212 



Nor is it probable that any one can be found who really believes in the 

 doctrine. It .would not be difficult to find in Hobbes' writings opinions 

 inconsistent with it ; and even by Bentham and Austin the doctrine is 

 asserted with the anarchical qualification that the government may be re- 

 sisted, or evea overturned, when demanded by the vague principle of 

 general utility. So in history, never has the doctrine been practically 

 asserted by any but the predominant party in the government ; nor has it 

 ever had the slightest influence with the party in opposition. Nor are we 

 without instances of revolutions eifected by men who on previous occa- 

 sions had most absolutely asserted the doctrine. Thus, among many 

 other instances that might be cited, the cavalier and church party, who, 

 in the great rebellion, supported Charles, and asserted in the most unqual- 

 ified terms the principle of the divine right of kings, was not restrained 

 by its doctrine, from joining with the revolutionary party to dethrone 

 James. Nor can any one in this country be found who hesitates to justify 

 our own Revolution, or any other of the great revolutions of history by 

 wliich tyranny has been overthrown, and constitutional liberty estab- 

 lished. 



NOTES. 



(a) "The ancient Greeks applied the name TZoXirturj to all political science. Wa 

 (Germans) distinguish Public Law {Staatsrecht) and Politics (Politik) as two special 

 sciences 



" Public Law and Politics both consider the State on the whole, but each from a dif- 

 ferent point of view, and in a different direction. In order to understand the State more 

 thoroughly, we distinguish its two main aspects— its existence and its life. 



" Public Law [Staatsrecht) deals with the State as it is, i. e., its normal arrangements, the 

 permanent conditions of its existence. 



" VoVitics (Politik), on the other hand, Aas to do with the life and conduct of the S' ate." 

 — The Theory of the State, Bluntschli translation, p. 2. (The italics are the translator's.) 



"The general science of Right is divided into three principal branches, each one of 

 which forms a distinct science : First, the philosophy of right— sm integral part of philoso- 

 phy in general— expounds the, fundamental principles of right, whicli result from the 

 nature of man as a reasonable being, and determines the manner in which the relations 

 between men ought to be established in order to conform to the idea of justice. It cre- 

 ates thus, not a chimerical, but an ideal State, towards which social life ought more and 

 more to approximate. On the other hand, the history of right — an integral part of history 

 in general — makes us know the changes that the laws and the institutions of a people 

 have undergone at different epochs of their civilization. Their present state, so far as it 

 is comprised in the principles of right actually in force, is determined by positive right, 

 private and public ; while civil and political statistics, which are a part of general sta- 

 tistics, make us know tlie totality of facts which characterize the state of private and 

 political law. Positive right i.s comprised in the history of right, because it changes con- 

 tinually wi'.h the culture of the people. Finally the science intermediary between the 

 science and the history of right, and bearing upon both, is political scietice (or Policy, la 

 science politique). It demands on one hand, from the philosophy of right, the knowledge 

 of the end of society, and of the general principles of its civil organization, and con- 

 sults, on the other, in history and positive right, and in statistics the antecedents of a 

 people, the character and the manners which it has mauitested in its institutions, the 

 actual state of its culture, and its exterior relations with other nations. It is from this 

 data that political science expounds the reforms for which the State is prepared by its 



