It is this power of teaching other men how to think that has

Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is enclosed in _underscores_. Additional

notes will be found near the end of this ebook.

AN OLD MASTER

AND

OTHER POLITICAL ESSAYS

AN OLD MASTER

AND

OTHER POLITICAL ESSAYS

BY

WOODROW WILSON

PROFESSOR OF JURISPRUDENCE IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

AUTHOR OF “CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT,” “DIVISION AND

REUNION,” ETC., ETC.

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

1893

COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

TROW DIRECTORY

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY

NEW YORK

TO

ROBERT BRIDGES

WITH HEARTY ACKNOWLEDGMENT

OF LONG AND TRIED

FRIENDSHIP

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. AN OLD MASTER, 3

II. THE STUDY OF POLITICS, 31

III. POLITICAL SOVEREIGNTY, 61

IV. CHARACTER OF DEMOCRACY IN THE UNITED STATES, 99

V. GOVERNMENT UNDER THE CONSTITUTION, 141

⁂ I. and II. republished from the _New Princeton Review_,

IV. and V. from the _Atlantic Monthly_, with the

kind permission of the publishers.

I

AN OLD MASTER

Why has no one ever written on the art of academic lecturing and its

many notable triumphs? In some quarters new educational canons have

spoken an emphatic condemnation of the college lecture, and it would

seem to be high time to consider its value, as illustrative of an art

about to be lost, if not as exemplary of forces to be retained, even

if modified. Are not our college class-rooms, in being robbed of the

old-time lecture, and getting instead a science-brief of _data_ and

bibliography, being deprived also of that literary atmosphere which

once pervaded them? We are unquestionably gaining in thoroughness;

but are we gaining in thoughtfulness? We are giving to many youths an

insight, it may be profound, into specialties; but are we giving any of

them a broad outlook?

There was too often a paralysis of dulness in the old lecture, or,

rather, in the old lecturer; and written lectures, like history and

fashion in dress, have an inveterate tendency to repeat themselves;

but, on the contrary, there was often a wealth of power also in the

studied discourse of strong men. Masters bent upon instructing and

inspiring--and there were many such--had to penetrate that central

secret of literature and spoken utterance--the secret of style. Their

only instrument of conquest was the sword of penetrating speech.

Some of the subtlest and most lasting effects of genuine oratory

have gone forth from secluded lecture desks into the hearts of quiet

groups of students; and it would seem to be good policy to endure

much indifferent lecturing--watchful trustees might reduce it to a

minimum--for the sake of leaving places open for the men who have in

them the inestimable force of chastened eloquence. For one man who

can impart an undying impulse there are several score, presupposing

the requisite training, who can impart a method; and here is the well

understood ground for the cumulating disfavor of college lecturing and

the rapid substitution of ‘laboratory drill.’ But will not higher

education be cut off from communion with the highest of all forces, the

force of personal inspiration in the field of great themes of thought,

if you interdict the literary method in the class-room?

I am not inclined to consume very many words in insisting on this

point, for I believe that educators are now dealing more frankly with

themselves than ever before, and that so obvious a point will by no

means escape full recognition before reformed methods of college and

university instruction take their final shape. But it is very well to

be thinking explicitly about the matter meanwhile, in order that the

lecture may be got ready to come fully militant into the final battle

for territory. The best way to compass this end would seem to be, to

study the art of the old masters of learned discourse. With Lanfranc

one could get the infinite charm of the old monastic school life;

with Abelard, the undying excitement of philosophical and religious

controversy; with Colet, the fire of reforming zeal; with Blackstone,

the satisfactions of clarified learning. But Bee and Paris and Oxford

have by no means monopolized the masters of this art, and I should

prefer, for the nonce at least, to choose an exemplar from Scotland,

and speak of Adam Smith. It will, no doubt, be possible to speak of him

without going over again the well worn ground of the topics usually

associated with his great fame.

There is much, besides the contents of his published works, to draw

to Adam Smith the attention of those who are attracted by individual

power. Scotchmen have long been reputed strong in philosophic doctrine,

and he was a Scot of the Scots. But, though Scotland is now renowned

for her philosophy, that renown is not of immemorial origin; it was not

till the last century was well advanced that she began to add great

speculative thinkers to her great preachers. Adam Smith, consequently,

stands nearly at the opening of the greatest of the intellectual eras

of Scotland. Yet by none of the great Scotch names which men have

learned since his day has his name been eclipsed. The charm about the

man consists, for those who do not regard him with the special interest

of the political economist, in his literary method, which exhibits

his personality so attractively and makes his works so thoroughly his

own, rather than in any facts about his eminency among Scotchmen. You

bring away from your reading of Adam Smith a distinct and attractive

impression of the man himself, such as you can get from the writings of

no other author in the same field, and such as makes you wish to know

still more of him. What was he like? What was his daily life?

