The Stability of Law and Custom
In so far as concerns the present question, that is to say as regards those standards and principles which underlie the established system of law and custom, the modern point of view was stabilised and given a definitive formulation in the eighteenth century; and in so far as concerns the subsequent conduct of practical affairs, its constituent principles have stood over without material change or revision since that time.
So that for practical purposes it is fair to say that the modern point of view is now some one hundred and fifty years old.
It will not do to say that it is that much behind the times;
because its time-worn standards of truth and validity are a very material factor in the makeup of "our time." That such is the case is due in great part to the fact that this body of principles was stabilised at that time and that they have therefore stood over intact, in spite of other changes that have taken place. It is only that the principles which had been tested and found good under the conditions of life in the modern era up to that time were at that time held fast, canvassed, defined, approved, and stabilised by being reduced to documentary form. In some sense they were then written into the constitution of civilised society, and they have continued to make up the nucleus of the document from that time forth; and so they have become inflexible, after the fashion of written constitutions.
In the sight of those generations who so achieved the definite acceptance of these enlightened modern principles, and who finally made good their formal installation in law and usage as self-balanced canons of human conduct, the principles which they so arrived at had all the sanction of Natural Law, --
impersonal, dispassionate, indefeasible and immutable;
fundamentally and eternally right and good. That generation of men held "these truths to be self-evident"; and they have continued so to be held since that epoch by all those peoples who make up the effectual body of modern civilisation. And the backward peoples, those others who have since then been coming into line and making their claim to a place in the scheme of modern civilised life, have also successively been accepting and (passably) assimilating the same enlightened principles of clean and honest living. Christendom, as a going concern of civilised peoples, has continued to regulate its affairs by the help of these principles, which are still held to be a competent formulation of the aspirations of civilised mankind. So that these modern principles of the eighteenth century, stabilised in documentary form a hundred and fifty years ago, have stood over in immutable perfection until our time,a monument more enduring than brass.
These principles are of the nature of habits of thought, of course; and it is the nature of habits of thought forever to shift and change in response to the changing impact of experience, since they are creatures of habituation. But inasmuch as they have once been stabilised in a thoroughly competent fashion in the eighteenth century, and have been drafted into finished documentary form, they have been enabled to stand over unimpaired into the present with all that weight and stability that a well-devised documentary formulation will give. It is true, so far as regards the conditions of civilised life during the interval that has passed since these modern principles of law and custom took on their settled shape in the eighteenth century, it has been a period of unexampled change, -- swift, varied, profound and extensive beyond example. And it follows of necessity that the principles of conduct which were approved and stabilised in the eighteenth century, under the driving exigencies of that age, have not altogether escaped the complications of changing circumstances. They have at least come in for some shrewd interpretation in the course of the nineteenth century. There have been refinements of definition, extensions of application, scrutiny and exposition of implications, as new exigencies have arisen and the established canons have been required to cover unforeseen contingencies; but it has all been done with the explicit reservation that no material innovation shall be allowed to touch the legacy of modern principles handed down from the eighteenth century, and that the vital system of Natural Rights installed in the eighteenth century must not be deranged at any point or at any cost.
It is scarcely necessary to describe this modern system of principles that still continues to govern human intercourse among the civilised peoples, or to attempt an exposition of its constituent articles. It is all to be had in exemplary form, ably incorporated in such familiar documents as the American Declaration of Independence, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the American Constitution; and it is all to be found set forth with all the circumstance of philosophical and juristic scholarship in the best work of such writers as John Locke.
Montesquieu. Adam Smith, or Blackstone. It has all been sufficiently canvassed, through all its dips, spurs and angles, by the most competent authorities, who have brought their best will and their best abilities to bear on its elucidation at every point, with full documentation. Besides which, there is no need of recondite exposition for the present purpose; since all that is required by the present argument is such a degree of information on these matters as is familiar to English-speaking persons by common notoriety.
At the same time it may be to the purpose to call to mind that this secular profession of faith enters creatively into that established order of things which has now fallen into a state of havoc because it does not meet the requirements of the new order.
