statute-book of the angels. On the contrary, other institutions are good for the opposite reason, though they might be condemned, from a particular point of view or even absolutely, by the political philosopher or the moralist. The Spartans were small in number, of high courage, ambitious, and violent. Ill-fitting laws might have turned them into a mere set of pettifogging knaves; Lycurgus made them a nation of heroic brigands.
There is no doubt about it. As the people is born before the laws, the laws take after the people; and receive from it the stamp which they are afterwards to impress in their turn. The changes made in institutions by the lapse of time are a great proof of what I say.
I have already mentioned that as nations become greater, more powerful, and more civilized, their blood loses its purity and their instincts are gradually altered. As a result, it becomes impossible for them to live happily under the laws that suited their ancestors. New generations have new customs and tendencies, and profound changes in the institutions are not slow to follow. These are more frequent and far-reaching in proportion as the race itself is changed; while they are rarer, and more gradual, so long as the people is more nearly akin to the first founders of the State. In England, where modifications of the stock have been slower and, up to now, less varied than in any other European country, we still see the institutions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries forming the base of the social structure. We find there, almost in its first vigour, the communal organization of the Plantagenets and the Tudors, the same method of giving the nobility a share in the government, the same gradations of rank in this nobility, the same respect for old families tempered with the same love of low-born merit. Since James I, however, and especially since the Union under Queen Anne, the English blood has been more and more prone to mingle with that of the Scotch and Irish, while other nations have also helped, by imperceptible degrees, to modify its purity. The result is that innovations have been more frequent in our 42