Unhappily, we know very little that is detailed of Adam Smith as a

man; and it may be deplored, without injustice to a respected name,

that we owe that little to Dugald Stewart, who was too self-conscious

and too stately to serve another efficiently as biographer. There

was no suitable place amid the formal spaces of his palatial style

for small illuminating details. Even from Dugald Stewart, however,

we get a picture of Adam Smith which must please every one who loves

simplicity and genuineness. He was not, perhaps, a companionable man;

he was much too absent-minded to be companionable; but he was, in

the highest sense, interesting. His absent-mindedness was of that

sort which indicates fulness of mind, which marks a mind content,

much of the time, to live within itself, indulging in those delights

of quiet contemplation which the riches of a full store of thought

can always command. Often he would open to his companions his mind’s

fullest confidences, and, with a rare versatility, lavish a wealth of

information and illustration upon topics the most varied and diverse,

always to the wondering delight of those who heard him.

All who met Adam Smith in intimate intercourse are said to have been

struck chiefly by the gentleness and benignity of his manner--traits

which would naturally strike one in a Scotchman; for men of that

unbending race are not often distinguished by easiness of temper or

suavity of manner, but are generally both _fortiter in re et fortiter

in modo_. His gentleness was, possibly, only one phase of that timidity

which is natural to absent-minded men, and which was always conspicuous

in him. That timidity made it rare with him to talk much. When he

did talk, as I have said, his hearers marvelled at the ingenuity of

his reasoning, at the constructive power of his imagination, at the

comprehensiveness of his memory, at the fertility of all his resources;

but his inclination was always to remain silent. He was not, however,

disinclined to public discourse, and it is chiefly to his unusual

gifts as a lecturer that he seems to have owed his advancement in the

literary, or, rather, in the university, world.

Acting upon the advice of Lord Kames, an eminent barrister and a man of

some standing in the history of philosophy, he volunteered a course of

lectures in Edinburgh almost immediately upon his return from Oxford;

and the success of this course was hardly assured before he was elected

to the chair of Logic in the University of Glasgow. In the following

year he had the honor of succeeding to the chair of Moral Philosophy,

once occupied by the learned and ingenious Hutcheson. He seems to have

been at once successful in raising his new chair to a position of the

very highest consideration. His immediate predecessor had been one

Thomas Craigie, who has left behind him so shadowy a reputation that it

is doubtless safe to conclude that his department was, at his death,

much in need of a fresh infusion of life. This it received from Adam

Smith. The breadth and variety of the topics upon which he chose to

lecture, and the felicity, strength, and vitality of the exposition

he gave them (we are told by one who had sat under him), soon drew

to Glasgow “a multitude of students from a great distance” to hear

him. His mastery of the art of academic lecturing was presently an

established fact. It appears clear that his success was due to two

things: the broad outlook of his treatment and the fine art of his

style. His chair was Moral Philosophy; and ‘moral philosophy’ seems

to have been the most inclusive of general terms in the university

usage of Scotland at that day, and, indeed, for many years afterward.

Apparently it embraced all philosophy that did not directly concern the

phenomena of the physical world, and, accordingly, allowed its doctors

to give very free play to their tastes in the choice of subjects.

Adam Smith, in Glasgow, could draw within the big family of this

large-hearted philosophy not only the science of mental phenomena,

but also the whole of the history and organization of society; just

as, years afterwards, John Wilson, in Edinburgh, could insist upon the

adoption of something very like _belles-lettres_ into the same generous

and unconventional family circle.

Adam Smith sought to cover the field he had chosen with a fourfold

course of lectures. First, he unfolded the principles of natural

theology; second, he illustrated the principles of ethics, in a series

of lectures which were afterwards embodied in his published work on

the “Theory of Moral Sentiments;” third, he discoursed on that branch

of morality which relates to the administration of justice; and, last,

coming out upon the field with which his name is now identified, he

examined those political regulations which are founded, not upon

principles of justice, but upon considerations of expediency, and which

are calculated to increase the riches, the power, and the prosperity

of the State. His notes of his lectures he himself destroyed when he

felt death approaching, and we are left to conjecture what the main

features of his treatment were, from the recorded recollections of

his pupils and from those published works which remain as fragments

of the great plan. These fragments consist of the “Theory of Moral

Sentiments,” the “Wealth of Nations,” and “Considerations Concerning

the First Formation of Languages;” besides which there are, to quote

another’s enumeration, “a very curious history of astronomy, left

imperfect, and another fragment on the history of ancient physics,

which is a kind of sequel to that part of the history of astronomy

which relates to ancient astronomy; then a similar essay on the ancient

logic and metaphysics; then another on the nature and development of

the fine, or, as he calls them, the imitative, arts, painting, poetry,

and music, in which was meant to have been included a history of the

theatre--all forming part, his executors tell us, ‘of a plan he had

once formed for giving a connected history of the liberal and elegant

arts;’” part, that is (to continue the quotation from Mr. Bagehot),

of the “immense design of showing the origin and development of

cultivation and law, or ... of saying how, from being a savage, man

rose to be a Scotchman.”

