would not have stimulated trade, nor replenished the bankrupt fisc, nor incorporated the privileged classes with the bulk of the nation, nor done anything else to repair an organisation of which every single part had become incompetent for its proper function.  It was the material misery and the political despair engendered by the reigning system, which brought willing listeners to the feet of the teachers who framed beneficent governments on the simple principles of reason and the natural law.  And these teachers only busied themselves with abstract politics, because the real situation was desperate.  They had no alternative but to evolve social improvements out of their own consciousness.  There was not a single sound organ in the body politic, which they could have made the starting-point of a reconstitution of a society on the base of its actual or historic structure.  The mischiefs which resulted from their method are patent and undeniable.  But the method was made inevitable by the curse of the old regime.[34]

Nor is there any instance in history of mere opinion making a breach in the essential constitution of a community, so long as the political conditions were stable and the economic or nutritive conditions sound.  If some absolute monarch were to be seized by a philanthropic resolution to transform the ordering of a society which seemed to be at his disposal, he might possibly, by the perseverance of a lifetime, succeed in throwing the community into permanent confusion.  Joseph II. perhaps did as much as a modern sovereign can do in this direction.  Yet little came of his efforts, either for good or harm.  But a man without the whole political machinery in his power need hardly labour under any apprehension that he may, by the mere force of speculative opinion, involuntarily work a corresponding mischief.  If it is true that the most fervent apostles of progress usually do very little of the good on which they congratulate themselves, they ought surely on the same ground to be acquitted of much of the harm for which they are sometimes reviled.  In a country of unchecked and abundant discussion, a new idea is not at all likely to make much way against the objection of its novelty, unless it is really commended by some quality of temporary or permanent value.  So far therefore as the mere publication of new principles is concerned, and so far also as merely self-regarding action goes, one who has the keenest sense of social responsibility, and is most scrupulously afraid of doing anything to slacken or perturb the process of social growth, may still consistently give to the world whatever ideas he has gravely embraced.  He may safely trust, if the society be in a normal condition, to its justice of assimilation and rejection.  There are a few individuals for whom newness is a recommendation.  But what are these few among the many to whom newness is a stumbling-block?  Old ideas may survive merely because they are old.  A new one will certainly not, among a considerable body of men in a healthy social state, gain any acceptance worth speaking of, merely because it is new.