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Studies in Literature by John Morley
page 78 of 223 (34%)
I mind the bigging o 't!"

Sir Henry Maine believes that the air is thick with ideas about
democracy that were conceived _a priori_, and that sprung from the
teaching of Rousseau. A conviction of the advantages of legislative
change, for example, he considers to owe its origin much less to
active and original intelligence, than to "the remote effect of words
and notions derived from broken-down political theories." There are
two great fountains of political theory in our country according to
the author: Rousseau is one, and Bentham is the other. Current
thought and speech Is infested by the floating fragments of these two
systems--by loose phrases, by vague notions, by superstitions, that
enervate the human intellect and endanger social safety. This is the
constant refrain of the pages before us. We should have liked better
evidence. We do not believe that it is a Roman praetorium. Men often
pick up old phrases for new events, even when they are judging events
afresh with independent minds. When a politician of the day speaks of
natural rights, he uses a loose traditional expression for a view of
social equities which has come to him, not from a book, but from a
survey of certain existing social facts. Now the phrase, the literary
description, is the least significant part of the matter. When Mr.
Mill talks of the influence of Bentham's writings, he is careful to
tell us that he does not mean that they caused the Reform Bill or the
Appropriation Clause. "The changes which have been made," says Mill,
"and the greater changes which will be made, in our institutions are
not the work of philosophers, but of the interests and instincts
of large portions of society recently grown into strength"
_(Dissertations_, i. 332). That is the point. It is the action of
these interests and instincts which Sir Henry Maine habitually
overlooks. For is the omission a mere speculative imperfection. It has
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