The wideness of view and amazing variety of illustration that

characterized his treatment, in developing the several parts of this

vast plan, can easily be inferred from an examination of the “Wealth of

Nations.”

“The ‘Wealth of Nations,’” declares Mr. Buckle, from whom, for

obvious reasons, I prefer to quote, “displays a breadth of treatment

which those who cannot sympathize with, are very likely to ridicule.

The phenomena, not only of wealth, but also of society in general,

classified and arranged under their various forms; the origin of

the division of labor, and the consequences which that division has

produced; the circumstances which gave rise to the invention of money,

and to the subsequent changes in its value; the history of those

changes traced in different ages, and the history of the relations

which the precious metals bear to each other; an examination of the

connection between wages and profits, and of the laws which govern

the rise and fall of both; another examination of the way in which

these are concerned, on the one hand with the rent of land, and, on

the other hand, with the price of commodities; an inquiry into the

reason why profits vary in different trades, and at different times;

a succinct but comprehensive view of the progress of towns in Europe

since the fall of the Roman Empire; the fluctuations, during several

centuries, in the prices of the food of the people, and a statement

of how it is, that, in different stages of society, the relative cost

of meat and of land varies; the history of corporation laws and of

municipal enactments, and their bearing on the four great classes of

apprentices, manufacturers, merchants, and landlords; an account of

the immense power and riches formerly enjoyed by the clergy, and of

the manner in which, as society advances, they gradually lose their

exclusive privileges; the nature of religious dissent, and the reason

why the clergy of the Established Church can never contend with it on

terms of equality, and, therefore, call on the State to help them, and

wish to persecute when they cannot persuade; why some sects profess

more ascetic principles, and others more luxurious ones; how it was,

that, during the feudal times, the nobles acquired their power, and how

that power has, ever since, been gradually diminishing; how the rights

of territorial jurisdiction originated, and how they died away; how the

sovereigns of Europe obtained their revenue, what the sources of it

are, and what classes are most heavily taxed in order to supply it; the

cause of certain virtues, such as hospitality, flourishing in barbarous

ages, and decaying in civilized ones; the influence of inventions and

discoveries in altering the distribution of power among the various

classes of society; a bold and masterly sketch of the peculiar sort

of advantages which Europe derived from the discovery of America and

of the passage round the Cape; the origin of universities, their

degeneracy from the original plan, the corruption which has gradually

crept over them, and the reason why they are so unwilling to adopt

improvements, and to keep pace with the wants of the age; a comparison

between public and private education, and an estimate of their relative

advantages; these, and a vast number of other subjects, respecting

the structure and development of society, such as the feudal system,

slavery, emancipation of serfs, origin of standing armies and of

mercenary troops, effects produced by tithes, laws of primogeniture,

sumptuary laws, international treaties concerning trade, rise of

European banks, national debts, influence of dramatic representations

over opinions, colonies, poor-laws--all topics of a miscellaneous

character, and many of them diverging from each other--all are fused

into one great system, and irradiated by the splendor of one great

genius. Into that dense and disorderly mass, did Adam Smith introduce

symmetry, method, and law.”

In fact, it is a book of digressions--digressions characterized by more

order and method, but by little more compunction, than the wondrous

digressions of Tristram Shandy.

