Part 19 (1/2)

The violation of meristic law is [Greek: anomia] (iniquity).

The violation of critic law is [Greek: adikia] (injury).

Iniquity is central generic term; for all law is _fatal_; it is the division to men of their fate; as the fold of their pasture, it is [Greek: nomos]; as the a.s.signing of their portion, [Greek: moira].

If we choose to cla.s.s the laws of precept and distribution under the general head of ”statutes,” all law is simply either of statute or judgment; that is, first, the establishment of ordinance, and, secondly, the a.s.signment of the reward or penalty due to its observance or violation.

To some extent these two forms of law must be a.s.sociated, and, with every ordinance, the penalty of disobedience to it be also determined.

But since the degrees and guilt of disobedience vary, the determination of due reward and punishment must be modified by discernment of special fact, which is peculiarly the office of the judge, as distinguished from that of the lawgiver and lawsustainer, or king; not but that the two offices are always theoretically and, in early stages, or limited numbers, of society, are often practically, united in the same person or persons.

Also, it is necessary to keep clearly in view the distinction between these two kinds of law, because the possible range of law is wider in proportion to their separation. There are many points of conduct respecting which the nation may wisely express its will by a written precept or resolve; yet not enforce it by penalty; and the expedient degree of penalty is always quite a separate consideration from the expedience of the statute, for the statute may often be better enforced by mercy than severity, and is also easier in bearing, and less likely to be abrogated. Farther, laws of precept have reference especially to youth, and concern themselves with training; but laws of judgment to manhood, and concern themselves with remedy and reward.

There is a highly curious feeling in the English mind against educational law; we think no man's liberty should be interfered with till he has done irrevocable wrong; whereas it is then just too late for the only gracious and kingly interference, which is to hinder him from doing it. Make your educational laws strict, and your criminal ones may be gentle; but, leave youth its liberty, and you will have to dig dungeons for age. And it is good for a man that he wear the yoke in his youth; for the yoke of youth, if you know how to hold it, may be of silken thread; and there is sweet chime of silver bells at that bridle rein; but, for the captivity of age, you must forge the iron fetter, and cast the pa.s.sing bell.

Since no law can be in a final or true sense established, but by right (all unjust laws involving the ultimate necessity of their own abrogation), the law-sustaining power in so far as it is Royal, or ”right doing”;--in so far, that is, as it rules, not mis-rules, and orders, not dis-orders, the things submitted to it. Throned on this rock of justice, the kingly power becomes established and establis.h.i.+ng, ”[Greek: theios],” or divine, and, therefore, it is literally true that no ruler can err, so long as he is a ruler, or [Greek: archon oudeis hamartanei tote hotan archon e] (perverted by careless thought, which has cost the world somewhat, into ”the king can do no wrong”). Which is a divine right of kings indeed, and quite una.s.sailable, so long as the terms of it are ”G.o.d and my Right,” and not ”Satan and my Wrong,” which is apt, in some coinages, to appear on the reverse of the die, under a good lens.

Meristic law, or that of tenure of property, first determines what every individual possesses by right, and secures it to him; and what he possesses by wrong, and deprives him of it. But it has a far higher provisory function: it determines what every man should possess, and puts it within his reach on due conditions; and what he should not possess, and puts this out of his reach conclusively.

Every article of human wealth has certain conditions attached to its merited possession, which, when they are un.o.bserved, possession becomes rapine. The object of meristic law is not only to secure every man his rightful share (the share, that is, which he has worked for, produced, or received by gift from a rightful owner), but to enforce the due conditions of possession, as far as law may conveniently reach; for instance, that land shall not be wantonly allowed to run to waste, that streams shall not be poisoned by the persons through whose properties they pa.s.s, nor air be rendered unwholesome beyond given limits. Laws of this kind exist already in rudimentary degree, but needing large development; the just laws respecting the possession of works of art have not hitherto been so much as conceived, and the daily loss of national wealth, and of its use, in this respect, is quite incalculable.[108] While, finally, in certain conditions of a nation's progress, laws limiting acc.u.mulation of property may be found expedient.

[108] These laws need revision quite as much respecting property in national as in private hands. For instance: the public are under a vague impression, that because they have paid for the contents of the British Museum, every one has an equal right to see and to handle them. But the public have similarly paid for the contents of Woolwich a.r.s.enal; yet do not expect free access to it, or handling of its contents.

The British Museum is neither a free circulating library, nor a free school; it is a place for the safe preservation, and exhibition on due occasion, of unique books, unique objects of natural history, and unique works of art; its books can no more be used by everybody than its coins can be handled, or its statues cast. Free libraries there ought to be in every quarter of London, with large and complete reading-rooms attached; so also free educational inst.i.tutions should be open in every quarter of London, all day long and till late at night, well lighted, well catalogued, and rich in contents both of art and natural history. But neither the British Museum nor National Gallery are schools; they are treasuries; and both should be severely restricted in access and in use. Unless some order is taken, and that soon, in the MSS. department of the Museum (Sir Frederic Madden was complaining of this to me only the other day), the best MSS. in the collection will be destroyed, irretrievably, by the careless and continual handling to which they are now subjected.

