contingency. And not less foolish is the statesman who
sits still till every conceivable objection to his policy has been
mathematically refuted in advance, and every wild prediction falsified
by the event; for that would ensure his never moving at all. _Sedet
aeternumque sedebit_. A proper enough attitude, perhaps, on the part of
an eristic philosopher speculating on politics in the silent shade of
academic groves, but hardly suitable for a practical politician who has
to take action on one of the most burning questions of our time. Human
affairs are not governed by mathematical reasoning. You cannot
demonstrate the precise results of any legislative measure beforehand as
you can demonstrate the course of a planet in the solar system.
"Probability," as Bishop Butler says, "is the guide of life;" and an
older philosopher than Butler has warned us that to demand demonstrative
proof in the sphere of contingent matter is the same kind of absurdity
as to demand probable reasoning in mathematics. You cannot confute a
prophet before the event; you can only disbelieve him. The advocates of
Home Rule believe that their policy would in general have an exactly
contrary effect to that predicted by their opponents. In truth, every
act of legislation is, before experience, amenable to such destructive
criticism as these critics urge against Home Rule. I have not a doubt
that they could have made out an unanswerable "case" against the Great
Charter at Runnymede; and they would find it easy to prove on _a priori_
grounds that the British Constitution is one of the most absurd,
mischievous, and unworkable instruments that ever issued from human
brains or from the evolution of events. By their method of reasoning the
Great Charter and other fundamental portions of the Constitution ought
to have brought the Government of the British Empire to a deadlock long
ago. Every suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, every Act of Attainder,
every statute for summary trial and conviction before justices of the
peace, is a violation of the fundamental article of the Constitution,
which requires that no man shall be imprisoned or otherwise punished
except after lawful trial by his peers.[20] Consider also the magazines
of explosive materials which lie hidden in the constitutional
prerogatives of the Crown, if they could only be ignited by the match of
an ingenious theorist. The Crown, as Lord Sherbrooke once somewhat
irreverently expressed it, "can turn