It is interesting to note that even this vast miscellany of thought,

the “Wealth of Nations,” systematized though it be, was not meant to

stand alone as the exposition of a complete system; it was only a

supplement to the “Theory of Moral Sentiments;” and the two together

constituted only chapters in that vast book of thought which their

author would have written. Adam Smith would have grouped all things

that concern either the individual or the social life of man under the

several greater principles of motive and action observable in human

conduct. His method throughout is, therefore, necessarily abstract

and deductive. In the “Wealth of Nations,” he ignores the operation

of love, of benevolence, of sympathy, and of charity in filling life

with kindly influences, and concentrates his attention exclusively upon

the operation of self-interest and expediency; because he had reckoned

with the altruistic motives in the “Theory of Moral Sentiments,” and

he would not confuse his view of the economic life of man by again

forcing these in where selfishness was unquestionably the predominant

force. “The philosopher,” he held, “is the man of speculation, whose

trade is not to do anything, but to observe everything;” and certainly

he satisfied his own definition. He does observe everything; and he

stores his volumes full with the sagest practical maxims, fit to have

fallen from the lips of the shrewdest of those Glasgow merchants

in whose society he learned so much that might test the uses of his

theories. But it is noticeable that none of the carefully noted facts

of experience which play so prominent a part on the stage of his

argument speaks of any other principle than the simple and single one

which is the pivot of that part of his philosophy with which he is at

the moment dealing. In the “Wealth of Nations” every apparent induction

leads to self-interest, and to self-interest alone. In Mr. Buckle’s

phrase, his facts are subsequent to his argument; they are not used for

demonstration, but for illustration. His historical cases, his fine

generalizations, everywhere broadening and strengthening his matter,

are only instances of the operation of the single abstract principle

meant to be set forth.

When he was considering that topic in his course which has not come

down to us in any of the remaining fragments of his lectures--the

principles of justice, namely--although still always mindful of its

relative position in the general scheme of his abstract philosophy

of society, his subject led him, we are told, to speak very much

in the modern historical spirit. He followed upon this subject,

says the pupil already quoted, “the plan which seems to have been

suggested by Montesquieu; endeavoring to trace the gradual progress

of jurisprudence, both public and private, from the rudest to the

most refined ages, and to point out the effects of those arts which

contribute to subsistence, and to the accumulation of property,

in producing corresponding improvements or alterations in law and

government.” In following Montesquieu, he was, of course, following

one of the forerunners of that great school of philosophical students

of history which has done so much in our own time to clear away the

fogs that surround the earliest ages of mankind, and to establish

something like the rudiments of a true philosophy of history. And this

same spirit was hardly less discernible in those later lectures on the

“political institutions relating to commerce, to finances, and to the

ecclesiastical and military establishments,” which formed the basis of

the “Wealth of Nations.” Everywhere throughout his writings there is a

pervasive sense of the realities of fact and circumstance; a luminous,

bracing, work-a-day atmosphere. But the conclusions are, first of all,

philosophical; only secondarily practical.

It has been necessary to go over this somewhat familiar ground with

reference to the philosophical method of Adam Smith, in order to come

at the proper point of view from which to consider his place among the

old masters of academic lecturing. It has revealed the extent of his

outlook. There yet remains something to be said of his literary method,

so that we may discern the qualities of that style which, after proving

so effectual in imparting power to his spoken discourses, has since,

transferred to the printed page, preserved his fame so far beyond the

lifetime of those who heard him.

Adam Smith took strong hold upon his hearers, as he still takes strong

hold upon his readers, by force, partly, of his native sagacity, but

by virtue, principally, of his consummate style. The success of his

lectures was not altogether a triumph of natural gifts; it was, in

great part, a triumph of sedulously cultivated art. With the true

instinct of the orator and teacher, Adam Smith saw--what every one

must see who speaks not for the patient ear of the closeted student

only, but also to the often shallow ear of the pupil in the class-room,

and to the always callous ear of the great world outside, which must

be tickled in order to be made attentive--that clearness, force, and

beauty of style are absolutely necessary to one who would draw men to

his way of thinking; nay, to any one who would induce the great mass

of mankind to give so much as passing heed to what he has to say. He

knew that wit was of no avail, without wit’s proper words; sagacity

mean, without sagacity’s mellow measures of phrase. He bestowed the

most painstaking care, therefore, not only upon what he was to say,

but also upon the way in which he was to say it. Dugald Stewart speaks

of “that flowing and apparently artless style, which he had studiously

cultivated, but which, after all his experience in composition, he

adjusted, with extreme difficulty, to his own taste.” The results

were such as to offset entirely his rugged utterance and his awkward,

angular action, and to enable the timid talker to exercise the spells

of an orator. The charm of his discourses consisted in the power of

statement which gave them life, in the clear and facile processes

of proof which gave them speed, and in the vigorous, but chastened,

imagination which lent them illumination. He constantly refreshed and

rewarded his hearers, as he still constantly refreshes and rewards his

readers, by bringing them to those clear streams of practical wisdom

and happy illustration which everywhere irrigate his expositions. His

counsel, even on the highest themes, was always undarkened. There

were no clouds about his thoughts; the least of these could be seen

without glasses through the transparent atmosphere of expression which

surrounded them. He was a great thinker,--and that was much; but he

also made men recognize him as a great thinker, because he was a great

master of style--which was more. He did not put his candle under a

bushel, but on a candlestick.

In Doctor Barnard’s verses, addressed to Sir Joshua Reynolds and his

literary friends, Adam Smith is introduced as a peer amidst that

brilliant company:

“If I have thoughts and can’t express ’em,

Gibbon shall teach me how to dress ’em

In words select and terse;

Jones teach me modesty and Greek,

_Smith how to think_, Burke how to speak,

And Beauclerc to converse.”

