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History of England, from the Accession of James the Second, the — Volume 3 by Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay
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analogy to the science of Mechanics. The mathematician can easily
demonstrate that a certain power, applied by means of a certain
lever or of a certain system of pulleys, will suffice to raise a
certain weight. But his demonstration proceeds on the supposition
that the machinery is such as no load will bend or break. If the
engineer, who has to lift a great mass of real granite by the
instrumentality of real timber and real hemp, should absolutely
rely on the propositions which he finds in treatises on Dynamics,
and should make no allowance for the imperfection of his
materials, his whole apparatus of beams, wheels, and ropes would
soon come down in ruin, and, with all his geometrical skill, he
would be found a far inferior builder to those painted barbarians
who, though they never heard of the parallelogram of forces,
managed to pile up Stonehenge. What the engineer is to the
mathematician, the active statesman is to the contemplative
statesman. It is indeed most important that legislators and
administrators should be versed in the philosophy of government,
as it is most important that the architect, who has to fix an
obelisk on its pedestal, or to hang a tubular bridge over an
estuary, should be versed in the philosophy of equilibrium and
motion. But, as he who has actually to build must bear in mind
many things never noticed by D'Alembert and Euler, so must he who
has actually to govern be perpetually guided by considerations to
which no allusion can be found in the writings of Adam Smith or
Jeremy Bentham. The perfect lawgiver is a just temper between the
mere man of theory, who can see nothing but general principles,
and the mere man of business, who can see nothing but particular
circumstances. Of lawgivers in whom the speculative element has
prevailed to the exclusion of the practical, the world has during
the last eighty years been singularly fruitful. To their wisdom
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