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true, is irrelevant, for the resistance was caused by Lecture nationalism, and the question under consideration is whether the happiness either of Italians or Spaniards was promoted by yielding to the spirit of nationality. However this may be, it can hardly be disputed that nationalism, connected as it often is with historical traditions belonging to a past age, may, and often has become a hindrance to what any Benthamite Liberal would account good government. What is even more to be regretted, a narrow spirit of nationalism, fostered, as it often is, by historical traditions, has in more States than one produced racial divisions and animosities, which are not only in themselves a gigantic evil and an impediment to all true progress, but, since they depend upon feeling rather than upon any wish for good government, cannot be composed by any merely rational reform of laws or of institutions. Here, in short, the historical spirit unites disastrously with the apotheosis of instinct. Happy, from a Benthamite point of view, is the nation which is not haunted by the dream or nightmare of past or traditional glory. The singular absence in England of all popular traditions causes some natural regret to poets and even to patriots. Yet it has assuredly favoured the growth and the preservation of English freedom. Forgetfulness is in politics akin to forgive

ness.

The absence of historical hatreds has at any rate delivered England from the spurious patriotism which

Visits ancient sins on modern times

And punishes the Pope for Cæsar's crimes.

The enthusiast for nationality can indeed hardly deny that nationalism has often been a hindrance to

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Lecture various kinds of improvement, but he will of course plead that the spirit of nationality is of more value than any material or even than some kinds of moral progress. Whatever be the truth of this plea, the opposition between Benthamism and nationalism' is obvious. The historical spirit, therefore, in giving prominence to the idea of nationality has told against the authority of utilitarian liberalism.

The disintegration, then, of beliefs has weakened the authority of Benthamite doctrine; the apotheosis of sentiment has rendered difficult the application of the utilitarian theory to the amendment of the law; the historical method has fostered a spirit foreign to the ideas of Benthamite philosophy. Three tendencies pre-eminently characteristic of our time have, therefore, diminished, to say the least, the power of individualism and favoured, or at any rate cleared the ground for, the growth of collectivism. But we have already passed into a field of thought which lies beyond the limits of these lectures. An English lawyer ought not to trespass further upon the

1 Sympathy with national resistance to Napoleon in Spain and Germany was felt keenly by Tories and very slightly, if at all, by Whigs and Radicals.

Every creed, political no less than religious, if it is to be effective, must become a faith; but a faith is the alliance of thought with some strong and cognate feeling. Every form of political belief, therefore, seeks to connect itself with some appropriate emotion. This held good of Benthamite liberalism. It became a faith, but it could not naturally blend with the sentiments now known as imperialism or nationalism, though in 1830 they had hardly received definite names. Benthamism just because the fundamental idea of utilitarian morality is that the proper aim of human action is the greatest happiness of the greatest number-had a real affinity, and in fact became closely allied with the sentiments of philanthropy and cosmopolitanism.

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province of historians, moralists, or philosophers. Lecture He will do well to direct attention as far as possible to the close and demonstrable connection during the nineteenth century between the development of English law and certain known currents of opinion. He should insist upon the consideration that the relation between law and opinion has been in England, as elsewhere, extremely complex; that legislative opinion is itself more often the result of facts than of philosophical speculations; and that no facts play a more important part in the creation of opinion than laws themselves. He must above all enforce the conclusion at which every intelligent student must ultimately arrive, that each kind of opinion entertained by men at a given era is governed by that whole body of beliefs, convictions, sentiments, or assumptions, which, for want of a better name, we call the spirit of an age. "Deeper than opinions lies the sentiment which predeter"mines opinion. What it is important for us to "know with respect to our own age or any age is, not its peculiar opinions, but the complex elements of that moral feeling and character in which, as in "their congenial soil, opinions grow." 1

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1 Pattison, Essays, ii. p. 264.

APPENDIX

NOTE I

THE RIGHT OF ASSOCIATION

[See pp. 95-102, 152-157, 190-200, 266-272 ante;

Pic, Traité Élémentaire de Législation Industrielle, Les Lois Ouvrières (2nd ed.);

Hauriou, Précis de Droit Administratif ;

Trouillot and Chapsal, Du Contrat d'Association ;

Loi 14-17, juin 1791 (Loi Chapelier);

Code Pénal, arts. 414-416; Loi 25 mai 1864; Loi 21 mars 1884; Loi 1 juillet 1901.]

(A) The problem raised in every civilised country by the right of association.

Of the nature of the right of association and its peculiarities enough has been already said (pp. 152-157 ante).

The point to note is that at the present day its exercise raises difficulties in every civilised country. In England, as elsewhere, trade unions and strikes, or federations of employers and lock-outs; in Ireland, the boycotting by leagues and societies of any landlord, tenant, trader, or workman, bold enough to disobey their behests or break their laws; in the United States, the efforts of mercantile Trusts to create for themselves huge monopolies; in France, the real or alleged necessity of stringent legislation in order to keep religious communities (congrégations religieuses) under the control of the State-in almost every country, in short, some forms of association force upon public attention the practical difficulty of so regulating the right of association that its exercise may neither trench upon each citizen's individual freedom nor shake the supreme authority of the State. The problem to be solved, either as a matter of 2 H

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