It is this power of teaching other men how to think that has given

to the works of Adam Smith an immortality of influence. In his first

university chair, the chair of Logic, he had given scant time to the

investigation of the formal laws of reasoning, and had insisted,

by preference, upon the practical uses of discourse, as the living

application of logic, treating of style and of the arts of persuasion

and exposition; and here in his other chair, of Moral Philosophy,

he was practically illustrating the vivifying power of the art he

had formerly sought to expound to his pupils. “When the subject of

his work,” says Dugald Stewart, speaking of the “Theory of Moral

Sentiments,” “when the subject of his work leads him to address

the imagination and the heart, the variety and felicity of his

illustrations, the richness and fluency of his eloquence, and the skill

with which he wins the attention and commands the passions of his

hearers, leave him, among our English moralists, without a rival.”

Such, then, were the matters which this great lecturer handled, and

such was the form he gave them. Two personal characteristics stand out

in apparent contrast with what he accomplished: he is said to have been

extremely unpractical in the management of his own affairs, and yet he

fathered that science which tells how other people’s affairs, how the

world’s affairs, are managed; he is known to have been shy and silent,

and yet he was the most acceptable lecturer of his university. But it

is not uncommon for the man who is both profound and accurate in his

observation of the universal and permanent forces operative in the life

about him, to be almost altogether wanting in that sagacity concerning

the local and temporary practical details upon which the hourly

facilitation and comfort of his own life depend; nor need it surprise

any one to find the man who sits shy and taciturn in private, stand out

dominant and eloquent in public. “Commonly, indeed,” as Mr. Bagehot has

said, “the silent man, whoso brain is loaded with unexpressed ideas,

is more likely to be a successful public speaker than the brilliant

talker who daily exhausts himself in sharp sayings.” There are two

distinct kinds of observation: that which makes a man alert and shrewd,

cognizant of every trifle and quick with every trick of speech; and

that which makes a man a philosopher, conscious of the steady set of

affairs and ready in the use of all the substantial resources of wise

thought. Commend me to the former for a chat; commend me to the latter

for a book. The first will sparkle; the other burns a steady flame.

Here, then, is the picture of this Old Master: a quiet, awkward,

forceful Scotchman, whose philosophy has entered everywhere into the

life of politics and become a world force in thought; an impracticable

Commissioner of Customs, who has left for the instruction of statesmen

a theory of taxation; an unbusiness-like professor, who established

the science of business; a man of books, who is universally honored by

men of action; plain, eccentric, learned, inspired. The things that

strike us most about him are, his boldness of conception and wideness

of outlook, his breadth and comprehensiveness of treatment, and his

carefully clarified and beautified style. He was no specialist, except

_in the relations of things_.

Of course, spreading his topics far and wide in the domain of history

and philosophy, he was at many points superficial. He took most of his

materials at second hand; and it has been said that he borrowed many of

his ideas from the French. But no matter who mined the gold, he coined

it; the image and superscription are his. Certain separate, isolated

truths which served under him may have been doing individual, guerilla

warfare elsewhere for the advancement of science; but it was he who

marshalled them into drilled hosts for the conquering of the nations.

Adam Smith was doubtless indebted to the Physiocrats, but all the world

is indebted to Adam Smith. Education and the world of thought need men

who, like this man, will dare to know a multitude of things. Without

them and their bold synthetic methods, all knowledge and all thought

would fall apart into a weak analysis. Their minds do not lack in

thoroughness; their thoroughness simply lacks in minuteness. It is only

in their utterances that the mind finds the exhilaration and exaltation

that come with the free air that blows over broad uplands. They excite

you with views of the large aspects of thought; conduct you through

the noblest scenery of the mind’s domain; delight you with majesty of

outline and sweep of prospect. In this day of narrow specialties, our

thinking needs such men to fuse its parts, correlate its forces, and

centre its results; and our thinking needs them in its college stage,

in order that we may command horizons from our study windows in after

days.

The breadth and comprehensiveness of treatment characteristic of

the utterances of such a teacher are inseparable attributes of his

manner of thought. He has the artist’s eye. For him things stand in

picturesque relations; their great outlines fit into each other; the

touch of his treatment is necessarily broad and strong. The same

informing influence of artistic conception and combination gives to

his style its luminous and yet transparent qualities. His sentences

cannot retain the stiff joints of logic; it would be death to them

to wear the chains of formal statement; they must take leave to deck

themselves with eloquence. In a word, such men must write _literature_,

or nothing. Their minds quiver with those broad sympathies which

constitute the life of written speech. Their native catholicity makes

all minds receive them as kinsmen. By reason of the very strength of

their humanity, they are enabled to say things long waiting to be said,

in such a way that all men may receive them. They hold commissions

from the King of Speech. Such men will not, I am persuaded, always

seek in vain invitations to those academic platforms which are their

best coignes of vantage. But this is not just the time when they are

most appreciated, or most freely encouraged to discover themselves;

and it cannot be amiss to turn back to another order of things, and

remind ourselves how a master of academic inspiration, possessing, in

a great power to impart intellectual impulse, something higher than a

trained capacity to communicate method, may sometimes be found even in

a philosophical Scotchman.

