process is clearly artificial; and society to this extent becomes a
manufacture rather than a growth." No, not even these changes are
exceptions, if they be real and permanent changes. The true sources of
such changes lie deeper than the acts of legislators. To take first the
simplest instance. We all know that the enactments of representative
governments ultimately depend on the national will: they may for a time
be out of harmony with it, but eventually they must conform to it. And
to say that the national will finally determines them, is to say that
they result from the average of individual desires; or, in other
words--from the average of individual natures. A law so initiated,
therefore, really grows out of the popular character. In the case of a
Government representing a dominant class, the same thing holds, though
not so manifestly. For the very existence of a class monopolizing all
power, is due to certain sentiments in the commonalty. Without the
feeling of loyalty on the part of retainers, a feudal system could not
exist. We see in the protest of the Highlanders against the abolition of
heritable jurisdictions, that they preferred that kind of local rule.
And if to the popular nature must be ascribed the growth of an
irresponsible ruling class; then to the popular nature must be ascribed
the social arrangements which that class creates in the pursuit of its
own ends. Even where the Government is despotic, the doctrine still
holds. The character of the people is, as before, the original source of
this political form; and, as we have abundant proof, other forms
suddenly created will not act, but rapidly retrograde to the old form.
Moreover, such regulations as a despot makes, if really operative, are
so because of their fitness to the social state. His acts being very
much swayed by general opinion--by precedent, by the feeling of his
nobles, his priesthood, his army--are in part immediate results of the
national character; and when they are out of harmony with the national
character, they are soon practically abrogated. The failure of Cromwell
permanently to establish a new social condition, and the rapid revival
of suppressed institutions and practices after his death, show how
powerless is a monarch to change the type of the society he governs. He
may disturb, he may retard, or he may aid the natural process of
organization; but the general course of this process is beyond his
control. Nay, more than this is t