treating it, conduce materially to a successful issue. (2) As the cause continues to operate, morbid habits are formed, and morbid effects are multiplied: a vitiated system is engendered, which soon defies the utmost practical skill. When maladies have become chronic, they cannot be removed at once, or by any simple remedy; as time has been occupied in their formation, time must be allowed for their cure-as their effects have been multiplied, the treatment must be various; the general health and regimen of diet, as well as more special remedies, must be attended to. When the malady is in its acute stage, the politician, as well as the physician, may attempt to control it, but will often fail; the most favourable time for cure is at its incipient stage, before it has become acute, and still more before it has hardened into a chronic type. The politician, like the physician, will have frequent cause to perceive that time is an essential element in the exercise of his art:(2) he will learn the necessity, not only of adopting proper measures, but of carrying them into effect at the right moment; and he will find, by experience, that the best remedies will always be impeded, will often be vain, and sometimes even be mischievous, if they are administered out of season.

There is, lastly, another function which is common to the politician and the physician, namely, the adoption of a prophy

Vidi ego quod primo fuerat sanabile, vulnus
Dilatum longæ damna dedisse mora.'

Ovid. Rem. Am. 91-102.

Temporis ars medicina fere est. Data tempore prosunt,
Et data non apto tempore vina nocent.

Quinetiam accendas vitia, irritesque vetando,
Temporibus si non aggrediare suis."

Ib. 131-4.

On the importance of time in practical politics, see Zachariä vom Staate, vol. ii. p. 259. Theophrastus published a treatise, entitled ToλTIKÒV πpòs Tous Kaipoús, in four books, Diog. Laert. v. 45, where see Menage's note. According to Cic., De Fin. v. 4, Theophrastus wrote: Quæ essent in republicâ inclinationes rerum, et momenta temporum, quibus esset moderandum, utcumque res postularet.'

lactic treatment, and the employment of such a diet and such measures as will prevent disease, and maintain the system in a sound state. () Those sanitary measures which have for their object the maintenance of a normal condition of health should be imitated by the politician, who should strive to discern all noxious influences, and to avert or counteract them before they have caused any serious detriment to the community.

(24) See Gregory, ib. par. 973.

409

$ 1

CHAPTER XXVII.

ON POLITICAL PROGRESS.

WHEN the facts of any political case have been

correctly ascertained, and when a true theory, reduced by proper adaptations into a preceptive maxim, is duly applied to it, all the logical conditions for sound practice have been fulfilled. Every system of rules, however-every scientific art-fails occasionally when applied in practice; and there is no judgment so sure as always to perceive and rectify its defects. Neither in politics nor in any other branch of practice-with whatever department of science it may be concerned—is there any infallible guide to success. In military and naval affairs, in education, in constructive and engineering works of all kinds, in agriculture, horticulture, manufactures, commerce, in all modes of investing capital and of employing labour, as well as in the business of government, the judges most competent, on account of study, experience, and natural ability, often err.

Thus, in the choice of sites for new harbours, docks, and of new roads and lines of communication, the most experienced persons are not infallible in their judgments respecting the wants of trade, and the existence of an effective demand. Projects of this kind, when executed, do not always fulfil the expectations of their promoters. The same remark applies to new colonies. Not every new town becomes an Alexandria; not every new settlement becomes a Carthage, a Syracuse, or a New York. An inferior position is sometimes preferred to a superior one in its immediate neighbourhood, as when Chalcedon was founded before Byzantium. (') New mechanical inventions of all sorts

(1) Les gouvernements ont tenté quelquefois de fixer eux-mêmes les places où les villes seraient bâties; mais leurs décrets sont restés sans effet, toutes les fois que la position et la nature des lieux n'y ont pas attiré ou multiplié la population. On en trouve plusieurs exemples dans

r

frequently fail upon trial; new buildings prove to be unsuited for their destination; new rooms are unfavourable to hearing.