II

THE STUDY OF POLITICS

It has long been an open secret that there is war among the political

economists. John Stuart Mill no longer receives universal homage,

but has to bear much irreverent criticism; even Adam Smith might be

seriously cavilled at were not the habit of praise grown too old in his

case. He is still ‘the father of political economy;’ but, like other

fathers of his day, he seems to us decidedly old fashioned. The fact

is, that these older writers, who professed to point out the laws of

human business, are accused of leaving out of view a full half of human

nature; in insisting that men love gain, they are said to have quite

forgotten that men sometimes love each other, that they are not only

prehensile, but also a great many other things less aggressive and less

selfish.

Those who make these charges want to leave nothing human out of their

reckonings; they want to know ‘all the facts,’ and are ready, if

necessary, to reduce every generalization of the older writers to the

state--the wholly _exceptional_ state--of a rule in German grammar.

Their protest is significant, their purpose heroic, beyond a doubt; and

what interesting questions are not raised by their programme! How is

the world to contain the writings, statistical, historical, critical,

which must be accumulated ere this enormous diagnosis of trade and

manufacture shall be completed in its details? And after it shall have

been completed in detail who is to be born great enough in genius and

patience to reduce the mass to a system comprehensible by ordinary

mortals? Moreover, who is going surety that these new economists will

not be dreadful defaulters before they get through handling these

immense assets of human nature, which Mill confessed himself unable

to handle without wrecking his bookkeeping? Are they assured of the

eventual collaboration of some Shakespeare who will set before the

world all the standard types of economic character? Let the world hope

so. Even those who cannot answer the questions I have broached ought to

bid such sturdy workers ‘God speed!’

The most interesting reflection suggested by the situation is, that

political economists are being harassed by the same discipline of

experience that, one day or another, sobers all constructors of

systems. They cannot build in the air and then escape chagrin because

men only gaze at their structures, and will not live in them. Closet

students of politics are constantly undergoing new drill in the same

lesson: the world is an inexorable schoolmaster; it will have none

of any thought which does not recognize it. Sometimes theorists like

Rousseau, being near enough the truth to deceive even those who know

something of it, are so unfortunate as to induce men to rear fabrics of

government after their aerial patterns out of earth’s stuffs, with the

result of bringing every affair of weight crashing about their ears, to

the shaking of the world. But there are not many such coincidences as

Rousseau and his times, happily; and other closet politicians, more

commonly cast and more ordinarily placed than he, have had no such

perilous successes.

There is every reason to believe that in countries where men vote as

well as write books, political writers at any rate give an honest

recognition of act to these facts. They do not vote their opinions,

they vote their party tickets; and they are the better citizens by far

for doing so. Inside their libraries they go with their masters in

thought--mayhap go great lengths with Adolph Wagner, or hold stiffly

back, “man _versus_ the state,” with Spencer; outside their libraries

they ‘go with their party.’ In a word, like sensible men, they frankly

recognize the difference between what is possible in thought and what

is practicable in action.

But the trouble is, that when they turn from voting to writing they

call many of their abstract reflections on government studies of

_politics_, and thereby lose the benefit of some very wholesome aids

to just thought. Even when they draw near the actual life of living

governments, as they frequently do, and read and compare statutes

and constitutions, they stop short of asking and ascertaining what

the men of the street think and say of institutions and laws; what

little, as well as what big, influences brought particular laws into

existence; how much of each law actually lives in the regulation of

public function or private activity, how much of it has degenerated

into ‘dead letter;’ in brief, just what things it is--what methods,

what habits, what human characteristics and social conditions--that

make the appearance of politics outside the library so different from

its appearance inside that quiet retreat; what it is that constitutes

‘practical politics’ a peculiar province. And yet these are the

questions most necessary to be answered in order to reach the heart of

their study.

Every one who has read great treatises on government which were not

merely speculative in their method must have been struck by their

exhaustive knowledge of statutes, of judicial precedents, and of legal

and constitutional history; and equally by their tacit ignorance of

anything more than this gaunt skeleton of institutions. Their best

pages are often those on which a modest asterisk, an unobtrusive

numeral, or a tiny dagger sticking high in the stately text, carries

the eye down to a foot-note, packed close in small print, in which some

hint is let drop of the fact that institutions have a _daily_ as well

as an epochal life, from which the student might ‘learn something to

his advantage.’

