Page:Sphere and Duties of Government.djvu/220

200 to this last condition, that natural and general right is the sole true basis of all positive law; that therefore we should always revert to that natural foundation; and hence that (to adduce a point of law which is, as it were, the source of all the others) no one can at any time, or in any way, obtain any right with regard to the powers or means of an- other against or without his will.

Under this supposition I would venture to lay down the following principle:—

''With regard to the limits of its activity, the State should endeavour to bring the actual condition of things as near to the true and just principles of theory as this is possible, and is not opposed by reasons of real necessity. Now, the possibility consists in this, that men are sufficiently ripe to receive the freedom which theory always approves, and that this freedom can succeed in producing those salutary consequences which always accompany its unhindered operation. The other consideration, or that of opposing necessity, reduces itself to this: that freedom, if once granted, is not calculated to frustrate those results, without which not only all further progress, but even existence itself, is endangered. In both of these cases the statesman s judgment must be formed from a careful comparison between the present condition of things, and the contemplated change, and between their respective consequences.''

This principle proceeds absolutely from the application, in this particular case, of the principle we before laid down with regard to all methods of reform. For, as well when there is an incapacity for greater freedom, as when the essential results we have referred to would suffer from the increase, the real condition of things prevents the abstract principles of theory from manifesting themselves in those consequences which, without the intermixture of any foreign influence, they would invariably produce. I shall not add anything