Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 22.djvu/744

724 indeed, be proportionately restricted in number, but within this area they will be none the less valid.

Thus, in the science of political economy, it is not universally true that, in all conditions of society, population tends to increase out of proportion to the means of subsistence; for the effective desire of individual self-enrichment constitutes in certain conditions a reparative and compensating force. So in law, it is not everywhere true that a human being is, in a legal sense, a person and not a thing; or that laws proceed from a consciously acting political authority; or that it is recognized as an axiom that taxation and representation go together. The several propositions here chosen, by way of illustration, from two of the component sciences which, with others, go to constitute the complete range of political studies, and help to convert those studies into a separate science, are only partially and relatively true at certain places and periods. But, within these limits of time and place, their truth, and the truth of all like propositions, is invariable and incontestable.

Thus, if the composite nature of Politics impairs the universality of the majority of the propositions with which it is concerned, this only establishes the relativity of these studies, and in no wise detracts from their usefulness or supersedes the employment of those rigorous logical methods which in other respects continue to be applicable.

2. Another reason which accounts for the unscientific aspect under which political studies usually present themselves is that it very rarely happens, or has happened, that conscious attention to the true character of governmental problems, to their difficulties, and to the modes of their solution, is aroused in any nation till long after a practical solution of some kind has been instinctively resorted to, and a considerable advance in the art of administration achieved.

An exception might be supposed to exist in the case of colonies and dependencies, at the first foundation of which all the materials seem to be within the conscious control of the parent or governing State. But it is just on this very account that theoretical truths have here their most hopeful platform, and are habitually applied in practice to an extent which, because of unnoticed but vitiating errors of calculation, is often fraught with serious hazard. The Cornwallis settlement in Bengal, the early land policy of the Australian colonies, and the attempted central taxation of the American colonies by the British Parliament, are all instances of the over-hasty application, to materials believed to be malleable, of firmly fixed political principles. The principles themselves, indeed, in all these cases, needed re-examination and restatement.

The obstacles to at once applying even the best-established principles of government, in all conceivable emergencies, so soon as conscious attention happens to be awakened to the national needs, are sufficiently obvious. It is not only that the principles themselves