Political Science Of The State

586 POLITICAL SCIENCE.
In fact, from the nature of the relation between the individual
and the state, as it was apprehended by the Greeks, it was
not possible to go much farther. And yet he has investigated
this department of politics with a clear eye, and no one since
his time seems to have added much to what he has here
brought together, except so far as the history of large states
and the experience of principles on a large scale has enlight-
ened them. A full discussion of revolutions, especially of
modern revolutions, is a desideratum yet to be supplied. We
intend to look at one or two aspects of the subject only.
We have elsewhere remarked that the word revolution is
Comprehensiveness so comprehensive as to embrace various move-
of the word revolu-
tion, ments of a sudden kind, aiming at political
changes, and including as well changes in one or two respects,
as those which contemplate the.complete political transforma-
tion of society. Thus, the movement that ends in a change
of dynasty, or in removing the existing sovereign and putting
one of his near kindred in his place, is equally called a revo-
lution with one which obliterates differences of ranks, dises-
tablishes a church, abolishes royalty, and alters the tenure of
land together with a large part of the law that has come down
from the past. There is but one event generally known as a
revolution in English history, and this had far less of a revo-
lutionary character than others which have not obtained the
title. It consisted in the bloodless flight of a king who had
endeavored to subvert the laws and institutions ; in a conven-
tion-parliament's declaration that the throne was vacant, and
their invitation to his son-in-law and his daughter to reign in
his stead. He packed up his luggage and went across the
channel. That was the visible event, the body of this revo-
lution, which had indeed a soul much larger than its body.
Now, why was this all ? It was owing to the great transac-
tions of nearly fifty years before, which were not called a
revolution, and yet for a time and before the right time
made a general overturning in the whole political fabric. The
recollection of those events and of what befel the sovereign
was a power that acted on the mind of the king and court to