ly suggested is, that
laws are the creatures of climate, local situation, accident, or
imposture--the fruit of any causes except those which appear to
operate with tolerable constancy. Montesquieu seems, in fact, to have
looked on the nature of man as entirely plastic, as passively
reproducing the impressions, and submitting implicitly to the
impulses, which it receives from without. And here no doubt lies the
error which vitiates his system as a system. He greatly underrates the
stability of human nature. He pays little or no regard to the
inherited qualities of the race, those qualities which each generation
receives from its predecessors, and transmits but slightly altered to
the generation which follows it. It is quite true, indeed, that no
complete account can be given of social phenomena, and consequently of
laws, till due allowance has been made for those modifying causes
which are noticed in the _Esprit des Lois_; but their number and their
force appear to have been overestimated by Montesquieu. Many of the
anomalies which he parades have since been shown to rest on false
report or erroneous construction, and of those which remain not a few
prove the permanence rather than the variableness of man's nature,
since they are relics of older stages of the race which have
obstinately defied the influences that have elsewhere had effect. The
truth is that the stable part of our mental, moral, and physical
constitution is the largest part of it, and the resistance it opposes
to change is such that, though the variations of human society in a
portion of the world are plain enough, they are neither so rapid nor
so extensive that their amount, character, and general direction
cannot be ascertained. An approximation to truth may be all that is
attainable with our present knowledge, but there is no reason for
thinking that is so remote, or (what is the same thing) that it
requires so much future correction, as to be entirely useless and
uninstructive.

The other theory which has been adverted to is the historical theory
of Bentham. This theory which is obscurely (and, it might even be
said, timidly) propounded in several parts of Bentham's works is quite
distinct from that analysis of the conception of law which he
commenced in the "Fragment on Government," and which was more recently
completed by Mr. John Austin. The resolution of a law into a command
of a particular nature, imposed under special conditions, does not
affe