the two dying Musulman powers in the West, is virtually partitioned between Britain and Russia, with France holding a bit of the south-east corner. So Africa has now been (with trifling exceptions) divided between five European Powers (Portugal, England, France, Germany, Italy). Thus there is hardly a spot of earth left on which a new independent community can establish itself, as the Greeks founded a multitude of new commonwealths in the eighth and seventh centuries B. C., and as the Teutonic invaders founded kingdoms during the dissolution of the Roman Empire.

If we turn to the possibilities of new States arising from the ruins of existing ones, whether by revolt or by peaceful separation, the prospect is not much more encouraging. There is indeed Turkey. Five out of the six new States that have arisen in Europe during this century have been carved out of the territories she claimed-viz. Greece, Rumania, Servia, Bulgaria, Montenegro: and there is material for one or two more in Europe and possibly for one or two in Asia, though it is more probable that both the Asiatic and European dominions of the Sultan will be partitioned among existing States than that new ones will spring out of them. The ill-compacted fabric of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy may fall to pieces. Parts of the Asiatic dominions of Russia may possibly (though in a comparatively distant future) become independent of the old Muscovite motherland, and the less civilized among the republics of Central and South America may be broken into parts or combined into new States, though the saying 'plus cela change, plus c'est la même chose' is even more true of those countries than of that to which it was originally

applied, and gives little hope of interesting novelties. But on the whole the tendency of modern times is rather towards the aggregation of small States than towards the division of large ones. Commerce and improved facilities of communication are factors of constantly increasing importance which work in this direction, and this general tendency for the larger States to absorb the smaller forbids us to expect the rise, within the next few generations, of more than a few new Constitutions which will provide matter for study to the historian or lawyer of the future.

What type of Constitution will these new States, whatever they be and whenever they come, be disposed to prefer? Upon this point it is relevant to observe that all the new States that have appeared since 1850 have adopted Rigid Constitutions, with the solitary exception of Montenegro, which has no Constitution at all, but lives under the paternal autocracy of the temporal ruler who has succeeded the ancient ecclesiastical Vladika1. Each of them, on beginning its independent life, has felt the need of setting out the lines of its government in a formal instrument which it has consecrated as fundamental by placing it above ordinary legislation. Similar conditions are likely to surround the birth of any new States, similar motives to influence those who tend their infancy. The only cases in which a Flexible Constitution is likely to arise would be the division of a country having such a Constitution into two or more fragments, each of which should cleave to the accustomed system; or the revolt of a people or community among whom, as they grow into a State,

1 As to Italy, however, see above, pp. 202 and 208.

usages of government that had naturally sprung up might, when independence had been established, continue to be observed and so ripen into a Constitution. The chance that either of these cases will present itself is not very great. New States will more probably adopt documentary Constitutions, as did the insurgent colonies of England after 1776 and of Spain after 1811, and as the Christians of South-Eastern Europe did when they had rid themselves of the Turk. Upon the whole, therefore, it would seem that the future is rather with Rigid Constitutions than with those of the Flexible type.

It is hardly necessary to close these speculations by adding the warning that all prophecies in politics must be highly conjectural. Circumstances change, opinion changes; knowledge increases, though the power of using it wisely may not increase1.

The subtlety of nature, and especially the intricacy of the relations she develops between things that originally seemed to lie wide apart, far surpasses the calculating or predicting wit of man. Accordingly many things, both in the political arrangements of the world and in the beliefs of mankind, which now seem permanent may prove transitory. Democracy itself, though most people treat it as a thing likely to grow stronger and advance further, may suffer an eclipse. Human nature no doubt remains. But human nature has clothed itself in the vesture of every sort of institution, and may change its fashions as freely in the future as it has done in the past.

1 Απανθ' ὁ μακρὸς κἀναρίθμητος χρόνος

φύει τ' ἄδηλα καὶ φανέντα κρύπτεται.

Soph. Ajax, 646.

NOTE TO ESSAY III

CONSTITUTIONAL AND OTHER GOVERNMENTS

THE races and nations of the world may, as respects the forms of Government under which they live, be distributed into four classes :

I. Nations which have created and maintain permanent political institutions, allotting special functions to each organ of Government, and assigning to the citizens some measure of participation in the business of Government.

In these nations we discover Constitutions in the proper sense of the term. To this class belong all the States of Europe except Russia and Montenegro, and, outside Europe, the British self-governing Colonies, the United States and Mexico, the two republics of South Africa, Japan and Chili, possibly also the Argentine Republic.

II. Nations in which the institutions aforesaid exist in theory, but are seldom in normal action, because they are in a state of chronic political disturbance and mostly ruled, with little regard to law, by military adventurers. This class includes the republics of Central and South America, with the exception of Chili, and possibly of Argentina, whose condition has latterly been tolerably stable.

III. Nations in which, although the upper class is educated, the bulk of the population, being backward, has not begun to desire such institutions as aforesaid. Such Nations therefore remain under autocratic monarchies. To this class belong Russia and Montenegro. Japan has lately emerged from it: and two or three of the newest European States might, but for the interposition of other nations, have remained in it.

IV. Nations which are, for one reason or another, below

the level of intellectual life and outside the sphere of ideas which the permanent political institutions aforesaid presuppose and need for their proper working. This class includes all the remaining peoples of the world, from intelligent races like the Chinese, Siamese, and Persians, down to the barbarous tribes of Africa.

Constitutions, in the sense in which the term is used in the preceding Essay, belong only to the first class, and in a qualified sense to the second. In the modern world they are confined to Europe and her Colonies, adding Japan, which has imitated Europe. In the ancient world they were confined to three races, Greeks, Italians, and Phoenicians, to whom one may perhaps add such races as the Lycians, who had learnt from the Greeks. Their range is somewhat narrower than that of law, that is to say, there are peoples which, like the Musulmans of Turkey, Egypt, and Persia, have law, but have no Constitutions.

No race that has ever lived under a regular constitutional Government has permanently lost it, except those parts of the Roman Empire which now form part of the Turkish Empire; and the Roman Empire, though its Government never ceased to be in a certain sense constitutional, ultimately extinguished the habit of self-government among its subjects.