superable difficulty, and justly, for it has never been overcome except by the parliamentary régime which Montesquieu, after spending a thoughtful life in surveying English government, which might be seen in action or known. through the cold medium of history, establishes to be the beau-ideal of governments. In that celebrated chapter, the sixth of his eleventh book, in which he treats of the constitution of England, he lays down that there are in each state three sorts of powers :-the Legislative; the Executive, in affairs which relate to the rights of nations; the Executive, in affairs which relate to civil right. There is no liberty if the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body of persons, because the same monarch or senate may make tyrannical laws in order to execute them tyrannically. There is no liberty if the judicial power is not separated from the legislative and the executive. If joined to the legislative the judge could be legislator, and his power over life and property arbitrary; if joined to the executive, the judge could have the force of an oppressor. Everything is lost if the same body of chiefs or the same man exercised all. There is despotism and absolutism whether of the one or of the many. In most European kingdoms the prince has the first two powers, his subjects the third. Among the Turks, as in the Venetian plutocracy and in the Athenian multitude after the time of Cleon, all are united. The power of judging ought not to be given to a permanent senate, but exercised by persons drawn from the body of the people at certain times of the year by law. There is always in a state which is or has been in a state of progress, a body of persons distinguished by birth, riches, or honours, to whom, if confounded with the people and allowed no distinct voice, the common liberty would be slavery; the majority would exercise over them an absolute tyranny. It being therefore necessary that their part in legislation should be proportionate to the other advantages which they have in the state, it results that they form a body

which has the power to stop the illegal attempts of the people, as the people have the right to stop theirs. If there were no monarch, and the executive power were confided to a certain number of persons drawn from the legislative body, there could be no liberty, because the two powers would be to a certain extent united. The fundamental constitution of the government is that there exists a legislative body composed of two parties-an hereditary body of nobles and a body chosen to represent the people. The executive has only a veto on the legislative acts of the two houses.

This is, in brief, the idea of constitutional monarchy, as developed in Great Britain, and the model which so many of the continental nations have endeavoured in vain to transfer to their own countries. Why have they failed? Simply because they have overlooked and disregarded the fact, that the parliamentary institutions depend for their stability on being the representatives of separate interests; and when they cease to be this, when one of these interests perishes, the power of the whole fabric must fall. When the balance of power ceases to coincide with the balance of property, that portion of the state which has the greatest wealth will demand a corresponding accession of power; and even should it not be granted constitutionally, will acquire it by what is called, in the phrase of the day, "pressure from without." It may, therefore, safely be laid down as one of the conditions for the successful working of constitutional government, that the interest whose rights are provided for in this parliamentary system should have of itself strength enough to assert its rights, with chance of success, in a civil war. There must not only be a right of resistance, but also a power of resistance. Whatever sentimentalists (and sentimentalism is a dangerous virtue for a practical politician), whatever such persons may say about right, not might, it is quite certain that every state and every government which has existed for any length of time has been established by

violence, or the fear of it, and has continued to exist only because its enemies had not the force requisite to overthrow it. If there is not in the state a power of resistance by two or more of the colliding forces of society, it follows that the most powerful element is in reality the ruling body in the state, and that the other constitutional powers act as feeble checks upon it. They are no longer powers militant, for one is a power triumphant. When such a state of things exists the constitution has lost its vital principle, the principle of compromise, and exists only by the sufferance of the superior party. They have lost the safeguard against that political degeneration which is caused by the appropriation of public offices and the distribution of public property to serve the purposes of a class. The common desire to avoid such a calamity induces that perpetual jealousy which is so necessary for the maintenance of the constitution, and may excuse a defeated party for crying ruin upon every little reverse of their own. Thus the Reform Bill of 1832, and the Revolution of 1688, were both inveighed against as destructive to the constitution, because they were carried against the wishes of a great political party, and had, therefore, in their eyes, a direct tendency to destroy the equilibrium of counterbalancing powers, though, in effect, they secured that equilibrium, because the defeated party had previously more power than was its share. Thus it is a maxim of practical politics, often in recent times neglected, but never violated without disaster, that not only is a constitutional monarchy the proper form of government for nations where the chief elements of civilisation opposite but not contrary to each other are simultaneously and equally developed, but also that simultaneous and equal development is necessary for the exist ence of constitutional monarchy.

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There are three classes of nations in their acme. 1st. Those in which all the social elements that stage of national development co-exist, and where a

proper

constitutional monarchy gives effect to them, and affords the natural and proper governmental machinery.

2nd. Those in which all the social elements proper to that stage of natural development co-exist, but where there is no constitutional monarchy.

3rd. Where some of these social elements are wanting, and the national development is, therefore, strikingly imperfect.

Of the first, England is the most perfect example. Let us illustrate the second by considering the state of France before the Revolution. There was a powerful monarch; there was a body of hereditary aristocrats, who had been, and might have continued to be, formidable to the king; there were industrious, educated, and wealthy traders ; all the materials out of which the English constitution has been formed-all the forces of society whose collision strikes out the bright spark of national splendour; but to the last was denied the political power which their wealth and influence gave them the capacity of forcibly demanding; and the aristocracy, descending to be courtiers, threw the weight of their influence entirely against the populace; and hence, from the simple violation of the principle that the balance of power should coincide with the balance of property, came the Revolution. Now, subsequently, France desired a constitution, and consummated a miserable failure. For the French constitution of 1830

found in that country no body like the peers of England, great territorial potentates, who include in their order the men most distinguished for solid and substantial wealth, and those eminent for high descent, as well as the choicest of those who have been the most illustrious in their generation for personal acquirements; forming together a compact and distinct body which, by its hereditary rights, is totally independent of the crown. The French aristocracy of 1830 were, on the contrary, altogether deficient in this independent power and honourable prestige. The peerage being for life only, and its possessors incapable of holding

large landed estates, they were necessarily dependent on the crown, and, beyond the power of exercising a constitutional right, their voice carried no weight with it. The consequence was, that all France divided into two parties, -crown and people, the new phantom aristocracy naturally exercising whatever little power it had for the interest of their sovereign, on whom every peer was in some degree dependent. France, therefore, both before and after the Revolution, supports the proposition, that an incongruity between the form of government and the social elements of the state ends only in disaster. In the one case there was an aristocratical-monarchical government where there should have been a constitution like the English in the other there was a constitution like the English, where there should have been either a centralised republic or an empire.

Now, of the third class of nations in their acme, viz. where some of the social elements are wanting, the examples are extremely numerous, and their diversity such that no two examples are alike, for none falls short of perfection in exactly the same point and to the same degree as another nation does.

Of all imperfect developments, that of Germany has been at once the most striking and the most perplexing to an inquirer who desires to understand the causes of social movements. The imperfection of German development arises not from the absence of any one of the social elements, but from the dislocated manner in which they have each pursued a separate and independent development. Instead of the aristocratic and democratic elements pursuing, as it were, on the same soil and in the same nation, their natural tendencies, it seemed as if, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the two elements belonged to a different people and a different land. The great mass of Germany remained under the sway of rude, feudal, and disunited barons, sometimes calling themselves kings and reigning dukes, acknowledging the Emperor as