The latter,

They are the independent men, whom Fox, if I mistake not, humorously defined, when he said, an independent man is a man you can never depend upon. those who fluctuate between courses of action, are properly called trimmers, a term taken from nautical terminology, which has lost I believe, much of its use, since the times of Charles II. and James II., when every body who was attached to the cause of royalty, and even ready to wink at much abuse, was stigmatised with the name of trimmer as soon as he showed himself unwilling to support and defend all the atrocities and corruptions of the court party. Real trimmers are to be shunned in politics as in every other sphere of action; for they are lacking in perseverance or manliness.

The remaining important questions respecting parties will be more conveniently treated of in the next chapter on opposition.

CHAPTER III.

Opposition.-Government. Administration.-What is a lawful Opposition.A well-understood Opposition the essential safeguard of Liberty.-The Opposition a great Institution of Modern Times.-As such it dates from the Times of Walpole and Pultney.—It is lawful to oppose the Majority, which is not always right.—(Order of Sitting in Legislative Assemblies.)—Public Opinion and General Opinion.-Ethical Rules relating to Opposition and Parties in general.-How far ought a Citizen to go in his Opposition, especially in times of War.-Coalitions.-Parties formed on the Ground of foreign national Extraction.

XVII. GOVERNMENT, we have seen, is that establishment which has been agreed upon in order to obtain the ends of the state. It is the machinery of the state. We understand by government chiefly the characteristic and fundamental principles and laws of the jural society, including in monarchies the ruling family, inasmuch as the established dynasty is considered as one of the fundamental and, so long as that government exists, unchangeable features of the state-machinery. The constitutional monarch is an institution. By administration we understand the application of those characteristic and fundamental principles to the occurrences of the day, and, more especially, the chief appliers of those fundamental principles; the chief officers-the cabinet ministers, who for the time have the application, the acting out of the executive laws and government principles as they understand them, in their hands. Now this administering of government, this application of the

principles to practical cases may not only be executed in the spirit of wisdom, justice, conscientiousness and soberness, or folly, injustice, wickedness and profligacy; but the best and calmest men may perfectly agree as to the principles of government, but totally differ in their views as to its application in specific, and yet highly important cases. All those who desire a change of this spirit of application, and, consequently of the chief officers, whose business it is to make this application, from whatever motive this desire may arise, and who unite into a party in order to prevent, by united efforts, the administration from the adopted course as much as possible, in order to dislodge those who occupy the chief places, so as to place in their stead persons of their own views, are called the opposition. An opposition is under and within the fundamental law, in England against the minister, for instance Walpole, in America, against the president; but if in the former case the opposition went beyond Walpole, and worked against George the first or the second, as the jacobites did; or, if in the latter case, an opposition should strive to subvert congress, or the constitution, they cease to be oppositions, and become factions, treasonable bodies or insurgents, as the case may be. Oppositions, therefore, are lawful; they are not only to be suffered, but they are, if not factions, of the greatest usefulness, and, when the government itself becomes rebellious as to the fundamental law within, and traitorous as to the relations of the country without, as, for instance, Charles II. became in the treaty of May 22, 1670 (1) with France, oppositions are the only safeguards to rescue a nation. Without well-understood, lawful and loyal opposition, that support of all substantial civil liberty, namely, that the

minority be protected, and have every fair chance of converting the majority secured, would be either a mockery, or lead to continued violences; for opinion is like the air, harmless and easy if allowed freely to expand, but of tremendous power and danger if compressed.

(1) It is the treaty of Charles with France, after the conversion of Charles and James to catholicism, in the second article of which it is declared, that the king will make public his conversion, and receives the promise from the king of France, of assistance by armed force in the carrying out of this design in Great Britain. For the copy of the original of this second article, see Life of W. Lord Russell, 3d edit. vol. i, p. 51.

XVIII. Without well-understood opposition liberty cannot co-exist with peace and order. (1) Hence the many sufferings of the republics in the middle ages. Nor is any state safe which excludes lawful opposition, and treats all disagreement from the opinion of those in power, as sedition or treason. The fact is well known, that formerly the discharging of a minister from the divan of the Porte, was always at least accompanied with banishment, and frequently with the silken cord; it was considered natural, that he who is discontented must become, or thereby is already, a traitor. In most absolute monarchies, the displacement of a minister is called disgrace, and not unfrequently accompanied by a suggestion not to approach the capital within a certain circuit. So late as in 1610, when after the assassination of Henry IV. the imbecile French cabal had resolved to change all the political principles upon which that great king had conducted his government, Sully, his almost equally great minister, when informed of this change, said to his wife: "If I am wise,

I shall quietly resign all my posts and employments, withdraw all my money, or as much as I can; with part of it purchase some strong castle in one of the most distant provinces, and keep the remainder for any exigences that may happen." (2) So, absolute democracies or aristocracies could not endure opposition, not even the passive existence of those who were known to belong to the opposite side. Banishment followed banishment. Any administration in our modern representative states, which stigmatizes every opposition as factious, shows that it is either very weak or factious itself, and ought not to be borne with by the mass of substantial and good citizens.

As to the history of this great institution, for thus I feel tempted to call it, I believe we cannot date its perfection farther back than under George II. against Walpole, after the Jacobites had given up the idea of restoring the Stuarts, and when Pultney (afterwards Earl Bath) vigorously, yet not, at times, without the spirit of faction, led it. There existed, indeed, a regular opposition against William III., but it was generally more or less revolutionary; that is, it was in the interest of the Stuarts. The opposition in France mixes up frequently the two revolutionary parties of the legitimists and republicans, as this cannot be otherwise so soon after the expulsion of a dynasty. (3)

(1) Mr. Ellice called sir Robert Peel, in a speech relating to lord Durham's mission to the Canadas, in January 1838, if the papers be correct, the leader of her majesty's opposition. There is a deeper sense in this than that of mere pleasantry. The representative government of a free country is not complete without a lawful opposition. A proper lever is wanting.

(2) Memoirs of Sully, iii, p. 260, Lond. edit. of 1761.