ceed by establishing marts, cutting canals, laying down railroads, erecting factories, forming docks, and similar works, by which the natural riches of the country may be made to yield the largest return and to exert the greatest influence. In this sense, art is the development of nature, that is, its adaptation to the purposes of utility and beauty, the human intellect being the developing power.

5. When such developments as have last been mentioned are connected with some continuous intellectual process on which they depend, they are developments of an idea, and may be called political; as we see them in the growth of States or the changes of a Constitution. Barbarians descend into southern regions from cupidity, and their warrant is the sword: this is no intellectual process, nor is it the mode of development exhibited in civilized communities. Where civilization exists, reason, in some shape or other, is the incentive or the pretence of development. When an empire enlarges, it is on the call of its allies, or for the balance of power, or from the necessity of a demonstration of strength, or from a fear for its frontiers. It lies uneasily in its territory, it is illshaped, it has unreal boundary lines, deficient communication between its principal points, or defenceless or turbulent neighbours. Thus, of old time, Euboea was necessary for Athens, and Cythera for Sparta; and Augustus left his advice, as a legacy, to confine the Empire between the Atlantic, the Rhine and Danube, the Euphrates, and the Arabian and African deserts. In this day, we hear of the Rhine being the natural boundary of France, and the Indus of our Eastern empire; and we predict that, in the event of a war, Prussia will change her outlines in the map of Europe. The development is material; but an idea gives unity and force to its

movement.

And so in national politics, a late writer remarks

of the Parliament of 1628-29, in its contest with Charles, that, so far from encroaching on the just powers of a limited monarch, it never hinted at the securities which were necessary for its measures. However, "twelve years more of repeated aggressions," he adds, "taught the Long Parliament what a few sagacious men might perhaps have already suspected; that they must recover more of their ancient constitution, from oblivion; that they must sustain its partial weakness by new securities; that, in order to render the existence of monarchy compatible with that of freedom, they must not only strip it of all it had usurped, but of something that was its own."1 Whatever be the worth of this author's theory, his facts or representations are an illustration of a political development.

Again, at the present day, that Ireland should have a population of one creed, and a Church of another, is felt to be a political arrangement so unsatisfactory, that all parties seem to agree that either the population will develope in power or the Establishment in influence.

Developments in polities, though really the growth of ideas, are often capricious and intricate from the nature of their subject-matter. They are influenced by the character of sovereigns, the rise and fall of statesmen, the fate of battles, and the numberless casualties of the world. "Perhaps the Greeks would be still involved in the heresy of the Monophysites," says Gibbon, "if the Emperor's horse had not fortunately stumbled. Theodosius expired, his orthodox sister succeeded to the throne."2

Again, it often happens, or generally, that various distinct and incompatible elements are found in the origin or infancy of polities, or indeed of philosophies, some of which must be ejected before any satisfactory developments can take place, if any. And they are commonly ejected by the gradual Hallam's Constit. Hist. ch. vii. p. 572.

2 Ch. xlvii.

growth of the stronger. The reign of Charles the First, just referred to, supplies an instance in point.

Sometimes discordant ideas are for a time connected and concealed by a common profession or name. Such is the case of coalitions in politics and comprehensions in religion, of which commonly no good is to be expected. Such is an ordinary function of committees and boards, and the sole aim of conciliations and concessions, to make contraries look the same, and to secure an outward agreement where there is no other unity.

Again, developments, reactions, reforms, revolutions, and changes of various kinds are mixed together in the actual history of states, as of philosophical sects, so as to make it very difficult to exhibit them in any scientific analysis.

Often the intellectual process is detached from the practical, and posterior to it. Thus it was after Elizabeth had established the Reformation that Hooker laid down his theory of Church and State as one and the same, differing only in idea; and, after the Revolution and its political consequences, that Warburton wrote his "Alliance." A new theory is now again needed for the constitutional lawyer, to reconcile the existing state of things with the just claims of religion. And so, again, in Parliamentary conflicts, men come to their conclusions by the external pressure of events or the force of principles, they do not know how; they have to speak, and they look about for arguments: and a pamphlet is published on the subject in debate, or an article appears in a Review, to furnish common places for the many.

Other developments, though political, are strictly subjected and consequent to the ideas of which they are the exhibitions. Thus Locke's philosophy was a real guide, not a mere defence of the Revolution era, operating forcibly upon Church and government in and after his day. Such too were the theories

P

which preceded the overthrow of the old regime in France and other countries at the end of the last century.

Again, perhaps there are polities founded on no ideas at all, but on mere custom, as among the Asiatics.

• 6. In other developments the intellectual character is so prominent that they may even be called logical, as in the Anglican theory of the Royal Supremacy, which has been created in the courts of law, not in the cabinet or on the field. Hence it is carried out with a consistency and minute application which the history of constitutions cannot exhibit. It does not merely exist in statutes, or in articles, or in oaths, it is realized in details: as in the congé d'élire and letter-missive on appointment of a Bishop;-in the forms observed in Privy Council on the issuing of State Prayers;-in certain arrangements observed in the Prayer-book, where the universal or abstract Church precedes the King, but the national or really existing body follows him; in printing his name in large capitals, while the Holiest are in ordinary type, and in fixing his arms in churches instead of the Crucifix; moreover, perhaps, in placing "sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion,” before "false doctrine, heresy, and schism."

Again, when some new philosophy or its portions are introduced into the measures of the Legislature, or into the concessions made to a political party, or into commercial or agricultural policy, it is often said, "We have not seen the end of this;" "It is an instalment of future concessions;" "Our children will see." We feel that it has unknown bearings and issues.

The admission of Jews to municipal offices has lately been defended1 on the ground that it is the introduction of no new principle, but a development of one already received; that its great premisses Times Newspaper of March 1845.

have been decided long since, and that the present age has but to draw the conclusion; that it is not open to us to inquire what ought to be done in the abstract, since there is no ideal model for the infallible guidance of nations; that change is only a question of time, and that there is a time for all things; that the application of principles ought not to go beyond the actual case, neither preceding nor coming after an imperative demand; that in point of fact Jews have lately been chosen to offices, and that in point of principle the law cannot refuse to legitimate that election.

In theology, the adoption of the word ɛorókos at Ephesus as a test of orthodoxy is an instance of a logical development.

7. Another class of developments may be called historical; I mean when a fact, which at first is very imperfectly apprehended except by a few, at length grows into its due shape and complete proportions, and spreads through a community, and attains general reception by the accumulation, agitation, and concurrence of testimony. Thus some reports die away; others gain a footing, and are ultimately received as truths. Courts of law, Parliaments, newspapers, letters and other posthumous documents, historians and biographers, and the lapse of years which dissipates parties and prejudices, are in this day the instruments of the development. Accordingly the Poet makes Truth the daughter of Time.1 Thus at length approximations are made to a right appreciation of facts and characters. History cannot be written except in an after-age. Thus by development the Canon of the New Testament has been formed. Thus public men are content to leave their reputation to posterity; great re-actions take place in opinion; nay, sometimes men outlive opposition and obloquy. Thus Saints are canonized in the Church, long after they have entered into their rest.

1 Crabbe's Tales.

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