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CHAPTER XVI.

ON THE ETHICS OF POLITICS.

THE rules of political morality seem to be less ascertained and agreed upon in general opinion than any other branch of philosophy which applies itself directly to the life of man; and this is owing perhaps to their being in their nature less determinate; for though the first principles of this, as of all other morality, are plain and definite, the derivative principles, and their application in practice, are not so.

Some moralists would have the principles of private life carried whole into politics, in all their distinctness and strictness. Some, on the other hand, might have been worshippers in

the Temple at Acro-Corinth, which was dedicated to Necessity and Violence.

The result of this division of opinion is, that public men who adopt the more rigid creed, finding the carrying of it into practice to be equivalent to a repudiation of public life, are set at variance with themselves their conduct

jarring with their principles-and get their consciences broken down in an unavailing struggle: whilst they who deny the applicability to political life of the principles of private morality, are often unable to find footing upon any principle whatever.

The violation in political transactions of any precept of private morals, is denounced by popular moralists as "a doing of evil that good

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may come of it." It is far indeed from my thoughts to dissent from the maxim that evil is not to be done in order that good may come of it. But for the purpose of ascertaining the bearing of the maxim upon civil affairs, it is

necessary to examine what may be the exact meaning intended by it. I am not, I trust, infected with the juvenile philosophy which would reject popular maxims of this kind, without examining whether their error be not the want of scholastic accuracy in the terms, more than the want of reason for their basis. And the maxim in question stands upon still higher grounds; for it appears to have been popular even before the Christian era, and the sanction of St. Paul was given incidentally to the substance of it. I inquire, there ore, what that substance is? To the terms a logician would probably at first sight take this exception: that whereas nothing can be good or evil but as good or evil may come of it (the consequence of every act determining its quality), so you cannot do evil that good may come of it, unless by a mistake of what will be the consequence of what you do. But it is evident that something more is implied by the

maxim, than a mere warning against mistaking evil for good. The exception, therefore, would be just against the terms; but when the sense is duly expressed it is found to contain a wellknown principle of ethics. The acts which we do are truly good or evil, not only according to the immediate and obvious consequences, but also according to those which are remote and involved. Morality can only be maintained by the submission of individual judgments to general rules. The evil consequences involved in a departure from any such rule in any case, will always overbalance the ostensible good consequences; so that on the whole it is truly an act of evil consequence, or a doing of evil. The maxim means then, "Do not for “the sake of certain good consequences, though

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they be perhaps the only ones directly per"ceivable, an act which, as being a departure "from a general rule of morality, must be evil

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upon the balance of consequences."

Let us take this principle thus understood, and see whether it be equally applicable to private and to political life.

The law of truth stands first in the code of private morality. Suppose this law adopted absolutely, by statesmen acting in this country and in this age as members of a government. Not one in ten of the measures taken by the cabinet, can win the sincere assent of every member of that cabinet. The opinions of fifteen or twenty individuals can never be uniformly concurrent. The law of truth would require the dissentient members not to express assent. Under this law, when the Speaker of the House of Commons bids those who are of this opinion to say "Aye" and those who are of the contrary opinion to say "No," the dissentient members of the cabinet must say "No" accordingly. But if every such diversity of opinion is to be publicly declared, it is manifestly not in the nature of things, as society