LAW IN POLITICS. 429 



ing. The Speculative Faculty is impatient of wait- 

 ing upon Knowledge, and is ever as busy and as 

 ingenious in finding out new paths of error as in 

 supplying new interpretations of the truth. Hence 

 in Philosophy the most extravagant errors have 

 been constantly associated with the happiest in- 

 tuitions, and it has remained for the successors of 

 great men in another generation to separate their 

 discoveries from their delusions. Hence also in 

 Politics the great movements of Society have sel- 

 dom been accomplished without raising many false 

 interpretations of the Past, and many extravagant 

 anticipations of the Future.* It cannot, indeed, be 

 said with truth that the calamities of Nations have 

 generally arisen from too great play being given 

 to novel or theoretical conclusions. Rather the 

 reverse. They have arisen, for the most part, from 

 too little attention being paid to the progress of 

 opinion, and to the insensible development of new 

 conditions. 



The question has been often raised, whether 



* "Nos peres en 1789 ont ete condamnes a passer des perspectives 

 du Paradis aux scenes de l'Enfer." — Guizot, VEglise d La Socttti, 

 p. 218. 



