His contemporary, Sir William Blackstone,2 although an admirer of Mansfield, and at times a critic of the law as it then existed, was not a reformer by temperament, and his Commentaries (1776) then, as now, leave the impression of almost indiscriminate praise for the great bulk of the old law which the courts had been accustomed to administer. The law of real property, notably, was undergoing immense elaboration with results which were by no means satisfactory. If the landed interests were to retain their dominant place in national affairs, then agriculture would have to compete with the newer forms of commercialism. Great improvements were made during the eighteenth century in scientific farming, and agriculture made rapid strides as a source of wealth. The effective output, both in crops and herds, was increased and improved enormously, until it became clear that agriculture afforded opportunities for commercial enterprise. This development, however, could only be achieved by considerable capital outlay upon improvement, and was seriously hampered by the law of real property. Land could not take its place in a commercial scheme of things as long as it was so difficult to deal with it. The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century lawyers had developed elaborate methods of placing land beyond the control of the tenant in possession, and when they tried to retrace their steps in an endeavour to give the great landlord powers to charge and to sell, their remedies were equally cumbersome, uncertain and expensive. It is not until the close of the eighteenth century that any substantial progress was made towards providing a simpler law of land, and to this day the process is still going on.
At the same time there was a movement, not fully effective until the early years of the nineteenth century, for radically reforming the whole of the procedural side of law.
MONTESQUIEU
The most tremendous event in the eighteenth century was the French Revolution with which it closed, and a few words must be said here of its implications in legal and political science. These can best be illustrated by considering two great thinkers, Montesquieu who just preceded it, and Burke who was contemporary with it. In 1748 Montesquieu published his Esprit des Lois, which, like his earlier essays, was an attempt to give a political interpretation to history. The sources he used were Roman and more particularly English history. He classified the different forms of government and assigned to each its characteristic principle: thus despotism depends upon fear, monarchy upon honour, aristocracy upon moderation, and democracy upon virtue (in the Roman sense of the word). The corruption and fall of a government whereby it changes into another form he attributes to the corruption of its fundamental principle; but as long as the principle remains fairly pure he sees little to choose between the different possible forms. The really vicious situation is when institutions which are fitted for one principle of government are still forced to work although that principle has been replaced by another. Montesquieu tells us little about sovereignty, although he has a good deal to say about liberty. He regards liberty as best assured by the supremacy of law rather than of men, and to achieve this the best way, in his opinion, was the separation of powers. This part of his work is greatly indebted to John Locke. The aspect which he develops at most length is not the mere administrative convenience of specialising the functions of government, but rather the constitutional safeguards which result when each power operates as a check upon the others. It is this system of “checks and balances” which Montesquieu regards as particularly important, and as the secret of constitutional monarchy in England. It was he who had the romantic notion that English constitutionalism was directly derived from the ancient Germans of Tacitus.1 “Ce beau système a été trouvé dans les bois.” He even went so far as to develop a theory of the influence of geography upon politics. He is essentially modern in the emphasis which he places upon legislation, but it is his theory of the separation of powers and his insistence upon its value as affording constitutional safeguards which are most important for our purposes, for he was read by influential men in America and has had a marked influence upon constitutional development in that country.
EDMUND BURKE
Into the causes and character of the French Revolution we cannot enter; but some of its results upon English political thought may well be mentioned. The greatest political thinker at this time in England was Edmund Burke, and anyone who wishes to have a summary of English political wisdom by an experienced statesman who could adopt a philosophical attitude without losing touch with practical events must read the writings and speeches of Burke. They are likely to remain for a long time an authoritative statement of the results which had been achieved by parliamentary government in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At the present day his words are constantly upon the lips of the best English statesmen. His thought is characterised by its intimate contact with practical politics; rarely does he allow a theory to divert his attention from the practical problems of everyday government. A noteworthy portion of his work is in answer to Rousseau and to the theories of the rights of man. With a natural tendency to admire aristocracy, he felt that an extreme democracy as suggested by some theorists contained great dangers, and insisted that it was hazardous to abandon those sentiments for aristocracy which in his day seemed natural to mankind. He observes that a democracy is not affected by the fear which besets a monarch; when shameless acts are done the moral responsibility vanishes when spread among numerous persons, while the alleged liberty of a democracy is more often a delusion. The horrors with which the Revolution began made an increasing impression upon Burke as upon his countrymen, and had the practical effect of delaying reform for over a generation. Typical measures of this period were the Treasonable Practices Act1 and the Seditious Meetings Act2 of 1795, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act on several occasions, and the imposition of heavy stamp duties with the object of checking the circulation of cheap newspapers. Numerous State trials took place.3 Even purely private law fell under the influence of the extreme conservative reaction of which Lord Ellenborough was the personification in the King’s Bench (1802-1818) and Lord Eldon in Chancery (1801-1806, 1807-1827). To this result Burke largely contributed, nor must he be blamed overmuch for his caution at a moment when the wildest theories were being proclaimed in all seriousness. His speeches on America4 are the best expression of his philosophy, for they were made before the French Revolution came to strike terror throughout the rest of Europe. There in particular the political realism of Burke is apparent; he almost alone of British statesmen at the moment was prepared to face the facts, and having done so, to advocate a frank acknowledgment of the situation as it actually existed. He poured ridicule upon the government for their weak attempts to compel recognition of a principle which had no relation to the existing state of affairs; he was the embodiment of the spirit of compromise, and appreciated fully the fact that situations slowly change, and that the change must be recognised frankly. He was prepared to state that the American colonies had entered upon the stage of adult political life, and to counsel the government to treat them accordingly. Perhaps the most interesting passages in his speeches on America are those where he shows that the demands of the colonists were the very same which Englishmen at home had made in a more heroic age, and where he stresses the deep respect for legality which characterised English political development, urging that this very spirit lay at the root of the American case.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: LIBERALISM AND REFORM
SUMMARY
At length, the end of the Napoleonic war brought some relief from the political tension, and a wave