In like manner, the measures of a government which have been adopted with all securities for their success, sometimes fail in producing the effect intended. As we have shown in previous chapters,() the failure may be owing to causes which might by possibility have been foreseen, or to causes which scarcely admitted of reasonable anticipation. But inasmuch as politics admit of a scientific treatment, and can, within certain limits, be reduced to rules-as the experience of the past serves as a guide for the direction of the future-practical wisdom succeeds in the long run. Well-considered measures prove on the whole beneficial, and a well-governed is more prosperous than an ill-governed community.(3)

The immediate aim of every political act is success; to do something well, or to make something better. If a government > retains all that is good in its system, and maintains it in repair, and if it eliminates or improves what is bad, the society is progressive, so far as its progress depends upon the government. Political progress is the combined result of the several successful efforts at amelioration. These efforts may, as we have already had occasion to point out, (') be either systematic, simultaneous, and on a large scale, or they may be single, successive, and unconnected. In either case, however, they are the result of a deliberate design, and are distinctly conceived by their authors before they are executed.

L

§ 2 The subject of progressive civilization is of such vital importance in politics, that it will require examination before this treatise is brought to an end. We have had frequent occasion to advert to the capacity of progress as the characteristic of

les Etats Unis d'Amérique, et particulièrement dans l'état de Virginie.'— Comte, Traité de Législation, liv. iv. c. 2, note, who cites confirmatory passages from Jefferson and M. de Humboldt.

(2) Above, ch. xii. § 10; xxiv. § 18.
(3) See ch. xxiv. § 18.

(4) Ch. xx. § 9.

man in comparison with the animal kingdom,(5) and to remark, that without the instrumentality of political government this progress would be impossible. An inquiry into the means by which civilization has been effected, and by which it may be promoted, belongs, however, partly to the philosophical historian, and partly to the scientific politician. In the present chapter, we can only consider the subject so far as the proper method of treating it is concerned; and with this view we will attempt to determine to what extent, and by what evidence, the progress of civilization can be traced from its origin to the present time.(®)

§ 3 We have, in a former chapter, (7) referred to the theories respecting the progress of civil society, which represent mankind as emerging from a state of primitive barbarism, and gradually forming for himself the arts of civilized life. All these theories, from those of Æschylus, Plato and Lucretius, downwards, begin from an assumed positive state of rudeness, and describe the gradual amelioration of mankind, by the formation of political

(5) Sous quelque aspect que l'on étudie l'existence comparative de l'homme aux divers âges successifs de la société, on trouvera constamment que le résultat général de notre évolution fondamentale ne consiste pas seulement à améliorer la condition matérielle de l'homme, par l'extension continue de son action sur le monde extérieur; mais aussi et surtout à développer, par un exercice de plus en plus prepondérant, nos facultés les plus éminentes, soit en diminuant sans cesse l'empire des appétits physiques, et en stimulant davantage les divers instincts sociaux, soit en excitant continuellement l'essor des fonctions intellectuelles, même les plus élevées, et en augmentant spontanément l'influence habituelle de la raison sur la conduite de l'homme.'-Comte, Phil. Pos. tom. iv. p. 628.

(6) For an account of the manner in which the idea of social progress has been conceived by different writers, ancient and modern, see M. Savary's Essay, De l'Idée de Progrès; Paris, 1851.

(7) Ch. xxii. § 20. The distinction between barbarousness and civilization is discussed in Dunbar's Essays on the History of Mankind in Rude and Civilized Ages, essay 4 (ed. 2, 1781), and in Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society, part iv. § 4.

The term polished (says Ferguson), if we may judge from its etymology, originally referred to the state of nations in respect to their laws and government; and men civilized were men practised in the duty of citizens. In its latter applications, it refers no less to the proficiency of nations in the liberal and mechanical arts, in literature, and in commerce; and men civilized are scholars, men of fashion, and traders.'-Part. v. § 1.

M. Guizot's definition of civilization may be read in his Histoire de la Civilisation en Europe, leçon i.; and his Histoire de la Civilisation en France, leçon i. On the distinction between a savage and a barbarous state of society, see above, vol. i. p. 11, note 7.