The Growth of Government

There are superior political principles yet to be found, to give completeness to our system, and to account for departures that are constantly being made from the prescribed path of our preconceived theories; and within the orbit of a lesser truth the attractive influence of a greater shall lead to its discovery. Neptune had been seen, and its position in the heavens marked down; but the astronomer had made up his mind that it was a fixed star, all unconscious that a world was to be added to the solar system. And, in the firmament of truth, 1 " What the science of mechanics is to matter, party is to knowledge. The one leads to the improvement of material things, the other to the advancement of society. Party may be denominated the manifold form of moral power in action. Its elements are to be found in the principles of human nature. ... It permanently aids in opening paths of truth. It has an onward and conservative power. — Hist, of Democ, vol. i., p. 1. the heavens are studded with gems, whose significance is still unappreciated, but whose real character shall yet be known; and not only shall the comprehension of one truth lead to the apprehension of another, but, also, many incidental truths shall still- attend upon what shall yet be disclosed, like the attendance of Neptune's satellite upon the planet. There is a difference between seeing a thing and knowing it, and a truth cannot be fully known until its force is experienced, and that widely and by successive generations. Our sense of justice is one thing ; our judgment is quite another. With reference to the Infinite Euler, these terms may be used interchangeably. Not so with us. Between them occurs, sometimes, a fearful hiatus. Our intuitions are good, and our motives in government are good, but our judgment may be poor. To make judgment the transcription of justice is the progressive work of the ages. Judgment necessitates the data of experience. This is a growth. It involves an interminable series of well-considered efforts to adjust the parts of a community to the whole and the whole to the parts. ^ Society has ^ As stated in its preamble, the Constitution of Massachusetts "is a Social Compact by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall some common interests in opposition to the individuals composing it. The individual must yield something to the State; and yet it exists for the man, and not the man to aggrandize the State. In Plato's conception, a citizen differed from a slave only in this, that he had the State for his master. This is a Pagan idea, and not a Christian. In the Christian view, men are created alike, in the image of God: they have an independent value, and are equal. Nothing seems more elementary and evident. But in all rudimentary government the family was the unit. The patriarchy tended to become monarchy. The subject was taught to recognize authority, a thing so desirable in itself, but suppressive in its influence and tendency. The irresponsible use of power ends in its abuse. This abuse rouses men from that inertia which must be recognized as a law in the movements in human history, as well as a law in the motion of bodies, and which induces a peculiar tendency to rest or to depart from be governed by certain laws for the common good." — Manual of General Court, p. 39. **A11 the constitutional authority ever possessed by the kings of Great Britain over their dominions was by compact derived from the people, and held of them for the common interest of the whole society." — Contttitution of New Jersey. the existing order of things only so far as exigencies may require. Extreme despotism gives rise to extreme views of personal liberty. It can almost be said that the first step toward freedom is a misstep or overstep on the part of its assailant. That a people becomes disinthralled by being inthralled. But liberty does not begin with a people's enjoyment of it. It antedates all the forms of its expression. The spirit is given: a body is grown. The recognition has been gradual : the principle is eternal.

" Since neither now nor yesterday began Tliese thoughts, which have been ever, nor yet can A man be found who their first entrance knew." The struggle of six centuries abroad, and our own conflict and progress for a century and a half, brought us to the declaration that men were free and equal. Now, it is very significant that, for the perfected expression of this doctrine, we must come forward with the march of the centuries ; but to find the principles which men and generations of men have labored to embody, we jnust go backward to the very beginnings of constitutional government, only to find them assumed in the code of nature. "Whenever Roman jurisprudence, which has the longest known history of any set of human institutions, attempts to conform itself to the code of nature," all men are considered equal. This, as shown by Maine in his Ancient Law, is with the Romans a strictly legal rule. With the French it becomes a political proposition. ^ All men are equal in the sense of ought to be equal. And the maxim begins to express the sense of a great standing wrong suffered by mankind. A century ago the doctrine passed over to America. Says Maine, " The American lawyers of the time, and particularly those of Virginia, appear to have possessed a stock of knowledge, including miuch that could have been derived only from the legal literature of Continental Europe. …