of independent sovereigns; yet France might be stronger at
Calais and England at Dover.[117] Mill might have replied that a state
is a state precisely because, and in so far as, there is an agreement
to recognise a common authority or sovereign. Government does not
imply a 'mixture,' but a fusion of power. There is a unity, though not
the abstract unity of the Utilitarian sovereign. The weakness of the
Utilitarians is to speak as though the sovereign, being external to
each individual, could therefore be regarded as external to the whole
society. He rules as a strong nation may rule a weak dependency. When
the sovereign becomes also the society, the power is regarded as
equally absolute, though now applied to the desirable end of
maximising happiness. The whole argument ignores the simple
consideration that the sovereign is himself in all cases the product
of the society over which he rules, and his whole action, even in the
most despotic governments, determined throughout by organic instincts,
explaining and not ultimately explicable by coercion. Macaulay's
doctrine partially recognises this by falling back upon the Whig
theory of checks and balances, and the mixture of three mysterious
entities, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. But, as Bentham had
sufficiently shown in the _Fragment_, the theory becomes hopelessly
unreal when we try to translate it into facts. There are not three
separate forces, conflicting like three independent forces, but a
complex set of social institutions bound together into a whole. It is
impossible really to regard government as a permanent balance of
antagonistic forces, confronting each other like the three duellists
in Sheridan's _Critic_. The practical result of that theory is to
substitute for the 'greatest happiness' principle the vague criterion
of the preservation of an equilibrium between indefinable forces; and
to make the ultimate end of government the maintenance as long as
possible of a balance resting on no ulterior principle, but
undoubtedly pleasant for the comfortable classes. Nothing is left but
the rough guesswork, which, if a fine name be wanted, may be called
Baconian induction. The 'matchless constitution,' as Bentham calls it,
represents a convenient compromise, and the tendency is to attach
exaggerated importance to its ostensible terms. When Macaulay
asserted against Mill[118] that it was impossible to say which
element--monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy--had g