As a set-off, each principle or system having had its turn, having triumphed in a more complete and exclusive manner in the continental states, the development has been made on a greater scale, and with more grandeur and display. Royalty and the feudal aristocracy, for example, have appeared upon the continental stage with much more hardihood, extension, and freedom. All the political experiments, so to speak, have had a broader basis, and been more complete. It has thence resulted that political ideas, I mean general ideas, and not the application of practical sense to the conduct of affairs, but political ideas and doctrines, have been raised much higher, and deployed with far more rational vigour. Each system having in some sort presented itself alone and prominently, and having remained for a length of time on the stage, has enabled men to contemplate it in its entirety, to trace it back to its first principles, to follow it to its remotest consequences, and to fully unfold its theory. Whoever observes, with any degree of attention, the English genius, is struck with a double fact. On the one hand, he perceives a soundness of practical sense and ability, and on the other, an absence of general ideas and of elevation of mind on theoretical questions. Whether it is an English work on history, or jurisprudence, or any other matter, that we open, we very rarely find the great and fundamental reasons of things at all treated of. In all things, and especially in political sciences, pure doctrine, philosophy, science, properly so called, have flourished more luxuriantly on the continent than in England; their flights, at all events, have been much more bold and vigorous. And we cannot doubt that the different character of the development of civilisation in the two regions has mainly conduced to this result.
Thus, whatever may be thought of the inconveniences or the advantages which this difference has drawn in its train, it in itself is a real and incontestable fact, and the very circumstance which most profoundly distinguishes England from the continent. But although the various social principles or elements have been developed in that country more simultaneously, and on the continent more successively, it does not follow that at bottom the route and the object have not been the same. { 229} Considered in their whole extent, the continent and England have gone through the same great phases of civilisation, events have in each pursued the same course, and the same causes have led to the same effects. This, indeed, convincingly appeared in the picture I presented of civilisation up to the sixteenth century, and it will be equally perceptible in the portraiture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The development of the spirit of free inquiry and of pure monarchy, almost simultaneous in England, were accomplished on the continent at pretty long intervals; but they have been accomplished, and the two powers, after having successively enjoyed a marked predominance, have in the same manner joined battle. Therefore, upon the whole, the general march of the societies has been the same; and although there may be some substantial differences, the resemblance is deeply-seated. A rapid glance at modern times will remove all doubt upon the subject.