duce upon somebody else, but for their capacity of reflecting or suggesting ideas and sensations which are peculiarly their own. But individual æstheticism, far from being selfish, tends to link societies together by establishing a community of feeling and an universal language in which it can be expressed.

CHAPTER XVII.

FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT.

THE functions of government must correspond with the condition of the governed; and the present inquiry is limited to the investigation of what functions a government ought to discharge in a well-developed constitutional country. If the principles of the preceding chapters are correct, we shall arrive at the required conclusion, partly by a negative, and partly by a positive process of reasoning. In the first place, the government should not do for the people what they are well able to do for themselves. Its object should be to assist them to manage their own affairs with the smallest amount of authoritative interference; and when its operation becomes necessary, it should never resort to positive law, or other exhibition, or threat of force, if, by influencing opinion, it can obtain the action required. It should not be an expression of the average ignorance of the day, but ally itself as far as may be practicable with the progres

sive forces that tend to produce beneficial change. Indeed, it should regard as one of its primary obligations the duty of keeping in check those conservative principles which obstruct improvement. When civilization and representative institutions have made a certain progress, the conservative elements are of little use in resisting destructive agencies, because the latter no longer exist in sufficient strength to be formidable; and their only service is to prevent new ideas being acted upon without sufficient investigation, or with a rapidity disproportioned to the powers of the community. If all obstacles to the introduction of improvements were summarily removed, the waste of capital embarked in previous modes of operation, and the wear and tear of the human organism that would follow a great rush of change, would no doubt be serious evils, although they must soon prove self-corrective. But so far from the conservative forces requiring artificial aid to preserve the requisite balance, it is they, far more than the progressive forces, that require restraint. Nearly all human occupations generate conservatism, - land-owning invariably produces it, and maintains it up to the point of approaching ruin; success in commerce or manufactures evolves it, because those who are well off prefer keeping their advantages to entering a fresh

career in which their neighbours might outstrip them.

The besetting sin of governments is conservatism, not only because they endeavour to represent conservative interests, but because they are obliged to act upon a system, and systems are opposed to progress. If, therefore, a government is to do its duty to an advancing nation, it should be disconnected as much as possible from stationary or reactionary tendencies. This is the case when the central power does nothing that can be accomplished by local powers, and leaves to different localities diversity of action within the largest practicable limits, and when local powers abstain from meddling with individual concerns. The central power may stimulate, and may guide, with great advantage, when it ought not to undertake the work required; but if the development of all the individuals of the nation in self-reliance and natural diversity be the chief object to be kept in view, it should resist applications to do their work. In this country we need a popular hierarchy of government, from the parish-in which the ecclesiastical relations should be merged in the civil— to the imperial Parliament. A congeries of parishes naturally form a municipal borough in populous neighbourhoods; and cities, boroughs, and

parishes should converge in the county, which should have its representative institutions and its local parliament. With such institutions centralization would be kept in check, or only put to its legitimate purposes; and a great mass of business that now oppresses our legislature, and deteriorates the character of our government, would be locally transacted in a far more satisfactory manner.

It is perhaps necessary that the whole offensive force of a country should be at the direct disposal of the central authority; but the police, and the militia, which ought to constitute the chief military strength of the nation, should be essentially local. Arrangements for national education should likewise be local; and state interference should be restricted to aiding local efforts, or requiring that they should be made.

It is obvious that many things might be done by local representative administrations that ought not to be done by the central power; and if rules should be required to carry out the views of a majority with respect to early closing, or other restrictions upon the hours of labour, they might be made by a locality with less chance of mischief than if passed by the state, which should limit itself to legislation for general concerns.

In relation to crime, it is absurd that the govern