Critic law determines questions of injury, and a.s.signs due rewards and punishments to conduct.[109]

[109] Two curious economical questions arise laterally with respect to this branch of law, namely, the cost of crime and the cost of judgment. The cost of crime is endured by nations ignorantly, not being clearly stated in their budgets; the cost of judgment patiently (provided only it can be had pure for the money), because the science, or perhaps we ought rather to say the art, of law, is felt to found a n.o.ble profession, and discipline; so that civilized nations are usually glad that a number of persons should be supported by funds devoted to disputation and a.n.a.lysis. But it has not yet been calculated what the practical value might have been, in other directions, of the intelligence now occupied in deciding, through courses of years, what might have been decided as justly, had the date of judgment been fixed, in as many hours. Imagine one half of the funds which any great nation devotes to dispute by law, applied to the determination of physical questions in medicine, agriculture, and theoretic science; and calculate the probable results within the next ten years.

I say nothing yet, of the more deadly, more lamentable loss, involved in the use of purchased instead of personal justice,--[Greek: epakto par' allon--aporia' oikeion].

Therefore, in order to true a.n.a.lysis of it, we must understand the real meaning of this word ”injury.”

We commonly understand by it any kind of harm done by one man to another; but we do not define the idea of harm; sometimes we limit it to the harm which the sufferer is conscious of, whereas much the worst injuries are those he is unconscious of; and, at other times, we limit the idea to violence, or restraint, whereas much the worse forms of injury are to be accomplished by carelessness, and the withdrawal of restraint.

”Injury” is, then, simply the refusal, or violation of any man's right or claim upon his fellows: which claim, much talked of in modern times, under the term ”right,” is mainly resolvable into two branches: a man's claim not to be hindered from doing what he should; and his claim to be hindered from doing what he should not; these two forms of hindrance being intensified by reward, or help and fortune, or Fors on one side, and punishment, impediment, and even final arrest, or Mors, on the other.

Now, in order to a man's obtaining these two rights, it is clearly needful that the worth of him should be approximately known; as well as the want of worth, which has, unhappily, been usually the princ.i.p.al subject of study for critic law, careful hitherto only to mark degrees of de-merit, instead of merit;--a.s.signing, indeed, to the deficiencies (not always, alas! even to these) just fine, diminution, or (with the broad vowels) d.a.m.nation; but to the efficiencies, on the other side, which are by much the more interesting, as well as the only profitable part of its subject, a.s.signing in any clear way neither measurement nor aid.

Now, it is in this higher and perfect function of critic law, enabling as well as disabling, that it becomes truly kingly or basilican, instead of Draconic (what Providence gave the great, old, wrathful legislator his name?); that is, it becomes the law of man and of life, instead of the law of the worm and of death--both of these laws being set in everlasting poise one against another, and the enforcement of both being the eternal function of the lawgiver, and true claim of every living soul: such claim being indeed as straight and earnest to be mercifully hindered, and even, if need be, abolished, when longer existence means only deeper destruction, as to be mercifully helped and recreated when longer existence and new creation mean n.o.bler life.

So that what we vulgarly term reward and punishment will be found to resolve themselves mainly into help and hindrance, and these again will issue naturally from true recognition of deserving, and the just reverence and just wrath which follow instinctively on such recognition.

I say ”follow,” but in reality they are the recognition. Reverence is but the perceiving of the thing in its entire truth: truth reverted is truth revered (vereor and veritas having clearly the same root), so that Goethe is for once, and for a wonder, wrong in that part of the n.o.ble scheme of education in ”Wilhelm Meister,” in which he says that reverence is not innate, and must be taught. Reverence is as instinctive as anger;--both of them instant on true vision: it is sight and understanding that we have to teach, and these are reverence. Make a man perceive worth, and in its reflection he sees his own relative unworth, and wors.h.i.+ps thereupon inevitably, not with stiff courtesy, but rejoicingly, pa.s.sionately, and, best of all, restfully: for the inner capacity of awe and love is infinite in man; and when his eyes are once opened to the sight of beauty and honour, it is with him as with a lover, who, falling at his mistress's feet, would cast himself through the earth, if it might be, to fall lower, and find a deeper and humbler place. And the common insolences and petulances of the people, and their talk of equality, are not irreverence in them in the least, but mere blindness, stupefaction, and fog in the brains,[110] which pa.s.s away in the degree that they are raised and purified: the first sign of which raising is, that they gain some power of discerning, and some patience in submitting to their true counsellors and governors; the modes of such discernment forming the real ”const.i.tution” of the state, and not the t.i.tles or offices of the discerned person; for it is no matter, save in degree of mischief, to what office a man is appointed, if he cannot fulfil it. And this brings us to the third division of our subject.

[110] Compare Chaucer's ”villany” (clownishness).

”Full foul and chorlishe seemed she, And eke villanous for to be, And little coulde of norture To wors.h.i.+p any creature.”

III.--GOVERNMENT BY COUNCIL.

This is the determination, by living authority, of the national conduct to be observed under existing circ.u.mstances; and the modification or enlargement, abrogation or enforcement, of the code of national law according to present needs or purposes. This government is necessarily always by Council, for though the authority of it may be vested in one person, that person cannot form any opinion on a matter of public interest but by (voluntarily or involuntarily) submitting himself to the influence of others.

This government is always twofold--visible and invisible.

The visible government is that which nominally carries on the national business; determines its foreign relations, raises taxes, levies soldiers, fights battles, or directs that they be fought, and otherwise becomes the exponent of the national fortune. The invisible government is that exercised by all energetic and intelligent men, each in his sphere, regulating the inner will and secret ways of the people, essentially forming its character, and preparing its fate.