538 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



class who (on a subject which no one, however igno- 

 rant, thinks himself incompetent to discuss) profess 

 to guide themselves by common sense rather than by 

 science ; but is often countenanced by persons with 

 greater pretensions to instruction ; persons who, having 

 sufficient acquaintance with books and with the 

 current ideas to have heard that Bacon taught men to 

 >/ follow experience, and to ground their conclusions 

 upon facts instead of metaphysical dogmas, think 

 that by treating political facts in as directly experi- 

 mental a method as chemical facts, they are showing 

 themselves true Baconians, and proving their adver- 

 saries to be mere syllogizers and schoolmen. As, 

 however, the notion of the applicability of experi- 

 mental methods to political philosophy cannot coexist 

 with any just conception of these methods themselves, 

 the kind of arguments from experience which the 

 chemical theory brings forth as its fruits (and which 

 form the staple, in this country especially, of parlia- 

 mentary and hustings' oratory), are such as, at no time 

 since Bacon, would have been admitted to be valid in 

 chemistry itself, or in any other branch of experimental 

 science. They are such as these; that the prohibition 

 of foreign commodities must conduce to national 

 wealth, because England has flourished under it, or 

 because countries in general which have adopted it 

 have flourished; that our laws, or our internal admi- 

 nistration, or our constitution, are excellent for a 

 similar reason: and the eternal arguments from histo- 

 rical examples, from Athens or Rome, from the fires 

 in Smithfield or the French Revolution. 



I will not waste time in contending against modes 

 of argumentation which no person, with the smallest 

 practice in estimating evidence, could possibly be 

 betrayed into; which draw conclusions of general 