The inherent weakness of such a method is shown by the readiness with

which it is discredited when once a better one is put beside it. What

modern writer on political institutions has not felt, either directly

or indirectly, the influence of de Tocqueville and Bagehot? Both these

inimitable writers were men of extraordinary genius, and, whatever they

might have written about, their writings would have been admiringly

preserved, if only for the wonder of their luminous qualities. But

their political works live, not only as models of effective style,

but also as standards of stimulating wisdom; because Bagehot and de

Tocqueville were not merely students, but also _men of the world_, for

whom the only acceptable philosophy of politics was a generalization

from actual daily observation of men and things. They could see

institutions writ small in the most trivial turns of politics, and read

constitutions more clearly in a biography than in a statute-book. They

were men who, had they written history, would have written the history

of peoples, and not of courts or parliaments merely. Their methods

have, therefore, because of their essential sanity, gone far toward

discrediting all others; they have leavened the whole mass of political

literature. Was it not Bagehot, for instance, who made it necessary for

Professor Dicey to entitle his recent admirable work “The Law of the

Constitution,” that no one might think he mistook it for the _Life_ of

the Constitution?

Who has not wished that Burke had fused the permanent thoughts of

his splendid sentences of wisdom together into a noble whole, an

incomparable treatise whereby every mind that loved liberty might be

strengthened and fertilized? He had handled affairs, and could pluck

out the heart of their mystery with a skill that seldom blundered;

he spoke hardly a word of mere hearsay or speculation. He, it would

seem, better than any other, could have shown writers on politics the

difference between knowledge and insight, between an acquaintance with

public law and a real mastery of the principles of government.

Not that all ‘practical politicians’ would be the best instructors in

the deep--though they might be in the hidden--things of politics. Far

from it. They are too thickly crowded by daily detail to see permanent

outlines, too much pushed about by a thousand little influences to

detect accurately the force or the direction of the big and lasting

influences. They ‘cannot see the forest for the trees.’ They are no

more fitted to be instructors _because_ they are practical politicians

than lawyers are fitted to fill law-school chairs because they are

active practitioners. They must be something else besides to qualify

them for the high function of teaching, and must be that something

else in so masterful a fashion that no distraction of active politics

can for a moment withdraw their vision from the great and continuous

principles of their calling.

The active statesman is often an incomparable teacher, however, when

he is himself least conscious that he is teaching at all, when he has

no thought of being didactic, but has simply a heart full of the high

purpose of leading his fellow-countrymen to do those things which he

conceives to be right. Read the purposes of men like Patrick Henry

and Abraham Lincoln, men untutored of the schools--read their words

of leadership, and say whether there be anything wiser than their

home-made wisdom.

It is such reflections as these--whether my examples be well chosen or

not--which seem to me to lead directly to the right principle of study

for every one who would go beyond the law and know the life of States.

Not every State lets statutes die by mere disuse, as Scotland once

did; and if you are going to read constitutions with only lawyers for

your guides, be they never so learned, you must risk knowing only the

anatomy of institutions, never learning anything of their biology.

“Men of letters and of thought,” says Mr. Sidney Colvin, where one

would least expect to find such a remark--in a “Life of Walter Savage

Landor”--

“Men of letters and of thought are habitually too much given to

declaiming at their ease against the delinquencies of men of

action and affairs. The inevitable friction of practical politics

generates heat enough already, and the office of the thinker and

critic should be to supply not heat, but light. The difficulties

which attend his own unmolested task, the task of seeking after and

proclaiming salutary truths, should teach him to make allowance for

the still more urgent difficulties which beset the politician--the

man obliged, amidst the clash of interests and temptations, to

practise from hand to mouth, and at his peril, the most uncertain

and at the same time the most indispensable of the experimental

arts.”

Excellent! But why stop there? Must the man of letters and of thought

observe the friction of politics only to make due allowance for the

practical politician, only to keep his own placid conclusions free

from any taint of scorn or cavil at men whose lives are thrown amidst

affairs to endure the buffetings of interest and resist the tugs of

temptation? Is not a just understanding of the conditions of practical

politics also an indispensable prerequisite to the discovery and

audible proclamation of his own “salutary truths?” No truth which

does not on all its sides touch human life can ever reach the heart

of politics; and men of ‘unmolested tasks,’ of mere library calm,

simply cannot think the thoughts which will tell amidst the noise of

affairs. An alert and sympathetic perception of the infinite shifts

of circumstance and play of motive which control the actual conduct

of government ought to permeate the thinking, as well as check the

criticisms, of writers on politics.

