Considerations of a Representative Government | Page 8

themselves to the philosophy of politics in any comprehensive spirit,
have felt the importance of such a classification, but the attempts which
have been made toward it are as yet limited, so far as I am aware, to a
single step. The classification begins and ends with a partition of the
exigencies of society between the two heads of Order and Progress (in
the phraseology of French thinkers); Permanence and Progression, in
the words of Coleridge. This division is plausible and seductive, from
the apparently clean-cut opposition between its two members, and the
remarkable difference between the sentiments to which they appeal.
But I apprehend that (however admissible for purposes of popular
discourse) the distinction between Order, or Permanence and Progress,
employed to define the qualities necessary in a government, is
unscientific and incorrect.
For, first, what are Order and Progress? Concerning Progress there is
no difficulty, or none which is apparent at first sight. When Progress is
spoken of as one of the wants of human society, it may be supposed to
mean Improvement. That is a tolerably distinct idea. But what is Order?

Sometimes it means more, sometimes less, but hardly ever the whole of
what human society needs except improvement.
In its narrowest acceptation, Order means Obedience. A government is
said to preserve order if it succeeds in getting itself obeyed. But there
are different degrees of obedience, and it is not every degree that is
commendable. Only an unmitigated despotism demands that the
individual citizen shall obey unconditionally every mandate of persons
in authority. We must at least limit the definition to such mandates as
are general, and issued in the deliberate form of laws. Order, thus
understood, expresses, doubtless, an indispensable attribute of
government. Those who are unable to make their ordinances obeyed,
can not be said to govern. But, though a necessary condition, this is not
the object of government. That it should make itself obeyed is requisite,
in order that it may accomplish some other purpose. We are still to seek
what is this other purpose, which government ought to fulfill
abstractedly from the idea of improvement, and which has to be
fulfilled in every society, whether stationary or progressive.
In a sense somewhat more enlarged, Order means the preservation of
peace by the cessation of private violence. Order is said to exist where
the people of the country have, as a general rule, ceased to prosecute
their quarrels by private force, and acquired the habit of referring the
decision of their disputes and the redress of their injuries to the public
authorities. But in this larger use of the term, as well as in the former
narrow one, Order expresses rather one of the conditions of government,
than either its purpose or the criterion of its excellence; for the habit
may be well established of submitting to the government, and referring
all disputed matters to its authority, and yet the manner in which the
government deals with those disputed matters, and with the other things
about which it concerns itself, may differ by the whole interval which
divides the best from the worst possible.
If we intend to comprise in the idea of Order all that society requires
from its government which is not included in the idea of Progress, we
must define Order as the preservation of all kinds and amounts of good
which already exist, and Progress as consisting in the increase of them.

This distinction does comprehend in one or the other section every
thing which a government can be required to promote. But, thus
understood, it affords no basis for a philosophy of government. We can
not say that, in constituting a polity, certain provisions ought to be
made for Order and certain others for Progress, since the conditions of
Order, in the sense now indicated, and those of Progress, are not
opposite, but the same. The agencies which tend to preserve the social
good which already exists are the very same which promote the
increase of it, and _vice versâ_, the sole difference being, that a greater
degree of those agencies is required for the latter purpose than for the
former.
What, for example, are the qualities in the citizens individually which
conduce most to keep up the amount of good conduct, of good
management, of success and prosperity, which already exist in society?
Every body will agree that those qualities are industry, integrity, justice,
and prudence. But are not these, of all qualities, the most conducive to
improvement? and is not any growth of these virtues in the community
in itself the greatest of improvements? If so, whatever qualities in the
government are promotive of industry, integrity, justice, and prudence,
conduce alike to permanence and to progression, only there is needed
more of those qualities to make the