A difference of opinion as to the objects of government scarcely more real, though attended with far more fatal consequences than that which 11„•s divided speculative politicians, has ranged those who have dealt 1ANith government as a practical art in two opposite schools. By the one school, its object is said to be order; by the other, liberty; and each of these objects has been supposed to be attainable only to .an proportioned to that to which the other was sacrificed. A truer insight into the laws of society has led a more enlightened school than either entirely to reverse this latter opinion; and—whilst holding the two objects referred to, to be in truth the proximate objects of all government—to perceive that they are not only reconcilable, but that each is attainable only in and through the other, and that the perfection with which either is realized in any particular instance will be not in inverse but in direct' proportion to that to which the other is so. Order, So far from being the opposite of liberty, is thus toe principle by which conflicting, claims to liberty are reconciled. The principle
which is really opposed to liberty is license, in virtue of which the sphere of the liberty of one individual is endeavored to be carried into that of another: To the extent to which this takes place, the liberty of both is sacrificed, for the territory in dispute is free to neither of the claimants; whereas order, by preserving the boundary between them, assigns to each the portion which is his due, and prevents the waste of liberty which is necessarily involved in the gratification of license, and the consequent exist ence of anarchy. The reasons which. have led men to believe that the union between the principles of order and liberty, which it is thus their mutual interest to effect, can, in large states, be effected by means of representative institutions better than other political expedient that has yet been devised, will be explained tinder REPRESENT ATIVE GOVERNMENT. See also CONSTITUTION, MONARCHY, DEMOCRACY, LIBERTY, EQUALITY, and FRATERNITY.