civilized nations, and for the settlement of international differences without an appeal to arms. The former of these has been called the Positive Law of Nations; the latter might be called Speculative International Law. In the earlier writers, as Grotius and his imitators, the Law of Nations as it is, and the Law of Nations as it ought to be, are frequently confounded; and, indeed, scarcely any attempt is made

*"General jurisprudence, or the philosophy of positive law, is concerned with law as it necessarily is, rather than with law as it ought to be: with law as it must be, be it good or bad, rather than with law as it must be, if it be good." —AUSTIN, Outline of Lectures on General Jurisprudence, p. 3.

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