Right and Wrong in Politics [pp. 265-293]

THE PRINCETON RE VIEW.
and counteracted each other, there does arrive a moment atwhich it may be truly said that people have come to a definite
determination, and know their own mind. It is the part of a
good citizen, who is possessed by even the most frenzied
eagerness for achieving some particular political improvement,
to attain his object by a legitimate use of the multiform means
legitimately at his disposal. He will do his utmost to bring the
world-that is, the ultimately effective portion of the whole
body-politic-round to his views; he will resort, it may be, to all
the instrumentality of the public platform, the public press, and
of what is implied in the right of association and combination. It
is not till every one of these resources has been tried and has.
failed that the question can so much as present itself as to the
comparative duties of a citizen to acquiesce, for the sake of
order, in a hopelessly bad state of things, and that of encountering the certainty of present disorder, with the possibility of
bringing about a catastrophe involving good and evil alike, in
pursuit of a good not otherwise, if at all, to be attained. The.
plea for revolution in a popularly constituted state must rest on
the allegation of there being some accidental obstruction to thefree action of the popular will. This obstruction may be owing
to the preponderant and maliciously exercised influence of some
individual person or group of persons, who, by the existing
forms of the constitution, happen to be placed out of the
reach of popular control; or it may be due to the unexpected
failure of some check or balance wheel which time and circumstances have rendered futile; or, again, it may be due to a
deliberate conspiracy in some quarter or other by which the
forms of the constitution are complied with, while its spirit is.
perverted or treacherously invaded. Even in such contingencies
as these, recent examples, of which France at the close of
Marshal MacMahon's Presidentship was a signal specimen,.
have shown that there may be an outlet for the reassertion of
the true popular will short of either mob or military violence
Anyway, it is a crime of the deepest dye for any man or assemblage of men to contemplate revolution, so long as remedies may
still presumably be found either within the normal range of constitutional action or by means of popular amendments of the
constitution conducted after a regular and orderly fashion. Note
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