In a word, ought not the ‘man of the world’ and the ‘man of books’

to be merged in each other in the student of politics? Was not John

Stuart Mill the better student for having served the East India Company

and sat in the House of Commons? Are not Professor Bryce and Mr. John

Morley more to be trusted in their books because they have proved

themselves worthy to be trusted in the Cabinet?

The success of great popular preachers contains a lesson for students

of politics who would themselves convert men to a saving doctrine. The

preacher has, indeed, an incalculable advantage over the student of

politics in having as his text-book that Bible which speaks of the

human heart with a Maker’s knowledge of the thing He has made; by

knowing his book he knows the deepest things of daily life. But the

great preacher reaches the heart of his hearers not by knowledge, but

by sympathy--by showing himself a brother-man to his fellow-men. And

this is just the principle which the student of politics must heed.

He must frequent the street, the counting-house, the drawing-room,

the club-house, the administrative offices, the halls--yes, and the

lobbies--of legislatures. He must cross-examine the experience of

government officials; he must hear the din of conventions, and see

their intrigues; he must witness the scenes of election day. He must

know how men who are not students regard government and its affairs.

He will get many valuable suggestions from such men on occasion;

better than that, he will learn the available approaches to such men’s

thoughts. Government is meant for the good of ordinary people, and it

is for ordinary people that the student should elucidate its problems;

let him be anxious to keep within earshot of such.

This is not to commend the writer on politics to narrow ‘practical’

views and petty comment; it is not to ask him to find a philosophy of

government which will fit the understanding and please the taste of the

‘ward politician:’ it is only to ask him to keep his generalizations

firmly bottomed on fact and experience. His philosophy will not

overshoot the hearts of men because it is feathered with high thought,

unless it be deliberately shot in air. Thoughts do not fail of

acceptance because they are not commonplace enough, but because they

are not true enough; and, in the sort of writing about which we are

here speaking, truth is a thing which can be detected better by the man

who knows life than by the man who knows only logic. You cannot lift

truth so high that men cannot reach it; the only caution to be observed

is, that you do not ask them to climb where they cannot go without

leaving _terra firma_.

Nor is the student, who naturally and properly loves books, to leave

books and sit all his time in wiseacre observation amidst busy men. His

books are his balance--or, rather, his ballast. And of course the men

of his own day are not the only men from whom he can learn politics.

Government is as old as man; men have always been politicians; the

men of to-day are only politicians of a particular school; the past

furnishes examples of politicians of every other school, and there

is as much to be learned about government from them as from their

successors.

Carlyle had the sort of eye for which one should pray when seeking to

find men alive and things actual in the records left of them. Who has

not profited by his humorous familiarity with the foibles and personal

habits of the men who lived about the court of the Hohenzollerns?

Who has not learned more than any other man could have told him of

Prussian administration under its first great organizer by looking with

Carlyle into the sociable informalities of Frederick William’s ‘tobacco

parliament?’ Carlyle knew these men well enough to joke with and rail

at them. He twitted them with their family secrets, and, knowing what

clay they were of, was not awed by their state ceremonials. Yet he saw

them, as he himself bitterly complains, only through the medium of

crabbed documents and dry-as-dust books, with no seer like himself to

help him in his interpretations. It was hard straining of the eyes to

see so far back through the dense and murky atmosphere of formal record

and set history; but he saw, nevertheless, because he did not need to

be told all in order to know all; the dryest of historians could hardly

avoid dropping some hint which would suffice Carlyle more than would

tomes of ‘profane history.’

If you know what you are looking for and are not expecting to find it

advertised in the newspapers, but lying somewhere beneath the surface

of things, the dullest fool may often help you to its discovery. It

needs a good nose to do the thing, but look how excellent is the game

to which a casual scent may bring you in such a domain as the study of

politics. There are whole worlds of fact waiting to be discovered by

inference. Do not expect to find the life of constitutions painted in

the great ‘standard authorities,’ but, following with becoming patience

their legal anatomy of institutions, watch their slightest movement

toward an illustrative foot-note, and try to find under that the scent

you are in quest of. If they cite an instance, seek the recital of the

same case elsewhere, where it is told with a different purpose; if it

promise well there, hunt it further still, and make sure you catch

every glimpse it affords of men’s actual dealings with government. If

your text mention names of consequence, seek them out in biographies,

and scan there the personal relations of men with affairs, for hints

of the methods by which governments are operated from day to day. You

will not need any incentive to read all their gossip, in letters and

journals, and so see governors as men; but do more: endure official

interviews and sessions of Parliament with them; collate their private

letters and their public despatches--there’s no telling when or where

you shall strike fresh trails of the game you seek. Interview judges

off the bench, courtiers away from court, officers off duty. Go to

France and live next door a prefect in the provinces; go to London

and try to find out how things of weight are talked about in the

smoking-room of the House of Commons.