people requires us to be silent about our opinions. A republican, for
instance, is at perfect liberty to declare himself so. Nobody will say
that he is not within his rights if he should think it worth while to
practise this liberty, though of course he will have to face the obloquy
which attends all opinion that is not shared by the more demonstrative
and vocal portions of the public. It is true that in every stable
society a general conviction prevails of the extreme undesirableness of
constantly laying bare the foundations of government. Incessant
discussion of the theoretical bases of the social union is naturally
considered worse than idle. It is felt by many wise men that the chief
business of the political thinker is to interest himself in
generalisations of such a sort as leads with tolerable straightness to
practical improvements of a far-reaching and durable kind. Even among
those, however, who thus feel it not to be worth while to be for ever
handling the abstract principles which are, after all, only clumsy
expressions of the real conditions that bring and keep men together in
society, yet nobody of any consideration pretends to silence or limit
the free discussion of these principles. Although a man is not likely to
be thanked who calls attention to the vast discrepancies between the
theory and practice of the constitution, yet nobody now would
countenance the notion of an inner doctrine in politics. We smile at the
line that Hume took in speaking of the doctrine of non-resistance. He
did not deny that the right of resistance to a tyrannical sovereign does
actually belong to a nation. But, he said, 'if ever on any occasion it
were laudable to conceal truth from the populace, it must be confessed
that the doctrine of resistance affords such an example; and that all
speculative reasoners ought to observe with regard to this principle
the same cautious silence which the laws, in every species of
government, have ever prescribed to themselves.' As if the cautious
silence of the political writer could prevent a populace from feeling