GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THE IDBALX8T THEORY OF THE STATE 575
based upon prescription
and custom that theories of
Sovereignty which maintained that power was or ought
to be vested in the people were, Burke held, in the highest
degree dangerous* For the people, believing power to
reside in themselves, might by "a tumultuary and giddy
choice" endeavour artificially to alter the constitution of
the nation, with results as disastrous as those which would
be liable to attend the grafting on to a tree of an alien
shoot, or its uprooting for the purpose of an overhaul of
its roots.
For and here we come to another tenet of the idealists
which Burke was one of the first to emphasize a nation
is like any other growth in possessing its own peculiar
idiosyncrasies. Just as a tree has its peculiar, individual
twist, and the fruit of the tree its peculiar, individual
flavour, so a nation has its peculiar, individual form of
and reflects
growth. This form of growth at once expresses
the peculiar and individual characteristics of the people
who, in the first place, made the government, and who,
having grown up with and under it, could not change it
without changing themselves. The generic name which
Burke gives to these peculiarities, alike in people and in
government, is that of Presumption. "Prescription", that
is to say, sanctification by time, is, he writes, " accompanied
with another ground of authority in the constitution of
the human mind, Presumption". Every nation, in other
words, has a presumption to live and to be governed in
a particular way. Thus government is never the result of
an arbitrary act or a sudden revolution; or rather, if on
occasion government does result from arbitrary sudden
acts, it is government insecurely based, provisional and
temporary.
(2) Views of Maine and the Lawyers
SOCIETY AS A DETERMINED GROWTH. I turn next
to the treatment of political institutions by what may, for
short, be called the historical method. The writer whom
I propose to cite as representative of a line of thought