POLITICAL SCIENCE.
neglect, on the part of many, of their political duties. With-
out the verging of doctrine toward extreme democracy, most
of these evils would be slight, yet the contrast seems to show
that no political institutions of liberty can stand their ground
against social changes. We find now that men who are uni-
versally believed to have paid money to the electors or to the
legislatures hold up their heads, and the crime is seldom
noticed, less frequently brought to light.
Doctrine in politics has had a much wider sweep in France,
and indeed elsewhere in Europe, but, owing to the tendencies
towards extreme measures, such as the people voting in a ty-
rant, and to the ill-success of democratic government there
on the whole, the national feeling is becoming by experience
more practical in its aims and judgments. The great funda-
mental principle of practical politics is now more admitted
than it was once, namely, that governments in their forms are
not to be judged of on theory alone, because they present a
balance of powers and equitable adjustment of claims, but
by their capacity to hold their ground in a nation and to
secure national happiness.
Modern theories of communism, which have had their hot-
bed in great French centres of population, but are diffused
more or less over the rest of the Christian world, show the
fanatical power of political dogma in its worst form. The
ancient city-states were sometimes infested by cries for a new
division of property, but the prevalence of slavery and of
slaves from abroad prevented this evil, if it brought others.
As this is a theory which will infallibly lead to intestine war,
and has a plausible side, its obvious leadings are calculated
to produce greater distrust of democratic principles than all
other parts of extreme democracy.
Connected with the. differences as it respects speculation in
the two countries which we have selected as types of mod-
ern democracy, is the greater rigor of the French in pulling
down everything that stands in the way of theory, which may
be described as the sacrifice of other considerations to logical
deduction and to system, They demand the arithmetical