Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/19

Rh sumed the duties of war minister, which he continued to discharge till November 1819. He died 17th March 1830. Gouviou St Cyr was a prudent and cautious rather than a brilliant general, but he would doubtless have obtained better opportunities of acquiring distinction had he shown himself more blindly devoted to the interests of Napoleon.

 GOVERNMENT. Without attempting to discriminate by verbal definitions the various shades of meaning which this word assumes, we shall use it in this article in its widest sense that of the ruling power in a political society. The conception of society which this use of the word implies may be illustrated by two well-known theories. In John Austin's celebrated analysis of law, the first step is the proposition that a law is a command issued by a superior to a subject and enforced by a sanction or penalty. The laws of God with reference to the conduct of men, the laws of a private club or association of men with reference to the conduct of its members, and the laws of a political society, are all, according to Austin's definition, laws properly so called. The laws of nature are laws not properly so called. They are generalizations as to the uniform course of nature, and have no analogy to laws properly so called except in point of uniformity. Positive law, again, is distinguished from other laws, properly so called, as the command of the sovereign of an independent political community. A sovereign is a person, or a determinate body of persons, to whom the bulk of the community is habitually obedient. Every word in this definition has its precise meaning, which is developed by Austin with admirable clearness. The faculty &quot; of untying knots &quot; on which he prided himself is nowhere more conspicuously manifested than in the analysis which lays bare the real meaning of the common phrases used to describe the fundamental parts of society. It is not our purpose to examine the value of this analysis here, but simply to call attention to the assumption that in every society of men there is a determinate body (whether consisting of one individual, or a few or many individuals) whose commands the rest of the community obey. This sovereign body is what in more popular phrase is termed the Government of the country, and the varieties which may exist in its constitution are known as forms of government.

Mr Herbert Spencer, approaching the study of society under the influence of conceptions derived from the study of physical organisms, brings us to very much the same result. The union of men in society is itself an organic structure, having parts and functions corresponding to the parts and functions of an animal or a plant. Mr Spencer pursues this analogy so fully and minutely as to leave the impression that he believes it to be something more than an analogy, that it is a general law from which true deductions regarding society may be drawn. The veins and arteries correspond to our railroads and highways ; the nerves, communicating intelligence to the brain, are paralleled by the telegraph wires; the centralized action of society at the seat of government is the same thing as the regulative activity of the brain. Government is here represented by the regulative functions of a living organism, and forms of government are so many varieties in the structure. Austin, for the purposes of jurisprudence, finds it convenient to regard society as moulded by the will of a dominant body. Spencer exhibits the regulative parts of society as bound up with the rest in one organism. With both the existence of a government is necessary to the conception of society. In the one theory the element of command, in the other that of regulation, is conspicuous. If to these we add a third, that of simple agency, we shall have a tolerably complete view of the relations between Government and society. Besides commanding the conduct of individuals, besides regulating the relations of the various members of society, Government may be conceived of as merely the instrument of society. Where men are united in groups there arises from their union the necessity of action on behalf of the group. That part of society which attends to the business of the whole is the Government. Two main lines of inquiry divide the subject. The first relates to varieties in the structure of the governing body forms of government. The second relates to the functions of the governing body, the sphere of government, the things which fall within the province of state action. In both lines we have to deal with the ascertained facts of the past history and present condition of human societies. In both we have also to notice the speculative opinions of political thinkers. Notwithstanding the apparent confusion it will probably be found more convenient not to separate the historical from the speculative treatment of the subject. What is the best form of government 1 is not quite the same question as What was the constitution of Athens or Rome 1 What are the proper limits of state interference 1 is not the same question as What are the functions of the state in France or England 1 And yet the same answer may often serve for both sets of questions. Ideal constitutions have a suspicious resemblance to the constitutions with which their authors are most familiar. The political speculations of Plato and of Cicero are based on the state systems of Greece and Italy. Cicero's ideal code in the treatise De Legibus is simply an adaptation of the Twelve Tables. On the other hand, the form of political speculation is often determined by, and in turn determines, the practical politics of the time. The intimate connexion between speculation and practice in politics is strikingly illustrated in the period of controversy which culminated in the Revolution of 1688. The irreconcilable claims of crown and parliament threw the mind back on first principles. Never had theorists a better chance. Popular government and absolute government each sought to establish itself on a basis of reason and nature. Filmer founds kingly authority on the natural subjection of mankind and the lineal succession of the king to Adam, the first and divinely appointed head of mankind. Locke's general theories of civil government were, in his own opinion, sufficient &quot;to establish the throne of our great restorer or present king, William, to make good his title in the consent of the people, which, being the only one of all lawful governments, he has more fully and clearly than any prince in Christendom.&quot; We all know how the political issue was decided. The practical was not more complete than the speculative victory. For two centuries the speculations invented to support the popular cause against absolutism have been the accepted commonplaces of Englishmen on the constitution of civil society. A more recent example may be given from modern politics. During the discussions which preceded the passing of the Reform Act of 1867, no question was more hotly disputed than that of the real nature of the franchise. Was it a right or was it a privilege ] In form this is a scientific or, if we like, a metaphysical question But the answer to it depended on another question altogether whether you wished the franchise to be extended to a larger class or not.

Origin of Government.&mdash;A preliminary question, formerly of vast theoretical importance, would be, What is the origin of government 1 How did government come into existence 1 As a question of historical fact, it demands for its solution a knowledge of the whole past of the human race. It has been answered over and over again in times when historical knowledge could hardly be said to exist,